Disarmingly Simple Advice
And how to apply that advice to my latest sitcom script
How do you know what to do with your script? You’ve finished a draft. Some bits work. Some bits don’t. What are you supposed to do?
I was given a disarmingly simple tip on this by Paul Mayhew Archer when I was writing Think The Unthinkable for BBC Radio 4 back in the early 2000s. He had worked with Richard Curtis on The Vicar of Dibley and passed on this very straightforward piece of advice:
Ready?
Take those funny bits – and make them longer.
But that’s not all!
Take the bits that aren’t very funny – and make them much shorter.
Seriously. That’s the advice.
But it’s great advice. After all, you’re writing a sitcom, right? Which needs to be funny, right? Funny is hard. So if you’ve got something that works, make the most of it.
And quite often, there’s a bit that seemed like it would be funny, and isn’t.
Or there is some boring but necessary exposition and action which might well not be fixable with jokes. So cut it. Or, at least, cut it right down.
That’s exactly the process I’m about to go through with The Lab, the studio sitcom script I’ll be discussing in this week’s live Zoom session:
Sitcom Script Development (Live!): What’s Not Working (And How I Fix It)
That’s on Thursday evening next week (14th May). If you join the session, you’ll be able to actually read my script beforehand and decide for yourself:
which bits should be expanded
which bits should disappear entirely
and what you’d try next
Then I’ll walk through the options I’m considering — and why.
It’s pay-what-you-like (minimum £1) simply to keep the session manageable and full of people who are genuinely interested in sitcom writing.