1- DEVELOPING YOUR IDEA

What is your story? 

All ideas are only as good as the character that drive them, and all good ideas need to be dramatic.

Drama literally means “action” -to act. What is the central dramatic action in your idea?

What is the story? Do you have compelling enough journey for the character and audience to go on? If it´s a series or serial, do you have enough story to keep it going over a number of episodes or weeks?

Creating a coherent world is crucial. What are the rules of your story universe? What do and don´t we need to know and see? Less if often more- the writer needs to know all the rules and background -but the audience only needs enough to stay hooked without being confused.

You can read a couple of great examples of this in the scripts for the first episodes of The Fades and Life on Mars.

What kind of story is it? Are you using a recognisable genre, such as thriller or romantic comedy? If you are inspired or influenced by an archetypal story of old, what is it that´s different about your idea? You need to bring a fresh perspective to familiar tales, worlds, subjects and genres.

What the experiences feels like for the audience is also crucial. What is the tone and feel of the story? Are they consistent and coherent? There´s nothing more frustrating than a slasher movie that suddenly turns into romcom. But then sometimes clashing genres can work if they´re handled intelligently.

And the emotional response you are trying to aim for is just as important. What physical reaction are you looking for? Something so poignant it makes the audience cry? So funny it make their sides hurt from laughing too much? So terrifying it makes the hairs on the nape of their neck stand on end? So thrilling their hearts are in their mouths and they´re on the edge of their seat?

You need to know why writing this idea now is important. Is it something that keeps you up at night and has really got under your skin? What´s it about? What´s the theme- what are you trying to explore, what are you hoping to communicate?

Don´t write anything you don´t care about just to be “expedient” -because it will only be ever competent at best. Is it an idea that will strike a real chord with an audience? Who do you think will want to see it? If you have a burning desire to write, then it´s more likely to grab our attention.

2- KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO WRITE

Knowing what you want to write

Strong scripts know what they are and what they are trying to do

Weak scripts plough on without really being clear from the start. Great writers master medium and form, and manipulate it; not so great writers ignore it. Form is what kind of shape of story you are telling. Format is where in a specific broadcast or performance schedule it might sit.

So the first question to ask is: what is your story? Where and how do you see it finding its most engaging expression? Is it an idea that would work best on radio, or film, or television, or online? How do you want an audience to experience and connect with your story? Are the idea and story you have right for the medium you have chosen?

Once you have clarified where you think it will best live, you need to consider the specific format. Is it a complete single drama told from beginning to end? If so, does it fit an established format such as the 45 minute afternoon drama on Radio 4? TV singles are usually 60-90 minutes. Feature films are usually between 80-120 minutes.

Or is it a finite serial drama, told over a number of episodes that conclude in the final episode? If so, how many episodes do you think you need? How many weeks will an audience stick to it? 3? 4? 6? Or is it the kind of TV serial which is stripped across every night in a single week? TV serial dramas are usually told in hour-long episodes.

Or if it´s a series, is it a drama or comedy show you see returning in annual seasons, such as Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, Shameless, Miranda, The IT crowd? Drama series are usually in 60 minute episodes, whereas comedy series are usually in 30 minute episodes, with seasons lasting anything form the usual 6-8 episodes, right up to 20 plus episodes.

It isn´t usually a good idea to create your own continuing series -or soap- in your spec script. Soaps require a huge array of characters, families, relationships, setting and precincts. If you want to write for soaps, what you need is an original script which shows how well you can write -but one that isn´t itself a soap, or an episode form an existing soap.

The other thing to remember about form, is that all scripts are blueprints rather than a piece of “literature”. They are written to be made – the first stage in a process of production. The more your scripts looks like something coherently formed and formatted, the more impressive and effective it will be. But it´s also potentially just the beginning of something bigger -so don´t be too precious about the words on the page.

3- BEGINNINGS (AND ENDINGS)

Hitting the ground running.

Knowing where to start with the story that you tell is inextricably linked to the ending you are trying to reach.

You don´t need to know all the exact details of the ending, but you need to know where you are heading towards, what kind of ending you are trying to reach -whether tragic, comic, romantic, thrilling, horrifying, bittersweet, ambiguous. Knowing where you are going means you can work out the best, most engaging, most captivating, most meaningful place to start.

Getting the story started means hooking the audience´s attention immediately and hitting the ground running. This doesn´t mean an action sequence -it means starting the story straight away by showing characters in action, and by showing who the characters are by what they do.

Don´t worry about prefacing the story, or trying to “set it up” or introducing the characters artificially -unless a “once upon a time” narration is the kind of device you really want and need to use. Don´t get bogged down in the backstory -in explaining and relating what happened before we started watching. If there´s something important we need to know about the past, bring it into the present-tense action and drama of the story.

Don´t try to do too much. Find a focused way in – you don´t have to introduce every character, every theme, every plot straight away. Bring them in when you really need them to move the story forward, to surprise the audience, to step it up a gear.

But do something significant in the beginning -or the opening act- of your story. Make your characters step outside their comfort zone. Make them want something and pursue it. Set them a problem or dilemma. Make their world different. Give them some kind of call to action -whether it´s to keep a small thing secret or to go out and save humanity.

Most importantly, plan the story before you start writing. Make sure you know what the beginning, middle and end are. Plan what happens in them. Work out pieces of the jigsaw you need, and the order in which you want the audience to piece them together. But stand back, look at your characters, and ask whether they are driving it all forward -because when plotting seems to be taking over from the characters, then something is usually going wrong.

What kind of effect are you trying to have on the audience with your ending? Does it follow from where you started and the journey you´ve taken us and the characters on?

Great endings somehow feel inevitable -they are what should follow-on from everything that has gone before. Yet they must also not be predictable- if we can simply see what´s happening and predict how we´re going to get there, then there´s no surprise along the way. So does the ending truly deliver what you set up at the start? But does it also come in a surprising and somehow unpredictable way?

Great endings satisfy the audience -but satisfying them doesn´t mean simply making them happy and being obvious. Satisfaction means following through, it means not having frustratingly open or ambivalent endings, it means not tacking on a car chase or a plot twist to make things exciting, it means brining events and story to a meaningful climax, it means bringing drama characters to a point of understanding and realization about themselves, it means keeping comedy characters somehow trapped by their shortsightedness.

Great endings fit. Bad endings jar. Great endings bring the story to the boil and then deliver. Bad endings go off a tangents or fizzle out or just stop without any real sense of conclusion or satisfaction. Great endings have an impact. Bad endings implode.

Bad endings forget the audience. Great endings respect the audience.

4- THE MUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE

Making sense of the muddle

The difficulty with many scripts and stories is the middle -the stretch that connects the beginning with the end.

Philip Larkin once said we like stories of the muddle in the middle. The middle takes up more story time and space than the beginning and ending combined. And making that muddle work dramatically or comedically takes thought, planning and effort.

Once you´ve worked out where to begin and where you are going to try to get to, you have to work out the most appropriately difficult way for your characters to get from one to the other -if it´s an action movie, you expect high-octane action, tension and jeopardy, if it´s a detective story, you expect a blossoming relationship being beset with obstacles. Your characters need to get lost in this muddle -otherwise, the journey forward will be too easy for them.

However, you the writer can´t get lost. You need to be in control of the muddle. You need to manipulate characters, events, actions and consequences. You need to make seeming incoherence and confusion still travel towards a climax and a conclusion. You need to make things difficult for the characters while keeping up the momentum of the story for the audience. You need to plan the muddle carefully.

Remember to surprise the audience. What do they need to see? What can you leave out? What might make them see the story, characters and events in a new light?

Remember to engage the audience. Are the characters developing and changing interestingly? Or remaining comically trapped in entertaining enough ways?

Don´t let the story flat-line. Remember the troughs and the peaks, the dead ends and the moments of clarity, the domino-effect of actions and consequences. Otherwise the story will sag. And so will your audience.

5- CHARACTERS BRING YOUR WORDS TO LIFE

Bringing your words to life

Characters are the thing that separate great scripts from only competent scripts- and great writers from only competent writers.

There are a lot of things you can work on to improve and hone your script and your craft -structure, dialogue, formatting, scene writing -but if your characters aren´t engaging enough, then everything will be a struggle, because they must drive everything that happens- whether they are people, aliens, animals or robots.

To write great characters, you need to know what the world looks like from their point of view -to step into their shoes and see from their distinct perspective. What does the world look like when Frank Gallagher or Dot Cotton or Miranda or Sherlock look out at it? What does the world look like when your character looks out at it? If you know this, then you can know how they might instinctively act and react in any given situation. And from this comes authentic drama and comedy.

Great characters are active, not passive. They are always on some kind of journey -physical, emotional, psychological or otherwise -and are always trying to do or get or reach something. What they want may well not be clear, or even remotely what they need. But they should always want and need something. From this comes dilemma and choices. And from this comes drama and comedy.

Great characters are distinct -they are not like anybody else, even if they have characteristics and facets that we see in other characters. What is it that´s distinct about your character? What is it that´s particular about them? What are the things that most define what is unique about them?

Whether they are for drama or comedy, your characters need to be emotionally engaging -we need to want to spend time with them, see what they do next, fear for their safety, laugh at their flaws. We don’t need to like or admire or want to be like them- protagonists that do very bad things can be the most engaging and compelling and enjoyable. But they need to have some kind of emotional life with which can empathise. They need some kind of vulnerability -a chink in their emotional armour or Achilles heel or blind-spot that makes them universally human.

Character is the beating heart of every great idea, every great story, every great script. Even if you don´t manage to get lots of other things right in your first script, if you have characters we genuinely want to spend with, then you have something very special indeed.

6- SCENES

Moving the story forward

A scene is the combination of time, place and setting you use to frame and show a significant moment or event in the story.

It is what we need to see in order for the story to move forward. It is a moment of drama or comedy -of action, of import, of change.

Scenes in which things are just explained or related are not scenes -they are exposition, because nothing really happens. In scenes, something significant must happen -however cataclysmic, or however tiny and subtle. 

So ask yourself, in what way is the scene moving the story forward? What purpose does it have in the story, and in the drama or comedy? If you can´t answer either question, then does it need to be there?

Scenes show the conflicts and tensions, dilemmas and decisions, actions and reactions, of the characters driving your story. But they aren´t only about what can be shown explicitly. Great scriptwriting has subtext -things going on, things playing out, silent conversations being had, that exist below the surface and beyond what is being said.

Ask yourself these questions of every scene you plan to write:

-What effect does this scene have on the character within the moment?

-What effect does it have on the subsequent events of the story?

-What impact does it have on the world of the story?

-What else is going on below the surface and beyond the text?

Scenes aren´t just about themselves in isolation. Juxtaposition is crucial. Where it is placed in a sequence of events can define what a scene does and means, and how well it works. So what comes before? What comes after? Do they have a related effect on a sequence of events? If not, do they have an effect on how the audience sees and makes sense of the events?

Different kinds of scenes can come at different points in the story -if all your scenes look and sound and feel and seem similar, then the story will be dull. Each scene needs a specific and unique purpose in the story. Work that out, and you´ll save a lot of wasted time recapping the story and treading water as you go.

7- DIALOGUE

Behind the words

Dialogue is not just about what characters say -it´s about what they express by what they say.

Dramatic and comic dialogue is not conversation -it is there for a reason, it is honed and shaped and, from the writer´s point of view, purposeful.

But dialogue is not logical – characters, like people, do not necessarily or naturally express themselves in perfectly coherent grammar. Unless, of course, that happens to be something very specific to their personality -so not just the words they say, but who they are.

Great characters have an identifiable voice -they have tone, inflection, their own grammar, their own tics and tropes and ways of expressing themselves. Their voice needs to be individuated – to be particular to them.

Strong character voices are authentic. They express themselves, they aren´t mouthpieces for anything else -unless of course being a mouthpiece for something else is an intrinsic part of their character and the story… So beware of characters suddenly making speeches or grand statements that don´t ring true.

If your character has an accent or uses dialect/ slang, then write it in -but be sparing and be specific. When we first see them, indicate their accent -but don´t exhaustively write in a kind of phonetic version of it all the way through, because it can be impossible to read. Slip in specific words and terms only that dialect would use.

The biggest problem with most dialogue is being “on the nose” and being expositional. If the only reason for dialogue being there is to relate information to the audience, then think again. Find dramatic ways of making information significant in the moment and in the story. If you want the audience to realize a secret about a character, make the revelation of it difficult, with real consequences in the story.

Dialogue isn´t just about the words on the page -it´s about the things that are not said. The space between the words. The silences that speak volumes. The subtext of what´s going on below and behind the words.

8- WRITING IS REWRITING

Editing yourself

So you´ve developed your idea, worked out what kind of story and experience it is, created characters, structured the story, brought it to scenic life, and voiced the characters. You have a draft and it feels like an achievement.

And it is exactly that. But it is also the dangerous moment- where you must slam on the brakes, step back from something you have inevitably got too close to, and be deliberately hard on yourself.

No script falls perfectly finished onto the page after an intensive bout of extreme creativity. Scriptwriting is rewriting -whether it´s on the page or in your head, over days, weeks, months or years. To write and rewrite, you need to give your story time and space.

Print your script out, put it in an envelope, put it in a drawer or on a shelf, and force yourself to leave it alone for at least a couple of weeks, if not longer. You need to be able to come back to it fresh, make a deliberate attempt to reserve your subjectivity, and take as objective a look at it as you possibly can. This is not easy. But you have to do it. 

Do two things when you do reopen that envelope. First, reserve a quiet undisturbed space and read it through at pace, without stopping to take copious notes. Read it like someone else might read it, in one go. Ask yourself honestly what you think, does it work, what and where are the problems, is it clear, does it say what you wanted it to say, is it clearly the thing you set out to write?. Then, put it away again for at least another day, before you sit down and start digging down into making notes on scenes and lines on the page. 

Is there someone you can trust to give you honest, intelligent, useful feedback? If so, use them. Read it out loud -make the characters talk…

When  you do start using the big red editing pen, you have to stop yourself from being precious about your words . Scripts aren´t novels, or short stories, or poetry or rhetoric. If you are extremely lucky, they are tools in a production process that can involve numerous other people who will all bring something to the task of bringing to life the words you have written down. If you like something you´ve written, or think it´s really good, but can see it doesn´t really need to be there, then cut it out, save it, bank it- but don´t just leave it in.

Don´t presume that what you have written is genius. It might be. But great writers tend to presume the worst so that they can make it even better. Not so great writers can tend to presume what they´ve written is brilliant and resist any attempt to develop it. You should always be trying to make it better.

Is it finished? How finished does it need to be? No script is finished until it´s made -and great stories can go on to have further lives in other mediums. Your script just needs to be ready to be read. Ready to speak your voice, set out your stall, show what you can do. If you´re lucky enough to have someone pay you to rewrite it for them, then you can rethink what finished means.

Just make sure that you give your script the time and space it needs- and you need- to get it as tight as you can. No-one in the industry wants to see first drafts from writers who haven´t made up their minds about what they´re doing. They want to see the best, most developed script you think you can write. And they want to see what´s different and unique about what you can do.

WRITING TV DRAMA

SCREENWRITING TIPS

It´s important to know your market.

Check the schedules and watch as much Tv drama as you an -see what genres and formats are on, what´s popular, what works, what doesn´t work, what grips and inspires and entertains you, and what leaves you cold.

It´s always worth comparing the originality of your idea with current and previous shows. Try not to replicate something that has already hit the screens, and try to make everything you write unique in some way. But don´t try to simply plug a gap in the market or write something solely because it might appear to be a novel idea – you should write what you feel passionate about.

Always be specific about what kind of drama you are writing, where in the schedule it might fit, and what kind of audience it might reach. Is it a continuing, prime-time soap in thirty minute episodes? A returning crime series in sixty-minute episodes? A six part, post-watershed serial? A pre-watershed, sixty-minute single drama? Remember that writing for established formats isn´t the same thing as writing to a formula -strong established formats allow for individual expression, but it´s hard to be individual when writing to a perceived formula.

The shape and tone of your story will relate in many ways to the format and slot. A Doctors episode tells a self-contained, character driven guest story while an EastEnders episode normally interweaves multiple storylines -both are continuing series told in thirty-minute episodes, but they are placed at different times in the schedule, and their tone and form is likewise different.

TV is easy to turn off or turn over, so open your story as dynamically as you can. Try to hook the interest of the audience as soon as possible so that they will want to stay tuned and, if there are more episodes to come, will want to keep tuning in. Ask yourself if there´s a strong enough sense of character, drama, and story to sustain an audience´s engagement.

Engaging characters are at the heart of all good drama, no matter how mainstream or unusual your idea may be. Your characters should be believable, even if they are in an incredible situation. We should be able to empathize and engage with the main characters, even if we don´t necessarily like them. It´s hard to care about a character that plays a passive role in their own story, so make your central characters as active as possible. There should be all kinds of conflicts and difficulties for your characters to deal with -scripts are rarely interesting if the writer is too easy on or too nice to the characters.

TV is a visual medium. Reveal your characters and their story through the action. Good dialogue should serve the story rather than “relate” it, so check whether it is awkwardly explanatory and expository.

All good drama has a meaningful structure. A common problem is that the structure is too episodic -a conflict is introduced but is then either too quickly resolved or never fully resolved. Another common problem is that the storytelling is too undynamic -in drama things should happen as a consequence of, and not merely after, what has happened before. Another common problem is that of redundant scenes -make sure that every scene moves the story forward.

WRITING FILM

Film scripts are written to be produced as drama rather than read as literature.

Finished screenplays are a blueprint – a starting point in the production process rather than an end point in their own right.

Screenwriting is very technical and does not come naturally to anybody -it is a skill and craft that has to be acquired and developed. Fully formed screenplays do not fall onto the page following a burst of creativity -they must be developed and nurtured.

There are several important differences between writing for cinema and TV:

Cinematic experience: the way audiences watch films in the cinema is very different to the way audiences watch TV in the home.

Scale: film stories tend to be on a larger scale than TV dramas in terms of ideas, visuals, emotions, and cost

Shelf Life: great films tend to have a longer life than TV drama

Storytelling: films tend to be more complex than TV drama in terms of the visual storytelling and narrative structure.

Narrative scope: single dramas over 60 minutes tend not to fit into TV schedules, whereas feature-length films for cinema exhibition are rarely less than 90 minutes.

International appeal: films need to appeal beyond the domestic market to an international audience.

As a budding screenwriter, you should go to the cinema as often as possible and see films on the big screen for which they are intended. You should read as many screenplays as possible, and compare what you see on the page with what you see on the screen. It´s worth reading about the industry in the trade magazines such as Variety, Broadcast, The Hollywood Reporter and Screen International -don´t be naïve about how the industry works and the challenges that you face.

Many screenwriters start out by writing short films. Shorts are not only an important training ground, but are also useful as a calling card or showreel in the industry. Although money is rarely made from short films, there are various opportunities to produce and exhibit them, and they can prove a valuable tool in developing and promoting your talent.

Screenwriters can expect to do much more rewriting than original writing, and you should be prepared to engage with the invariably protected process of developing a script and project. Good writers are never happy with what they´ve written and look to improve their work – it doesn´t help to resist the development process by presuming that what they´ve written is great. There are almost never any completely valueless notes, even if you disagree with them and however badly expressed they may appear.

If you are commissioned, you will ultimately develop two crucial relationships: first, with the producer, who works to develop and promote the project; second, with the director, who takes creative control. Unless you have a directing or producing track-record, you should get used to the reality that other people will bring your script to life, and will bring their own vision, ideas and experience to that life.

It is worth acquainting yourself with books on “how to structure a screenplay”. But remember, it´s like putting on a pair of glasses -they can help you see things more clearly, but they can´t fix your eyesight. Use scriptwriting guides as a box of tools rather than as a set of rules. There are no rules -only good practice.

Remember that the audience should be at the heart of what you do. Making films is hard; getting them distributed in cinemas is even harder; getting people to come and see them is even harder still. The industry invariably needs to feel it can sell a film to an audience in order to risk investing in it. You need to show the industry that there is a potential audience for your work.

Writing for the big screen is always difficult. Develop a thick skin. Be persistent. You don´t have to agree with what director, producers, development executives, or script readers say about your work -but you should take what they say on board since ,in the end, they are the ones who might just decide to commission you.

WRITING TV SITCOM 

Situation comedy is in some ways a dramatic form, in that it must tell a story. 

Philip Larkin put it neatly when he said a satisfying story has a beginning, a muddle and an end. New writers often start at A get to Z in a straight line. The muddle in the middle is what makes a story involving.

IT is useful to think of organizing a story in three acts. The first act sets up the major story of the episode, and introduces the major sub-plot. The final act resolves both main plot and sub-plot. The middle act develops the narrative but also pushes things off into an unexpected direction. The audience should always want to know what is going to happen next, and be intrigued.

Involvement in a story depends on the characters through whom it is told. Whether the characters are heightened a lot or a little, they need to be recognizably human, behave in ways that people behave in life rather than in an artificial sitcom world, have personalities which will generate comic conflict and disagreement, and have tones of voice which are immediately and obviously theirs.

When planning a new idea, the characters should come first and if they are the right characters they will arrive with their world attached. Don´t say: “Estate agents are funny, so I´ll set a comedy in that world and then people in it”.

Think about the people first, give them histories, test them out in different situations where they are under pressure and see how they react, think about what makes them happy or scared or angry, write monologues for each character in that character´s tone of voice, find ways of exploring them fully. Make the people authentic, put them in an authentic world and then find their comic tone.

It´s always useful to plan and write out a storyline before embarking on a script. Describe what happens in each scene, remembering that each scene should be a mini-drama in itself, and should move the story or sub-plot forward. When the storyline is working satisfactorily, then start on the script.

Tailor your script to its intended market. If you are writing a sitcom to be recorded with a studio audience look at examples and note that there are generally three large sets and perhaps two small ones, that three is a limited amount of location taping, and that the action generally happens over a short period of time -because every different day demands a change of costume that slows down the recording.

If you are writing a comedy to be shot entirely on location, then try to avoid complicated set-ups. Location shows use one camera, and every angle has to be covered. Look analytically at a sequence in this sort of show, and see how many shots go to make it up.

WRITING RADIO DRAMA

Radio drama is the most intimate relationship a screenwriter can have with their audience, and yet it can also cheaply create anything that you can imagine.

The pictures are better on radio. There´s nothing you can´t do, nowhere you can´t go, and nothing that looks “cheap”. Nobody will say that they can´t afford to build that set, or the lighting´s not quite right, or that the bad weather is going to delay production for days. The true “budget” is that spent between you and the listener -the cost of two imaginations combined.

Radio is not about sound -it´s about significant, meaningful sound. So don´t be afraid of silence, or varying the distance between the speaker and the mike. The intimacy of a speaker with the listener can be immensely powerful. In real life, lots of sounds happen all at once. Think of sunday morning: grass cutters, distant church bells, bubbling pans, kids playing in the street. Use background sound to create an atmosphere that will help the listeners imagination create an entire world. Choose a setting with a distinct aural environment and use those sounds to underscore the story. Use sound to cut between places and times.

Radio has the fastest turn-off rate of all drama so make the audience want to stay. Try to hit the ground running -you have to do the thinking but it doesn´t necessarily have to reach the page. Everything must earn its keep -it may be a fantastic bit of prose or a wonderful image but if it´s not relevant to the story and the characters, lose it. Cut the preamble and emotionally tie the audience down. Simple often works best.

No drama works without emotionally engaging characters. The audience must want to spend time with them and want to know what will happen to them. Don´t over populate your play with too many character jostling for space. Each must be there for a reason. If you´re thinking of a particular accent/voice for a character, write it in -allow each personality to come through. But beware peer groups where characters have the same gender, age, class/status and accent/ dialect -they might be indecipherable on radio.

Know your ending and leave us satisfied – a poor ending is no reward for sticking with a story. Finish with a strong resolution to the issues raised. Don´t be afraid to move at pace, like TV or film, if the story or genre demands it.

Make sure you aren´t masquerading prose as dialogue. Don´t over explain -keep it lean and dramatic. Radio scripts can be just as spare as screenplays. Boil it down to the minimum, the essential. The silence, the pause, the space between the words is important -particularly in building suspense. Radio is a very visual medium. Allow the listener´s imagination to see the story. Think too about inarticulacy -most people don´t speak perfect, coherent RP. Every character needs their own “grammar”. The internal monologue is a great device but can be over used -especially for exposition or telling the audience how the character is feeling. So make it dramatic. Monologue requires extraordinary strength of character voice -Spoonface Sternberg had her own unique language.

Language is more naked and potent on the radio, so less is definitively more. Audiences can be as sensitive to religious oaths as to bad language. Gratuitousness of any kind won´t work -though something contentious put in meaningful context might. But also beware self-censorship -it´s easier to tone a script down than it is to make it more exciting and interesting.

The medium of radio for drama is liberating, not restrictive -it can mean more variety, more locations, more action, more imagination, and more originality. So use it to its full potential.

It´s crucial to identify and familiarize yourself with radio drama slots in the schedule.

WRITING RADIO COMEDY

Avoid characters, themes and situations that have recently been done.

Radio is not like film, where a hit will spawn a host of imitators. A successful sitcom series on Radio 4 guarantees the network won´t want anything similar for some time after.

Avoid trying to be too topical, especially given that the length of the commissioning process will make a flash-in-the-pan topic date quickly. Stories and situations that seem to resurface frequently include history, space, the media, parallel universes, school reunions, and the afterlife.

The idea has to be one that genuinely excites you, and that you have some genuine reason for writing. If someone asks why you want to write the idea and your only response is “because it hasn´t been done”, the chances are it will come across as uninspired. Bring your own unique comic insight into a particular situation or world, and you can probably only do that if you really care about it.

Having too narrow a theme and overworking it can be as dangerous as having no focus at all. Many new writers stop at one idea and overwork it -try to work in sub-themes as well as a main theme.

You don´t have to think of an original environment. It´s more important to give us a new perspective on something familiar, or a fresh style. Surreal or novel ideas are as commonplace as ones set around a sofa.

All your characters should have an original slant, comic potential and mileage. They need to have a comic flaw or two -some weakness that keeps getting them into trouble. They should interact with each other to create comedy, but should also remain believable. Characters should be likable, even if they aren´t necessarily “nice”. Comic empathy comes through making your characters suffer for their mistakes, yet be making them always somehow unaware of their faults.

Telling stories is important. The main story should relate to your main over-riding theme. If your comedy is about how ambition can lead to disaster, then the main plot should demonstrate that point. But it´s good to have several storylines and spread the comic possibilities -and they do not necessarily have to neatly tie-up or connect.

Make sure the humor is driven by the characters and stories, and not just about funny lines put into character´s mouths. Avoid characters sniping at each other “in a funny way”. Many writers assume that writing comedy for radio means just writing gags. It´s worth limiting the number of formulaic lines -eg “that´s like a cross between…” or “that´s about as healthy as….” or “I haven´t seen anything as bad as that since…” Great character are funny to an audience not because they crack jokes or make witty repartee but because of the things they do, choices they take, mistakes they make.

Avoid factual exposition. The audience very rarely needs to know much about a character´s past or how they came to be in the situation they´re in. 

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