Ideas and How They Grow

 Late one night, I was struck by an idea.  A basic premise for ... something.  Probably a sitcom.

I think there are two types of idea.

First - the ideas you generate when you NEED them.  You've committed to a deadline, to produce a piece of work, and now you need to decide what that work will be.  You brainstorm, mind-map, talk out loud, whatever it takes to come up with something.

These initial ideas are usually quite weak, but then you work out ways to make them more interesting.  Maybe you combine two ideas.  Maybe you add a twist.  Or maybe you pick a safe idea - the clock's ticking, after all - and just do your best to produce something reliable and high-quality.

Late one night, I was struck by the OTHER kind of idea.  A fully-formed concept that seemed strong and interesting - and no deadline in sight!

But these "pure" ideas present a bigger challenge.  What exactly could I DO with it?  No one had asked me to pitch a sitcom, or to write a pilot.  What's next?

Creatively, my preference is to be commissioned first, and write second.  Hire me to write a sketch, I'll write you a sketch.  Book me for a comedy night, I'll prepare a set for it.

But this was 2020.  With all my gigs cancelled, I had an unprecedented amount of spare time to sit and write.  Alright, I thought.  Let's do this.

I'm now going to tell you how I spent the next few months, right up to today.

There are two sides to this story, and the first is the creative side.  I'm not going to tell you my idea (and yes, I realise how annoying that is), but it's basically two love stories (with a twist).  I started messing about with that idea in my head.  I'd daydream about this show existing, visualising how it would look and sound.  How old are the characters?  What do they look like?  Are my protagonists people like me and my friends, or are they completely different?  What are their families like?  Where do they live, how much money do they have?

All this was in my head.  I'd write down some bullet points when I thought of something major I didn't want to forget, but the vast majority of the story existed only in my mind.  That way, my characters could start to feel like real people.  Not a list of details like "favourite food/film/band", but a sort-of vague sense of what they're like.

Once I was confident in the idea, I started telling my closest friends about it.  Not too many people at once - I think an idea can die if you tell the wrong person at the wrong time.  You don't want too much pressure at this point - or too much cynicism.

But this helped the idea to grow.  The questions they asked helped me identify the areas that needed attention.  Occasionally, these conversations became impromptu development meetings, as we threw ideas around and came up with different possibilities.

At this point, I'd let myself occasionally fantasise about the show running for several series with a great budget - a "sky's the limit" approach to ideas.  I think it's much easier to think big and then reign yourself in.  It means you end up thinking more creatively than starting small and trying to grow.

By now, I had a reasonable idea of my main characters, supporting characters, and a format for the show.  I had an idea for a pilot, an idea for several more episodes, and a loose idea of how the story would move and develop from one episode to the next.

More to the point, I was starting to work out how this show would be funny.  Comedy has been the main genre of my writing for the last decade, so this is familiar territory - but it's still scary.  People have strong opinions on humour, and a sitcom that isn't funny doesn't work.

One of the earliest pieces of advice I received about writing comedy is that all jokes are fundamentally about applying the logic of one thing to another thing.  Early episodes of Friends often feature stereotypical conversations about romantic relationships, but in unexpected situations - such as a non-romantic friendship, or a pet.

Since my sitcom is about romance and relationships, I needed to work out the nature of the jokes.  For now, I'm not going to elaborate on that.  But I came up with a paradigm for jokes that felt rich, versatile and reliable.

One of the major advantages to a background in standup comedy is that, having performed around a thousand live gigs, I reckon I've got a good instinct for the kinds of jokes and subjects people will find interesting or boring.  I'll probably talk more about this in the future, but here's an example: most people LOVE jokes about sex.  Some audiences don't want you to be too crude, but even those audiences are privately excited about the subject.  Most audiences DON'T want to hear about dreams.  They don't care; they switch off when the subject is mentioned.

It's usually a mistake to write about these turnoff subjects.  If you can't even grab an audience's attention, you won't make them laugh.

But in my view, it's also a mistake to exclusively write about exciting subjects.  Because EVERYONE writes about those subjects, and they've been done to death.

The most interesting comedy usually combines exciting and unappealing topics.  It makes the unappealing topics more exciting, and it gives the done-to-death topics a fresh new angle.

We're now up-to-date, by the way.  Swimming in my brain is a vivid soup of characters, jokes, scenarios, plots, locations, set pieces and formats.  Hardly any of it is written down, even at this point.  This may well be the standup comedian in me - very few comedians write their material longhand at any point.

Until now, I haven't spared a moment's thought to the "correct" way to write a sitcom.  That's the easy bit - the ABC plotting, the hard and soft motivations, or whatever these things are called.

But now it's time to think about those things.  So I'm watching YouTube videos analysing sitcoms, to help me identify any last-minute problems that need fixing in my show.  Because I'm going to start wri-

Hang on.  Let me back up.

As I said earlier - I like to write to a deadline.  Without a deadline, I still need a sense that I'm working on something practical, tangible, realistic.  Time spent developing this sitcom is time NOT spent working on standup, sketches, or anything else that can help me pay the bills.

As such, at the same time I started talking to friends about the concept, I also started talking about the practicalities of getting a sitcom made.  I talked to other comedians, and I talked to my colleagues in media.

If they'd told me there was no way for someone like me to get a sitcom made, I'd have parked the idea and moved on to something else.  And hey, I realise it's not easy getting a sitcom made by ANYONE.  But the feedback and advice I received was very positive.

There are several ways to get projects made.  In fact, as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, there are more possibilities than ever!  But also, probably less money than ever.

As a standup, I like the purity of live comedy gigs.  Someone's putting on a show in a random city or town.  I tell them I'm available, they tell me if they want me.  If they do, I go to that place, I perform, I take my money and go home.  Nice and easy!

Media by comparison seems slow and complicated.  Pitch the right idea to the right person at the right time, draft and redraft, pitch over and again, apply notes from countless different sources, and then hope your contacts haven't moved to another department before you're finally commissioned.

However, there's a sense in which it's more pure and simple than that.  Ultimately, the first step is to find other people who are excited by your idea, and who have the skills and powers you lack.  I spoke with potential producers and directors.  Some of them?  Their eyes lit up when I told them my idea.  They got excited on my behalf, maybe suggested some ideas of their own.  These are the people I want on my team!

Collaboration is like a romantic relationship, I think.  If someone isn't into you, move on.  Don't waste your time trying to convince someone of your inherent brilliance.  If they can't see it, that's not a good starting point.  Find the people who share your worldview, and who can get on board with your vision.

There are a lot of ways I could approach the commissioning side of this project, but one of my colleagues contacted me at the start of the month with a good opportunity.  The deadline's tight - I need a pilot script by Twelfth Night.

I'm a deadline person!  This is what I needed.  Worst case scenario, the script isn't good enough by then.  But at least I'll have a script that exists, a real, tangible starting point.

I will start writing the pilot tomorrow.