I've been writing mine for so long, it's embarrassing. I suppose I could've written something like 'Two Pints...', or 'My Family', and had it finished in about 6 months, but my standards are too high for that. The problem is, I'm constantly tweaking it, making changes every day. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get it finished. I'm starting to think I might even get knocked down by a car, or get some life-threatening illnes, before I finish it.
I've spent 14 months putting Grind Show together (between a full time job and writing/producing sketches) and it's only now that I have a series outline and a pilot I'm starting to be happy with.
...about 8 years. In my defence it looks and feels totally different from gen 1, and we've produced 5 scripts in last year so things have accelerated incredibly over the last year when I decided to take it seriously.
I think you have to be careful about too much tinkering. I find I want to change something every time I read it again, but that's not the point. To someone reading it for the first time, those jokes I think I want to change to new ones will still be fresh.
You will never produce a script that is perfect for production without the input of a producer, script editor and the comissiooning body because you don't know what they're looking for, over and above a high quality, funny, well structured script with good character definition and.... well, you know the rest.
I would suggest that, once you are generally happy with it, you send it to a script reader and get a professional perspective on how it stacks up against an industry benchmark. Then you can re-write, or not, on the back of this, and start sending it to production companies.
To answer the initial question posed in the thread, I took about 2 months, pretty much full time monday to friday to write a first draft, and most of that was planning the series and plotting all of the episodes.
My pilot that got a producer interested in was conceived in December 06, written by April 07. So about five months on that.
Same for my other pilot. I wrote a second episode of that quite quickly so it just goes to show that the pilot can take bloody ages, but once all the groundwork is laid it all happens quite quickly after that.
I've been working on 'A boy named shoe' for about three years. it's origional title was going to be 'Bless this mouse', then it was going to be 'every day has it's dog.'
Still only got three episodes.
It takes me between three and five weeks for a new pilot script. That's with about five rewrites thrown in, working from between four and six hours a day. Since Christmas I've completed three pilot scripts.
That said I once spent about three months working on one script and never got past the first ten pages. I was working on other things as well, but it was still very depressing. I have since sold that script so it worked out okay in the end.
My writing partner and I began writing our script at the start of August 2007 and finished it ready to send out to prod co's at the end of January 2008.
However, we only met on Tuesday and Thursday evenings for approx 3 hours a time. We did very little work outside of our meetings, almost to the point that if we were not together then the project was on hold.
I did a few sums and worked out that we spent approx 157 hours on the script from it's bear beginings to having it fully complete with series synopsis and getting it checked over by Marc Blake. If you equate that time to a working day of 8 hours then, and I was quite staggered by this, it took us 20 days to do the whole project.
I'm still scratching my head at those sums....
Def.
I came up with my current sitcom idea just over a year ago. I spent many months developing the characters, then just as long getting the pilot right. I'm only now finishing episode 6.
Well my last/first script was started as a new years resolution on the Jan 1st without an idea to a complete 1st draft on the 6th. Since then the rewrite and 5 additional episode plans took a week.
Can I ask why unless asked for you'd actually write more than one episode of a sitcom unless it was commissioned?
Quote: Rob B @ March 20, 2008, 10:54 AMWell my last/first script was started as a new years resolution on the Jan 1st without an idea to a complete 1st draft on the 6th. Since then the rewrite and 5 additional episode plans took a week.
Can I ask why unless asked for you'd actually write more than one episode of a sitcom unless it was commissioned?
Personally speaking, my sitcom would never have got anyone excited, if I'd only pitched one episode's worth of ideas, as it would've sounded like countless other sitcoms from the past. I felt I had to keep working on it for so long, just to give it a hope of standing out.
About 3 years on and off.
What I find very embarrassing is that the scripts being commissioned are being re-written! When you see the pitiful attempts at comedy gracing our screens it makes you think, "How bad were they?"
My latest one has just gone out into the stormy seas of prodco. Wrote it in December, took me about 4 hours flat out. That said I was noodling with ideas, and jotting things down on buses, in meetings, in bed for 3 or 4 months. Then after having it read by a group, I gave it a 2 hour edit. Then nibbled at it, here and there for a few weeks. Then gave it a final 3 hour edit (for me the hardest part), and spent a couple more hours on the synopsis. Doubt it'll get produced, but to be blunt it's 95% as good as I can get it, and I'm not going to drive myself up the wall for 5%, over a year. I figure one has to write an awful lot of crap, before one hit's ones stride. So I figure to spend the next couple of years writing 5-6 pilots, and hopefully by the 7th I'll be there. I know having written 3 pilots, there's a distinctive improvement in each one. I also recently looked up some of my old stuff, and was shocked at how bad it was. How unressurectibly bad.
Quote: sootyj @ March 20, 2008, 4:47 PMDoubt it'll get produced, but to be blunt it's 95% as good as I can get it, and I'm not going to drive myself up the wall for 5%, over a year.
For the sake of 5% why not give yourself the best chance you can get? You've already spent 3-4 months off and on, why risk wasting that time for the sake of, say, another month's work?
I also recently looked up some of my old stuff, and was shocked at how bad it was. How unressurectibly bad.
I know what you mean, hence the comment above - no-one is suggesting you take a year.