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Quote: billwill @ March 9 2011, 2:13 AM GMT

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Before you start writing anything like a script you should know your characters and locations as thoroughly as you knew your fellow pupils at school and your work colleagues at work. And you should know all the locations as thoroughly as if you had photographed them or built them yourself.

Then write an outline of your story or first episode of your sitcom series; this is called a treatment. Then break that outline down into the scenes that you will need in order to make the audience visualize that story.

Download the following template: http://www.datahighways.net/dhl/downloads/w2000/Cards.PDF

Which is the Script Development Cards template from my Scriptwriters' Toolkit.

Print out as many cards as you need, there's a guide to how many on the first sheet. Then write out one card for each character, each location and each scene from your breakdown. Shuffle the scenes around into the best logical or visual sequence (that why they are separate cards). Identify the key scenes of part 1, part 2 and part 3 of your episode and make cards for them, and identify the climax scene and write out a card for that.

Keep the cards with you wherever you go, jot notes on them every time you think of something significant. Then read them all through in sequence one evening, go sleep on it and then the next day you should be ready to type the first draft of the script of your episode. If you've done the research thoroughly writing the script and especially the dialogue will be dead easy, it will just flow from your fingers as if you were telling a story about your school friends or work colleagues.

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And for those of us who don't suffer from OCD?

There are as many ways to approach writing one's sitcom as there are sitcom writers. Personally, if I followed the above method I would probably a) have a nervous breakdown (yes, another one) and b) produce a piece of joyless, derivative and formulaic shit (and I can do that perfectly well using my current methods).

Quote: Tim Walker @ March 9 2011, 10:39 AM GMT

And for those of us who don't suffer from OCD?

There are as many ways to approach writing one's sitcom as there are sitcom writers. Personally, if I followed the above method I would probably a) have a nervous breakdown (yes, another one) and b) produce a piece of joyless, derivative and formulaic shit (and I can do that perfectly well using my current methods).

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I know exactly what you mean. I was talking to a writer recently, just a few pints in a quiet pub, and he was talking about a screenplay he was working on and how he just couldn't nail the Beat Sheet. And I had no idea what he was talking about. "Beat Sheet?" He went on to describe the formula for a screenplay, with each scene mapped out, every inciting incident and moment of crisis hitting the right page number, every beat of the story, and so on, and I was (and remain) horrified.

But there are lots of successful films (or TV shows) which were written to precisely this formula (my writer friend named a dozen or so) and some of them are genuinely brilliant, and highly original. I suppose the art is in marrying genuinely great ideas/characters/stories with this very rigid method of writing. That's a skill I don't think I could ever master.

You don't have to start at the beginning. Do a chunk you're comfortable with and then maybe work backwards to the start.

In the short while I've been doing this (and it is short) I've done it this way.

I sit on the toilet and scribble ideas down, set pieces are devised with really basic ideas develping little clouds popping up around them, characters are given traits and ideas with short scribbled sentences.

When typing it up I do it like plastering a wall. Get the bloody stuff on the wall/page first, don't worry too much about the dialogue and structure just type/trowel.
Then have a cup of coffee go back to it and shape it a bit.
Leave it a little longer then go back and polish it, going over a few times. spray some water on it if it helps.
When you've finished ask for money/wait in anguish for months.

Try not to get the two mixed up by the way. While a lump of dry plaster might be more impressive than some of the bilge that gets submitted to agencies and production companies, or even ends up on TV, it'll cost quite a lot to post.

For information purposes I have written two and a half scripts and plastered 0 walls

Quote: sean knight @ March 9 2011, 4:58 PM GMT

In the short while I've been doing this (and it is short) I've done it this way.

I sit on the toilet and scribble ideas down, set pieces are devised with really basic ideas develping little clouds popping up around them, characters are given traits and ideas with short scribbled sentences.

When typing it up I do it like plastering a wall. Get the bloody stuff on the wall/page first, don't worry too much about the dialogue and structure just type/trowel.
Then have a cup of coffee go back to it and shape it a bit.
Leave it a little longer then go back and polish it, going over a few times. spray some water on it if it helps.
When you've finished ask for money/wait in anguish for months.

Try not to get the two mixed up by the way. While a lump of dry plaster might be more impressive than some of the bilge that gets submitted to agencies and production companies, or even ends up on TV, it'll cost quite a lot to post.

For information purposes I have written two and a half scripts and plastered 0 walls

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I think you've developed a premise for a absent minded plasterer to follow the current work.

Quote: billwill @ March 9 2011, 2:13 AM GMT

You are jumping in the deep end, trying to run before you walk (to mix a few metaphors).

Before you start writing anything like a script you should know your characters and locations as thoroughly as you knew your fellow pupils at school and your work colleagues at work. And you should know all the locations as thoroughly as if you had photographed them or built them yourself.

Then write an outline of your story or first episode of your sitcom series; this is called a treatment. Then break that outline down into the scenes that you will need in order to make the audience visualize that story.

Download the following template: http://www.datahighways.net/dhl/downloads/w2000/Cards.PDF

Which is the Script Development Cards template from my Scriptwriters' Toolkit.

Print out as many cards as you need, there's a guide to how many on the first sheet. Then write out one card for each character, each location and each scene from your breakdown. Shuffle the scenes around into the best logical or visual sequence (that why they are separate cards). Identify the key scenes of part 1, part 2 and part 3 of your episode and make cards for them, and identify the climax scene and write out a card for that.

Keep the cards with you wherever you go, jot notes on them every time you think of something significant. Then read them all through in sequence one evening, go sleep on it and then the next day you should be ready to type the first draft of the script of your episode. If you've done the research thoroughly writing the script and especially the dialogue will be dead easy, it will just flow from your fingers as if you were telling a story about your school friends or work colleagues.

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Normally you post sound stuff billwill - and I'm with you on index cards for scenes (although I prefer to save a tree or two and do it on-screen).
But the above process is a sure way to wring every last drop of joy out of the writing process.
Often as not character traits develop as you write - as in "Wouldn't it be funny if he had a fear of spiders" - you then reverse engineer it into the script.
Same with locations, plot points etc.
What you mainly need to know is how the thing ends - then write your way towards it.
And if EVER you find the dialogue dead easy, trust me, you're doing it wrong.

Quote: Lazzard @ March 9 2011, 5:57 PM GMT

And if EVER you find the dialogue dead easy, trust me, you're doing it wrong.

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Well that's not strictly true! Sometimes it is easy (albeit in short bursts).

Writing dialogue is this easiest part. Creating interesting and relevant characters is the tricky part.

Hrummph...

You all seem to be ignoring that this was advice to a raw beginner suffering writers block, and you've missed a key phrase: "you should be ready to type the first draft of the script"

Note that word FIRST in there.

Your first draft is probably at least 10 rewrites before your submission draft.

There was nothing formulaic about what I said, just pre-planning.

Quote: Leevil @ March 9 2011, 6:10 PM GMT

Writing dialogue is this easiest part. Creating interesting and relevant characters is the tricky part.

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Exactly. Once you KNOW your characters, you know what they should say.

Quote: Lazzard @ March 9 2011, 5:57 PM GMT

What you mainly need to know is how the thing ends - then write your way towards it.

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Note the phrase: "and identify the climax scene and write out a card for that"

Quote: Lazzard @ March 9 2011, 5:57 PM GMT

Often as not character traits develop as you write - as in "Wouldn't it be funny if he had a fear of spiders" - you then reverse engineer it into the script.
Same with locations, plot points etc.

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No-one is saying that the planning cards are set in stone when you start writing, you amend them as you go along.

Quote: Lazzard @ March 9 2011, 5:57 PM GMT

And if EVER you find the dialogue dead easy, trust me, you're doing it wrong.

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If the dialogue doesn't flow easily on your FIRST draft then I suspect that YOU are doing it wrong; trying to write the final version on your first go ?

Quote: Griff @ March 9 2011, 7:35 PM GMT

There is more to dialogue than conveying character.

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I think character and dialogue have an indirect relationship. The character is maybe formed from what you don't say.

Rather like sex, there are many different ways of doing it. Rather like sex, the vast majority of attempts will be disappointing or at best mediocre. Rather like sex, occasionally you will reach amazing heights of satisfaction with what you've achieved. Rather like sex, chances are no-one else will notice.

Maybe I'm thinking too much about it. Writing, I mean.

Writing is like sex, as in it was once done with a tool that distributes liquid. Now it's all on computers.

Quote: Griff @ March 9 2011, 7:35 PM GMT

There is more to dialogue than conveying character.

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Yup, the environment (location) and the action (scene sequence description) both mentioned above.

And the interaction with other characters.

Anything else?

Quote: Griff @ March 10 2011, 12:40 AM GMT

Well, only the whole of everything: plot, theme, relationships (real and imagined), subtext, pace, style, wit, ambiguity, irony, foreshadowing, status, agendas, states of mind, naturalism, non-naturalism, implicit and explicit layers of meaning, reliable and unreliable speech, the said, the half-said and the unsaid, the entire art of dramatic writing. And that's before we even get to the character's voice, manner and idioms.

Still, apparently dialogue's "the easy bit" so thank goodness for that.

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Yeah, yeah, and Baz a total beginner to Script Writing is going to know how to do all that on his very first script.

Billwill does seem to be getting a bit of a shoeing for offering some help!

Would it be acceptable to all if he just said other techniques are available at the end?