Just wondering what other people's motives are for pursuing the life of writing a sitcom, or trying to write sketches? Mostly everbody faila. Is it our British/English obsession with having a sense of humour? I don't count stand-up or internet-recorded stuff. I'm talking about wanting to spend your life writing for some guys and girls who can act.
I know I can (sometimes) do it, but it'smmensely embarrassed about ...
What's your excuse?
All the best,
Tim.
For me it started with the classic thought that I could do at least as well as some of the shows on the screen. After I downloaded a pile of classic scripts, I figured out the basic rules of structuring a story, and noticed that the jokes were best when they fit into and flowed with the natural flow of the action, as opposed to sitting there in isolation - at that moment I convinced myself that I at least had a shot.... I've almost finished a pilot, and should be sending it in this month.... then the bubble will probably burst once I get the rejections !!!
I have a "real" job, and writing is something I do in my spare time - the fantasy being that I can have a second career doing something much more fun - hanging around with creative people, going to cool showbiz events - oh yeah, and making some money along the way. I'm also interested in returning to the UK, which will be a must once the producers start commissioning my work 
It's a little hard being in the US, as the day to day interaction is very different - way too business minded, without the eternal supply of humour woven into most every British conversation.
I'm glad I found BSG to keep my Brit factor at an acceptable level - I'm enjoying reading everyone's input, and laughing at the good natured interaction. So thank you, my virtual friends !
"So Why Do You Want To Do It?"
I don't want to... I 'have' to. There's nothing else.
I like the shallow ego boost of making people laugh.
Intense bitterness, vanity and a desire to inflict the only legal form of violence.
It's just kind of been in my blood ever since I was a kid. I used to record characters and sketches onto my dad's old reel-to-reel tape recorder, using 70s electronic toys as sound effects. All the other kids were out playing footie while I was recording another episode of Killer Turds From Mars. (It was sophisticated comedy. SHUT UP Bussell!)
Then as I grew up I was just as obsessed with comedy. Rik Mayal and Ade Edmondson weren't just comedians on the telly, they were like gods to me. I idolised them in the same way other kids idolise pop stars. I knew every line of Kevin Turvey's routine. Then I sent some sketches off to Hale and Pace got some on the show and thought..."hang on, maybe I can do this"...
Then I got a job writing gags for greetings cards which took all my time up for the following decade, so I was distracted. But I'm back on track now. I will do it if it sodding well kills me.
Lee you really hate the cards don't you?
Does it atleast pay well?
Quite simply.... I want to share all the stories in my head with everybody else.
Just do. Like it. Think I'm not bad at it.
Quote: sootyj @ November 1 2008, 1:07 PM BSTLee you really hate the cards don't you?
Does it atleast pay well?
I don't hate the cards at all, they bought my house and gave me a good job. But I worry that I'm running out of fresh ideas - after 13 years who can blame me? Plus there's always the horrific thought that the company I freelance for might sell up one day, leaving me with no back-up plan.
As for pay, it depends on what you mean by paying well. It's very up and down, like any freelance work. But I have a fairly-nice gaff and a wife and a kid and a cat and a labrador and a hamster and nobody's starved just yet.
Sorry for sounding flippant, I'm currently writing gags for a mobile phone company. Where as the money isn't as good it ain't bad.
I was more interested in the practicalities how many cards a month? Is it a one off payment or are there royalties?
And more realising you never really get paid to do what you want, only a simulacrum of it.
I do it because I must. Plus the written word is my favourite way of communicating. Less messy, less DNA, unless you discount the suspicious splashes on a rejection slip I received several years ago.
Most of us probably started creating entertainment so early we weren't self-conscious enough to ask that question. And once you've started, you can't stop.
First at primary school I was clearly "a good drawrer" (sic) and I loved comics, so I made my own comics and won praise and respect. Then in high school I was funny and could get laughs in class. Before I'd thought about it, I was writing and drawing comics, some funny some not, and publishing them in the school magazine, which I also edited. Oh yeah, that's when I discovered I'm a bit of a megalomaniac. I also started performing with a band and discovered I'm a show off.
Then at art college I discovered I could get on stage and get laughs, without needing the rest of the band around, and suddenly I was a stand up. That was when I wrote my first comedy play, a Cinderella panto.
And after you've made an audience laugh at your work you start thinking you're good at it and you should do more of it, so I wrote about 10 sitcom pilots in the next year or so, while starting off as a stand up.
Then I realised my stand up was improving because it got tested in front of a live audience, whereas my sitcom scripts just got a polite letter of apology (or, once by then, a meeting with Channel 4's Head of Comedy), so I decided to combine stand up and sitcom and created Situations Vacant, the live sitcom stage show, which mutated into The Sitcom Trials, where my scripts and others competed head to head.
Then after a few years of The Sitcom Trials (inc an 8 week TV series when, at least, one of my sitcoms actually got piloted on TV, and two of my comedies got piloted for BBC radio) I realised it wasn't benefitting my sitcom writing in the slightest and instead I was becoming a producer and facilitator, showcasing other peoples scripts and acting talents to the detriment of my own creative time. So I gave up The Sitcom Trials and left someone else to do it for a while.
Since when I've written and drawn 100s of pages of Bash Street Kids Adventures in The Beano, written one TV episode of Doctor Who (spec only), written and performed two hour long stage shows with The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and last month wrote a sitcom pilot for the Socks.
So, why do I do it? Because I'm good at it, when I get the chance. It's getting the chance that's the hard part.
I've always done it for as long as I can remember - and the writing too!
I started off with poems and I also drew cartoons and captioned them and some comic style strip stuff too. The poems developed into song lyrics and I started writing music as well.
Most of my writing has been song writing and that's my first and biggest love. I have written approx. 1,000 songs (I estimate) and about 800 are long forgotten. Of the 200 that remain, about 40 are "finished" and about 5 have some serious commercial potential (I think!!)...
As for other writing, I have tried short stories and plays. Also, some comedy sketches (about 100 so far and 30 mins of dramedy). The comedy is a recent side line and I would be the first to admit that I am a newbie comedy writer with lots to learn.
Back to the why I do it. I just like doing it. It is a pleasure.
Having said that, I do still aspire to steer at least one of my songs to commercial success. I don't hate money or success, I'll take what I can get!
I do (unfortunately?) have an unhealthy disdain of marketing men in the music and entertainment business generally as they are (inevitably) so full of themselves that they couldn't spot talent if it shat on their faces. I can say that as a marketeer myself! It's a drawback feeling that way maybe, but I get over it.
Anyway, whatever you do don't moan about any perceived "failure" or reasons for it, remember what someone who was very famous once said about success,
"..if you're good enough and big enough, it's here, come up and get it!"
Fx
I do it so I can pretend to be working.