Smoking Ban - Radio sketch

(Scrunched up e-paper in the cyber recycling bin.)

Maybe I'm retarded. But I could not make head nor tail of this

Well I was trying to make it as authentic as possible, rather than use Queen's English.

Well, I suppose the 'twist' is that, although there is now a ban on smoking in public places in force ... it doesn't include prisons which is where Raj (intent on smoking) intends himself to be put if he does a bit of armed robbery. Not the most creative bit of writing but there is a theme in there somewhere!

thanks for the comments.

I think the problem here is that it does deviate from the theme a bit and whilst this can be good, the beginning of the sketch (for me anyway) opened clumsily and so the deviation caused some confusion. I think if your beginning was simpler then it would be easier to understand what was going on.

"106.4 FM, this pirate station’s frequency and your mom’s weight."

I would change this to something less of a mouthful such as "106.4 our frequency and your mom's weight" or just lose the gag altogether.

"All is not good in the hood. Smoking, man."

I appreciate you are writing natural sounding dialogue here (of which I'm a big fan trust me) but this confused me, maybe it's me but I read 'Smoking' as some form of street slang due to the way it was written. Which then left me confused about the "Your radio?" bit. Just a small gripe but you know...

So at that point of reading I was already struggling to put everything in place and so the diversion in subject threw me right off.

However, put the starting in order and it would work I think so the rest of it is good.

And I do like the way you try to keep the dialogue natural, that's important in my book.

Hope this is at least a bit useful

Thanks for the amazing comments Tom Pk, you've broken it down really well for me. Essentially, what you see is a series of rewrites that have overlapped and so it has lost its cogency. Also, I was trying to be subtle about the exemptions etc but it didn't seem to work.

I'm glad you liked theattempt at natural dialogue, I don't speak like that all so it was a real challenge.

Thanks again, it's been a very valuable experience.

Quote: Pilot @ July 2, 2007, 11:04 PM

Thanks again, it's been a very valuable experience.

View original

I missed this I think - but I hope you do feel their criticism was helpful.

Give it another go.

Glad I could help Pilot. Like I said, given a stronger start it would have continued positively (no need to throw it away totally). The rest was strong I feel.

The criticism has been helpful and it's what this forum is all about, I am at the moment just refining it and will put it up again shortly, it justs needs to be a bit more relevant to the ban yet not too much like a public service announcement.