What's the story?

On Saturday, Micheál Jacob and I ran a writers' room experience for new writers in Manchester. It was a fun morning - and we hope the charming group of writers who came along enjoyed it. Thanks to Comedy Lab's Tom Short for organising it.

One of the issues we discussed was story generation.

Devising viable stories seems to be one of the major problems new(er) writers face. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Writers are by definition story tellers, and usually full of ideas - but mashing those ideas into a suitable shape for a script seems to cause a lot of difficulties.

The key is to keep things simple.

Stories, ideally, should come from your characters, rather than being imposed upon them. (There are sitcoms that subvert this, and very effectively, but as a general rule your characters should be generating your storylines.)

In the case of The House, we have three characters, Lucy, Zarah and Billy - played by Ilaria Passeri, Zoe Iqbal and Joseph Stacey.

Lucy is an accountant, going through a divorce, who has rented out the other rooms in her house for some extra money. Zarah is an actress, who's found herself doing medical roleplay for a living. And Billy runs a Youtube channel, and has an interest in longevity - as well, I suspect, as crypto, F.I.R.E, AI and so on.

Their contrasting personalities should be enough to fuel plenty of potential stories.

Furthermore, we want to keep the action as contained as possible.

It's the regulars that drive a show - so focus on them, and their world. Our gang are essentially stuck together - and that's good. Conflict creates comedy. Avoid bringing in additional characters (partly because it costs money, but mainly because nobody cares about them anyway).

This is only Episode 2 - so we need to be bedding in the central trio rather than throwing in random funny guests.

And we want the action in the house. This is not a time for holiday stories, trips to supermarkets, difficult commutes or anything like that. It needs to be kept absolutely in the world.

Micheál and I are really looking forward to seeing what members come up with. The best ideas will be incorporated into our Episode 2 storyline - and, of course, every successful contributor will receive a credit.

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Submit your ideas via The House page