Eric Chappell's advice
Tuesday 1st December 2009
This week, I had the joy, nay honour, nay privilege of being in the presence of Eric Chappell, writer of Rising Damp, Only When I Laugh, Home To Roost, Duty Free and many others. What started out as a 20-minute 'chat' turned into an hour-and-a-half masterclass, and we're deeply in debt to Eric for passing on his knowledge.
We started by talking about character. This, Eric insists, is the centre of a sitcom, and although this may be obvious, you’d be amazed at the number of writers who ignore it.
Each character in a sitcom - or character comedy, which is a more appropriate term - should have what Eric calls 'a comedic line'. Each character should have a life, a purpose, a reason for being there, and not just turn up to 'pass the marmalade'. I'd add to this the problems of one character just feeding lines to the lead character, or just asking questions like Dr Who's assistant. Or, if they are there to ask the questions, make sure they do it in a comedic way and make it part of their character.
Also, the characters should have an element of likeability about them - we want to see them in each episode - but they should also have something in their nature that creates friction with the other characters. This can be achieved by not only thinking about what your characters want, but by what your characters want from each other.
This could be a thing, such as a tin of fruit, an emotion such as love or respect, or a status position. Essentially, Basil wants Sybil to love and respect him while Sybil wants Basil to get off his high horse.
When creating characters, Eric wasn't afraid of using clichés or stereotypes to start with. When you see someone on a bus, what do you think?' he says. 'That's your starting point'.
So Philip, Don Warrington's character in Rising Damp, starts out by being African. That's the cliché, but then the reality is he's an African prince. And then it turns out he's actually from Croydon. It's this duplicity which creates plots - secrets and lies - but it also has another function. 'Characters lie to be liked,' Eric says.
Eric Chappell's first desire was not to write sitcom. He wrote for the genre because it was a lucrative way to get into the theatre. He took feature-length plays and condensed them into half-hour episodes. This way, the characters were richer and their back stories were already written. It's noticeable that his scenes are long and play-like.
Each episode, he says, should have pace and shouldn't want to 'sit down on itself'.
'Only digress if it's funny,' he says.
On the subject of the number of characters, Eric definitely thinks fewer are better. At The Sitcom Mission, we've always said that in 15 minutes it's better to get to know four characters well than 15 characters slightly but when it comes to writing sitcoms and, especially, plays, there's a practical reason for this too... 'It's cheaper.'