Write the Sitcom, Sell the Sitcom | London

To grasp the basic techniques of writing comedy, and to develop a strategy for making a living from the craft.

Tutor:	Dave Cohen	Venue:	St George's Church, Bloomsbury Way London WC1A 2HR
Date:	Saturday 30 October	Duration:	1 day Saturday
Time:	9:30am - 6:00pm	Price:	£145 + 17.5% VAT

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A one-day course that concentrates on writing sitcom for radio, TV, and the rapidly expanding market place of the 15 Minute Audience Sitcom Competition.

This is a great time to be writing sitcom. After a period in the doldrums the audience show is back in fashion thanks to Graham Linehan’s ‘IT Crowd’ and ‘Not Going Out’ starring Lee Mack, both returning this year for a fourth series. Meanwhile a number of non-audience hits have revived the form, notably Channel 4’s ‘Peep Show’ and ‘Inbetweeners’, and BBC1’s ‘Outnumbered.’ The BBC are still searching for a really big hit. Despite the recession and their own terrible year, ITV have still not given up in the hunt for a hit show.

But sitcom is a notoriously difficult form to master, and requires several different skills to be applied simultaneously.

This course begins with the two most important questions – what is your sitcom about (easy enough, it’s about a hotel owner who hates his guests), but what is it really about? (not so easy). We then start to build the elements that will create the show – character, plot and dialogue, performing practical exercises to show each of these. All the time maintaining a level of believability, and making us laugh. The one thing I can’t teach is the ability to write jokes. You can either do that or you can’t. But by the end of the course you should be writing funnier, more focused jokes that fit your own ideas to a greater extent.

We’ll look at the difference between writing for audience or non-audience, for the BBC and for the commercial sector, for mass or specialised audiences, writing for radio, writing for an established show, and breaking into the American sitcom market.

Then we shall concentrate on preparing a 15 minute script for one of the three growing Sitcom Writing competitions – Sitcommission, Sitcom Saturday and The Sitcom Trials. With Sitcom Saturday accepting scripts through the whole of March, and Sitcomission in April, you should all be aiming to present an entry.

At the end of the day you will receive a mountain of information explaining the entire commissioning process, who runs what, and who best to contact.

Screenwriters, novelists, playwrights and storytellers. Comedy producers to learn more about script editing and the process of writing comedy.
Movie producers and directors seeking to break into comedy and to understand the specifics of comedy narrative.
Comedy writers just beginning to sell their work.

Dave Cohen has been writing and performing comedy for a living for more than 25 years. He was nominated for the Perrier Award in 1984, and co-founded the Comedy Store Players with Paul Merton and Mike Myers. He has written for dozens of radio and TV shows including ‘News Quiz’, ‘Sunday Format’, ‘Dead Ringers’ and ‘Spitting Image’. He is a regular writer on ‘Have I Got News For You’, and has written five series of his hit Radio 4 series ‘15 Minute Musicals’ – which this year won the Writers Guild Award for Best Radio Comedy Show.

He has been a regular writer on BBC1 sitcoms ‘Not Going Out’ and ‘My Family’, and has been asked to contribute to the new series of ‘Life Of Riley’. In 2001 he won the British Comedy Heritage Award for Best Comedy Writer, and currently has sitcoms in development with BBC1, Radio 4 and Channel 4.

There are more than 30 Dave Cohens on imdb! This is him.

“Dave Cohen gives really good notes on sitcom scripts.” Sam Bain, co-creator and writer ‘Peep Show’, ‘The Old Guys’.

"I can truly say - hand on heart - that your course was fab, both business-like and creative and worth every penny."
Alice Josephs, writer 'For The Public Good' 'Swimming Naked - A Farce For Our Financial Times' http://www.realdealtheatre.org.uk

"Awesome notes." 
Ali Cook, comedian, writer, magician ('Dirty Tricks' Channel 4)

"Having previously only written for amateur shows, attending Dave's course gave me the confidence and motivation to start submitting my work to paying markets. Since doing Dave's course I have regularly sold sketches and songs to NewsRevue, Treason Show and Radio 4’s Newsjack, written gags for stand-ups, got two sitcoms through to the semi-finals of the Sitcom Trials, and received positive feedback from TV production companies. I also now co-write regularly with one of the other attendees I met on the course. If you're a writer wanting to get serious about comedy, Dave's course is a great place to start."
Griff Phillips, comedy writer

"Dave really helped me get an idea of the structure of a sketch and helped me get my sketches on the radio. Top guy, with great insight."
James Shakeshaft, comedy writer since 2006

"Dave showed me why my own material wasn't working and helped me to understand the basics of making good comedy. The help he has given me with my own work is immeasurable."
David Byrne, Writer ‘A Stroke of Genius’ Pleasance London & Edinburgh 2009

"Your feedback has made this project fun again. The scales have fallen from our eyes in a number of ways. We're both fizzing with ideas, which is great."
Norton & Wright, comedy writers
“Dave’s not just a script doctor, he’s a fully qualified script gynaecologist. Or so he looked to me as I helplessly tried giving birth to a sitcom that came out covered in its own muconium. Luckily Dave wiped it down and smacked it around a bit before the first cries could be heard. He also taught me an invaluable lesson: don’t get carried away with hackneyed metaphors.” Paul McKenzie – CBBC Writer/Producer/Co-Creator ‘Kerching!’, ‘Dani’s House’ and ‘My Almost Famous Family.’

Click here to read how Comedy Course Graduate Griff Phillips got his first sketch on BBC radio

Got a comment about Dave's course? Let us know

It would help to have at the very least, a passing knowledge of some of the current British sitcoms including those with an audience, such as ‘Not Going Out’, ‘Life Of Riley’, ‘My Family’ (BBC1), and ‘The IT Crowd’ (Channel 4), - and those without, such as ‘Peep Show’, ‘Inbetweeners’ (C4), ‘Lead Balloon’ and ‘Outnumbered’ (BBC). You can find out more, and a couple of short clips, by logging on to http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/notgoingout/ You can download whole episodes of the C4 shows from: http://www.channel4.com/4od/index.html

Apart from that, I suggest you
1) Read comedy scripts. Loads of them. The first few series of ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Frasier’ are available in book form, but you can pick up loads of scripts free from the internet. http://www.script-o-rama.com/tvscript.shtml has just about every episode of ‘Black Adder’, ‘Fawlty Towers’, ‘Friends’,‘Golden Girls’ ‘Larry Sanders’, ‘Only Fools & Horses’, ‘The Simpsons’ – and dozens more.

2) Listen to radio comedy. Regular slots are on Radio 4 Monday to Friday 11.30am and 6.30pm, some weekdays 11pm. Classic comedy is played endlessly on Radio 7. You can listen to anything a week after transmission on http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/ (or bbc4)

3) Try and catch as many new TV comedy shows as possible. (Plenty of new sitcoms recently, including ‘My Almost Famous Family’ and ‘How Not To Live Your life’. There’s a daily guide to every comedy show on British TV on the home page of the British Comedy Guide – http://www.comedy.co.uk/

4) I was interviewed about a previous course by the British Comedy Guide. You can read it in full at http://www.comedy.co.uk/writers/dave_cohen.shtml

5) Do by all means read any of the ‘How To Write Sitcom’ books you come across eg anything by John Byrne and/or Marcus Powell. This is not to disparage such books, but there’s nothing like reading a brilliant episode of ‘Seinfeld’ or ‘Fawlty Towers’ to inspire you out of the rut.

6) Read this article, Confessions of a Comedy Teacher, on www.comedy.co.uk