Recently in Writing for Television Category

Comedy writing has always had a harder time finding legitimacy than other forms - television comedy even more so. Different writing genres have always been prone to elitism and arbitrary labels of legitimacy or triviality, which seems a mite unfair when we look for genuine artistry.

I grew up with a deep love for the old-school comedy acts. I sometimes feel I should have been born twenty years earlier so I could be sat in the audience at the London Hippodrome or the Palladium to watch the variety bills that were so popular in the '50s where so many of these performers honed their acts.

Dialogue is one of the most challenging skills a writer has to develop. Producing words that sound natural and - above all - human, takes real talent and hard work. As discussed previously when analysing The Assassination of Jesse James, people rarely say what they actually mean, necessitating the writer to imbue dialogue with subtexts and subterfuge.

"Change my dear. And not a moment too soon!"

So said Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor having just regenerated from Peter Davison on the floor of the TARDIS. For the long-running sci-fi series ‘Doctor Who’, regeneration means a lot more than adding a new name to the opening credits. Change is at the core of the series format, and it is this constant transformation and evolution that has kept the series going for 45 years.

In fiction, there are no limitations on the worlds you create. But once you establish a fictional world for your characters to inhabit, it becomes fixed. The rules of this fictional reality have to remain constant. Once your reader or audience has constructed an understanding for your world in their minds, changing the rules later on can shatter the fiction.