“As a dramatic writer you have to pay for everything you write - in
other words, you have to earn the right to write it, to make it your
own, to have the confidence to let it go and know that it has a life of
its own.
“Michael Schilf talks about writing what you LIVE, LEARN and LOVE. Fact
is, you are already living and learning, and (it is hoped) loving
something or someone, so it’s all there, right at your fingertips,
right? Wrong. I can’t tell you how many wannabe writers have told me
that their problem is they have nothing to write about, and when I tell
them to look at their own lives they say, “but that’s me, I’m boring, no
one would want to read about anything I’ve experienced”, meaning that
they don’t value the life they have lived, have learned nothing from the
journey they have made so far, and refuse to embrace and spread the
love that has made it all vivid, challenging and bearable. In short,
they resort to the knee-jerk cop-out routine. Why? Because there’s
nothing more frightening than yourself, specially the parts of your self
that you’ve worked so hard to camouflage with noise, verbal and
gestural. Writing a sitcom script, weirdly enough, is about reducing or
even transcending the noise, or even - sometimes - using it in a clever
way to reveal an anxiety that is characteristic of the character. You
can think about it - and even talk about it - all day, all week, all
month, forever, but you’ll never get anywhere if its just talking and
thinking. You have to grapple with the demon. One of the things that
I’ve been re-learning doing THE CREATIVE LIFE is the importance of going
back and back and back - over the material - the big print, the
dialogue, combing through it and crossing stuff out. Allowing my voice
to gradually be overtaken by the voices of the characters. In comedy
writing, that old truism, LESS IS MORE, is a kind of ultimate principle.
Also, SIMPLE IS DIFFICULT. What I am beginning to realise is how
success (an episode’s funniness) depends on SIMPLICITY. That, and
TIMING. Remembering that old insight, “It ain’t got a thing if it ain’t
got that swing.” But none of this matters in the slightest - tis
merely a pep talk - unless you write it down and suffer, and write some
more and suffer some more, and allow yourself much gnashing of teeth
and at least 40 nights in a desert, and do it and do it and do it, until
it starts to become funny. Everything - even sex - becomes FUNNY if you
do it long long. Problem is, most people give up before it starts
getting good.”
- Billy Marshall Stoneking
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