Okay so you want to play tennis for a living do you play with someone who is worse than you so you can feel great about yourself? Of course not. It’s the same with sending your script out.
I was going to blog today about season finales, characters and stuff, but I just got some notes back from a fellow comedy writer who is much stronger than I am at the “joke” bit. He is a comedian and that is why his opinion was important to me. I have always been good at writing funny situations but the jokes-it just isn’t my strength-I can do them, but you know we all have something we are weakest at.
In the past five years the thing I get the most compliments on-comedy or drama-is nailing the characters. I am not sure if that is from all the years in acting, animation and storyboarding-all requiring “knowing the character.” Secondly I get praise on story-and matching the show.
When I switched back to comedy (my first couple of novels are comedy) I constantly got comments back about adding more jokes. *This is why I believe comedy works better in a team of writers instead of one-but you know there are always exceptions.*
Today I got some very valuable notes-joke suggestions from a friend. My Happy Endings script is going to be much stronger for it. I had asked a few others to read it, and they gave me general notes and even paid a consultant and had coverage done. All those helped, but today’s notes from this friend and comedy writer-are really going to punch it up a lot.
I am working on my joke writing and getting stronger at it. The reason I am writing this is that I really want you to think about what you struggle with the most and then send your script to someone who is great at that, and trust me, it will help you so much.
Thanks to my friend and fellow writer for all your time and help. 🙂
Steph Olivieri Bourbon ~ Writing Coach 