Am I Writing a Comedy Drama?

18th Dec 2020

I’ve known from the start that I wanted my first novel to be a ‘Rom Com’. A ‘will they won’t they’ fall in love with many funny moments along the way. The story also covers serious subjects such as divorce, death, secrets, lies, accidents and disappointments otherwise known as drama. So I guess it could also be called a ‘Comedy Drama’.

In order to hone my writing skills I took two online creative writing courses and have subscribed to ‘The Comedy Crowd’ for about a year now. They produce a regular email newsletter on many different types of comedy opportunities, most of which were not particularly relevant to me, until I saw an advert by Dave Gorman. He was offering subscribers to The Comedy Crowd a free download copy of his book ‘How To Be Averagely Successful At Comedy.’ I signed up for that offer but was more interested in his other book,  ‘The Complete Comedy Writer’ – “A Comprehensive, funny and ridiculously up-to-date guide for anyone who wants to write comedy.”

Dave Gorman’s biography said he had spent 10 years as a stand-up comedian performing more than 2,000 gigs across the UK; had became a full-time comedy writer in the mid-1990s and in 2000 made the series Travels With My Anti-Semitism for BBC Radio 4. He has written for some of the most successful TV shows including Have I Got News For You, Spitting Image, BBC sitcoms Not Going Out and My Family, and dozens of radio shows including News Quiz and Dead Ringers. A very impressive Portfolio in my opinion. As I write my novel I picture it in my mind as if I’m watching it on TV so I signed up for regular emails leading up to a Sitcom competition in August.

There were tips on the basics that any good sitcom needs – the premise, characters and world. After that he wrote very succinctly about the need to Activate, Escalate and Resolve the comedy tension in every episode/scene/joke. All through, he gave regular examples of what he considered good comedy writing, from Steptoe & Son, Mash, Black Adder and Frasier to Fleabag and suggested particular episodes to analyse. I always worried that these exercises would eat into the limited amount of time I had for the incredibly long process of editing my own Rom Com book.   

BBC Writersroom Call for Scripts

However I do enjoy the way he writes, it’s very simple, straight forward and down to earth, so I continue to subscribe to his emails. In November he started to write about the BBC Writer’s Room Call for Scripts which is open now and until 5pm on Wednesday 6th January 2021. What are they asking for? One drama or comedy-drama script of at least 30 full pages in length for TV, Film, Radio, Stage or Online or 2 x 15 minute episodes for Children’s TV or Online. Why 30 pages of script? Because the rule of thumb is that one page = one minute of screen time therefore 30 pages equals a half hour episode. Another little nugget is that as a rule UK series consist of 6 episodes.

He said, “This took us all by surprise. The BBC Writer’s Room have never asked for Comedy Drama before, and the Comedy window was usually in April. You may well ask, as I have done frequently to commissioners with no joy, “what do we mean by comedy drama”? I have decided to try and answer this question by my new favourite method of discovery, which is three weeks of daily emails on the topic.”

He asked many several comedy writers to give their definition of Comedy Drama, and invited the new writers receiving his emails to send in questions. The questions and answers were all very different, diving deeply into the many aspects of writing comedy sit-coms/thrillers/horrors/murder-mysteries, nit-picking definitions of comedy, humour, dark comedy, how to get the tone right in the different combinations and mostly getting nowhere near a definitive answer. It was a frustrating read until this popped up.

In another email Dave Gorman said he wanted an opinion on this from the drama side, so he asked Lisa Holdsworth, (Call The Midwife, All Creatures Great And Small, New Tricks, Ackley Bridge). She wrote that she didn’t think she’d ever written straight drama without humour, that her natural instinct was to find the wryness, the humanity, the laugh in even the most tragic or perilous circumstances.

This was my favourite answer/definition. “You’ve got to laugh or else you’d cry,” was a phrase I heard from my parents and other adults throughout my childhood. It also echoes something that came up in a TV programme I worked on. it was a documentary about the head of a famous West Country circus. When asked the question, what is the secret of successful entertainment the maestro answered “Make ’em laugh, make em cry.”

Do we need labels?

My conclusion? Comedy Drama is Real Life – it’s the great big bit in the middle of a scale with Drama at one end and Comedy at the other end. We all live our lives somewhere on this scale every day. My novel fits in somewhere in the middle. Where you pitch your novel, film, book, episode or series on this scale is up to you but the people who write listings, plan schedules or publish books need to know how to describe your work to the the potential viewers and readers –  and so they  need labels.

The whole submission process is an attempt to match what you’ve written with what a commissioning editor or publisher is looking for. They will usually have a give-away definition in their job title, Head of Drama or Head of Comedy, maybe a lot of Comedy Drama submissions were falling down the crack in the middle. In any case, selection often depends on what their latest success has been, they will most probably want more of the same. In my experience in TV production they always say they don’t know exactly what they’re looking for until it lands on their desk. From my research so far publishers say the same so labels help narrow the search and even pin it down.

At the moment I’m fifteen chapters into my first edit of my first novel. After I proofread each chapter I then copy it into a script formatting programming called Celtx. As I go through the script version it clearly shows me where the action is or isn’t working and where the backstories get in the way of the action. Re-doing the format takes a long time but I’m enjoying it so I persevere. The result is that I now do have more than 30 pages of script from four chapters that I think are particularly funny. So I’m wondering whether to make a submission to the BBC Writers Room in this month’s window. Why not?

Dave Goman’s advice is that even if the whole piece of work could be a six episode series, each 30 minute episode should be self-contained, with a start, a middle and a resolution, with maybe a small cliff-hanger to make people want to watch the next one. Does my 30 page selection do that? Maybe. Will I submit? Maybe. Will I ask my Drama Director friend to read it first? Of course! Will I take any notice of her comments? Of course. Will I submit? It’s only the first edit. Is it too soon? Yes. Should I wait till next year? Most probably. At least the thought of submitting has ramped up my motivation to get on with the edit.