Product Description

Almost every writer, whether professional or beginner, has thought of a good sitcom idea at one time or another, but fleshing that idea out is a long and complicated process of character development, plotting, dialogue writing and rewriting and then putting the whole package together in a way that will attract producers. In this book, successful sitcom writers John Byrne and Marcus Powell break that process down into a series of easy to follow steps. With chapters devoted to concept, characters and plot through to proposals, commissioning and production, Writing Sitcoms covers every aspect needed for success in the UK.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172276 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 171 pages

About the Author
John Byrne has over twenty years experience as a comedy writer, cartoonist and performer for TV, radio, theatre and print. Marcus Powell wrote the pilot script and several of the series episodes for Rude Boy.com, a BBC Children's sitcom. John and Marcus co-wrote Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me for BBC Radio 4 and they have several other sitcom projects in various stages of development both collectively and individually.

Customer Reviews

An adequate introduction
The writers of this book are experienced comedy writers, and I think it's safe to assume that their advice is good. A lot of this information is available elsewhere, for example on the web, and some of it could be considered commonsense. Nevertheless, this information is presented and written well, and it is useful to have it in one place. They do stress the importance of watching and analysing existing sitcoms, which is advice that seems a little obvious. They also emphasise the importance of writing and re-writing, which again seems obvious. It doesn't take long to read the book, and if you follow the advice they have given, actually reading this book can only be the beginning of writing your sitcom.

Brilliant Book
I enrolled on Film and TV Screenwriting at the University of Central Lancashire, but I quit because I was learning more from this book than from the university lecturers. This book is great, I recommend it to anybody looking to write sitcoms professionally

Of very limited use.
This book is only of use if you have never even had any basic ideas of your own on topics such as what makes things funny, where you might get ideas from or what kind of characters TV viewers like. Add if you have never had even a few of those ideas, you're probably not the right person to be writing a sitcom. This was a pot-boiler - avoid.