I think I needed the word "vomit draft" in my head, to give me permission to rush some things (a lesson I learned from NaNoWriMo that apparently didn't jump from stories to scripts). I've sorta been editing my concept to death, starting over too much and a good vomit is probably just what the doctor ordered.
Also, rough draft or not I loved the script. Been rewatching a lot of 30 Rock lately so it was hard not to hear Dr. Spaceman's voice for some of those lines.
I certainly find it helpful! If nothing else it removes that nagging worry that says "what if I never finish this?" And this Doctor certainly has a Spaceman-like obliviousness.
Also, you've talked about brainstorm and vomit drafts. But I feel like I've mostly been vomit drafting while brainstorming, thinking about a good beat or joke on the spot. In fact I first tried to brainstorm after your last post. It went well but I feel like the idea I had lent itself to brainstorming.
Is brainstorming as a single step really necessary ? Do you always do it ? Should I always try to do it in order to maximize the quality of my work ?
None of these steps are necessary in any real sense; this is just the system that has worked for me. I do brainstorm before everything I write, and I do think I get better results from brainstorming first. If you're writing while brainstorming you'll use your first ideas; if you brainstorm before you write you'll use your best ideas.
But the best method is the method that works for you. I'm sharing mine for those who don't have a method and feel totally lost.
I'm pretty relieved to find out that the darfts I've been writing are similar to me than the rough draft you've shared today.
Which leaves me bewildered : if this is your rough draft, how can it then be improved to the level of what you've shown us before ? I feel like, with remarks I've gathered on my rough drafts, I couldn't do major changes. I fear that the quality I have at the rough draft stage is near what I can do best with those.
With the two states of the Tide CEO sketch, I got it. The golden nugget was by the end. I bet I would have catched it if someone asked me to review the rough draft. It's almost not applicable to other drafts, being so clear and all.
I guess a broader question is : when can I hope that I can majorly improve the quality of my sketch after the rough draft ? Can I do it without professionnal writers feedback ?
I may not be totally following your question, so apologies if I'm misinterpreting. It sounds like you're saying that you feel your rough drafts are the best you can do, and you're not sure how to improve them more on your own.
I do think it's important to get feedback from someone else, but these people don't have to be professional writers -- they just have to be someone whose opinion you trust. Someone with good taste or sense of humor. Of course it HELPS if that other person is a writer, but what you're really looking for is an outside perspective. At the end of the day you're not trying to make other professional writers laugh, you're trying to make a broad audience laugh. So anyone who could be a part of a broad audience is a valuable reader.
This is the easiest way to improve your scripts, so you should aim to do it if you can. If you truly can't show it to anyone else. There are some things you could do: (1) record yourself reading the script out loud and listen to it back. This is a good way to hear lines that sound clunky or unnatural that look fine on the page. (2) Put the script down for at least week and then return to it. Enough time to kind of forget what you wrote. (3) Look for the laughs -- mark where you think you're likely to get a laugh, and make sure you've got a moment every 2-3 lines. But ultimately these things are all substitutions for getting notes in a group. If you can hear your sketch read, and get notes directly then you'll naturally hear where there are problems, where jokes fall flat, what jokes hit, and what angles you might not have seen.
So the short answer is: do everything you can to get outside readers. But I'll talk more about the editing process in a future post!
I feel you in terms of being on the other side - When I'm on the reviewing-side of someone's work, or even just leaving comments on the sketches we read in this newsletter, I try to be honest about what is or isn't working for me. But I don't feel like I'm often offering insights that can lead to the kind of big script revisions that Trapp's showed us that really elevate a sketch. Maybe that partially comes with practice and doing a lot of writing and reviewing.
But in the meantime, maybe approaching feedback and revisions after the rough draft equally in terms of what does/doesn't work AND of imagining other angles we could take with it (now that there's a whole heckin' draft to see and you can see how the script roughly flows from one beat to the next) would be helpful in finding ways to majorly improve a sketch's quality. Maybe it's easier to work backwards from 'here's how a sketch could look really different' to 'hey, I really like this super different version of the script.'
It's also worth noting that not every draft changes in huge ways between the rough and the final. Sometimes there WILL just be small changes to an otherwise solid core.
I definitely feel that frustration when work I think is polished is getting rejected or getting feedback, but if everyone involved is acting in good faith (we want to make your writing better or we want to show the best works to our audience) then I have to remember it's not a personal fault... It's just writing that can get better.
Another thing — that I've heard a million times but am finally getting — you could set it aside, work on something else, and look at it in a 1 week - 6 months....
I recently went over my final drafts from a year ago and they looked like roughs again AND I went over some outline notes from half a year ago and they had some interesting ideas I forgot but were basically worthless for the direction I was going in.
You can be your second set of eyes with distance.
Another idea is to be your own devil's advocate and try looking at it from perspectives other than the writer (how would we produce this, how might an actor change the reading, what would it look like as a book/comic etc.).
The rhyming made me smile every time and really sold the world, also the break in the pattern of "all our trolls are busy at the moment. Please be patient. We hope you die" made me laugh the most.
Something about the end and the frustrations the patient had during the repeated we hope you die felt off.... Jeff knows this is how it works and while I want to yell at the people who manage my insurance it's tough knowing they are people too or (sometimes on weekends) working through a language gap.
I think the doctors genuine care is important to why we believe in this system and something missing might be the idea from your brainstorming of the troll thinks they're helping. The we hope you die is really funny, and creates a great disconnect; an idea might be for the patient or another patient to be like "well they say I hope you die, but that's just how a troll shows he cares"
after all the healthcare system wouldn't saddle itself to something inhuman and destructive to life if they didn't care about you.... It couldn't be for something like profit.
..... I feel weird offering advice or opinions up the chain since you're imparting sweet knowledge nuggets to us, but thought it might be helpful and I might learn more from it.
Hi Mike Trapp! I didn't know where to ask a general question so I put it here. But, if there is a better place, please let me know! I have been loving these. I was wondering if you have advice or thoughts on developing solo sketch? I am most interested in using sketch elements in a solo performance.
This is a fine place to ask, since I don’t have a general question thread. One person sketches are hard to write, because so many tools are taken away from you. The most successful ones I’ve seen are those that play off structures where a single person might be talking a lot in the real world: press conferences, author readings, safety instruction, political speeches, etc. Your games need to be clear and strong, since you won’t be able to show anyone reacting to the unusual thing. And you need to have solid jokes almost constantly. As I said, they’re very hard to write well, but I’ve seen some very funny ones before.
I think I needed the word "vomit draft" in my head, to give me permission to rush some things (a lesson I learned from NaNoWriMo that apparently didn't jump from stories to scripts). I've sorta been editing my concept to death, starting over too much and a good vomit is probably just what the doctor ordered.
Also, rough draft or not I loved the script. Been rewatching a lot of 30 Rock lately so it was hard not to hear Dr. Spaceman's voice for some of those lines.
I certainly find it helpful! If nothing else it removes that nagging worry that says "what if I never finish this?" And this Doctor certainly has a Spaceman-like obliviousness.
Also, you've talked about brainstorm and vomit drafts. But I feel like I've mostly been vomit drafting while brainstorming, thinking about a good beat or joke on the spot. In fact I first tried to brainstorm after your last post. It went well but I feel like the idea I had lent itself to brainstorming.
Is brainstorming as a single step really necessary ? Do you always do it ? Should I always try to do it in order to maximize the quality of my work ?
None of these steps are necessary in any real sense; this is just the system that has worked for me. I do brainstorm before everything I write, and I do think I get better results from brainstorming first. If you're writing while brainstorming you'll use your first ideas; if you brainstorm before you write you'll use your best ideas.
But the best method is the method that works for you. I'm sharing mine for those who don't have a method and feel totally lost.
I'm pretty relieved to find out that the darfts I've been writing are similar to me than the rough draft you've shared today.
Which leaves me bewildered : if this is your rough draft, how can it then be improved to the level of what you've shown us before ? I feel like, with remarks I've gathered on my rough drafts, I couldn't do major changes. I fear that the quality I have at the rough draft stage is near what I can do best with those.
With the two states of the Tide CEO sketch, I got it. The golden nugget was by the end. I bet I would have catched it if someone asked me to review the rough draft. It's almost not applicable to other drafts, being so clear and all.
I guess a broader question is : when can I hope that I can majorly improve the quality of my sketch after the rough draft ? Can I do it without professionnal writers feedback ?
I may not be totally following your question, so apologies if I'm misinterpreting. It sounds like you're saying that you feel your rough drafts are the best you can do, and you're not sure how to improve them more on your own.
I do think it's important to get feedback from someone else, but these people don't have to be professional writers -- they just have to be someone whose opinion you trust. Someone with good taste or sense of humor. Of course it HELPS if that other person is a writer, but what you're really looking for is an outside perspective. At the end of the day you're not trying to make other professional writers laugh, you're trying to make a broad audience laugh. So anyone who could be a part of a broad audience is a valuable reader.
This is the easiest way to improve your scripts, so you should aim to do it if you can. If you truly can't show it to anyone else. There are some things you could do: (1) record yourself reading the script out loud and listen to it back. This is a good way to hear lines that sound clunky or unnatural that look fine on the page. (2) Put the script down for at least week and then return to it. Enough time to kind of forget what you wrote. (3) Look for the laughs -- mark where you think you're likely to get a laugh, and make sure you've got a moment every 2-3 lines. But ultimately these things are all substitutions for getting notes in a group. If you can hear your sketch read, and get notes directly then you'll naturally hear where there are problems, where jokes fall flat, what jokes hit, and what angles you might not have seen.
So the short answer is: do everything you can to get outside readers. But I'll talk more about the editing process in a future post!
I feel you in terms of being on the other side - When I'm on the reviewing-side of someone's work, or even just leaving comments on the sketches we read in this newsletter, I try to be honest about what is or isn't working for me. But I don't feel like I'm often offering insights that can lead to the kind of big script revisions that Trapp's showed us that really elevate a sketch. Maybe that partially comes with practice and doing a lot of writing and reviewing.
But in the meantime, maybe approaching feedback and revisions after the rough draft equally in terms of what does/doesn't work AND of imagining other angles we could take with it (now that there's a whole heckin' draft to see and you can see how the script roughly flows from one beat to the next) would be helpful in finding ways to majorly improve a sketch's quality. Maybe it's easier to work backwards from 'here's how a sketch could look really different' to 'hey, I really like this super different version of the script.'
What do you think?
It's also worth noting that not every draft changes in huge ways between the rough and the final. Sometimes there WILL just be small changes to an otherwise solid core.
I definitely feel that frustration when work I think is polished is getting rejected or getting feedback, but if everyone involved is acting in good faith (we want to make your writing better or we want to show the best works to our audience) then I have to remember it's not a personal fault... It's just writing that can get better.
Another thing — that I've heard a million times but am finally getting — you could set it aside, work on something else, and look at it in a 1 week - 6 months....
I recently went over my final drafts from a year ago and they looked like roughs again AND I went over some outline notes from half a year ago and they had some interesting ideas I forgot but were basically worthless for the direction I was going in.
You can be your second set of eyes with distance.
Another idea is to be your own devil's advocate and try looking at it from perspectives other than the writer (how would we produce this, how might an actor change the reading, what would it look like as a book/comic etc.).
Unrelated to the process: reading this and also seeing your tweets made me worry; hope you are doing ok Mike.
Everything is okay! I've just had four different different health plans over the last two years and I'm exhausted with the whole system
Living in Europe the US system sounds Dystopian with a capital D. Glad to hear all is fine!
It’s a wasteful, expensive, confusing system, but at least it provides terrible, selective care
Do the insurance companies employees take the hypocritic oath to counterbalance the doctors' hypocritic one?
If I say "it's barbaric but hey it's home," can Disney sue me?
The rhyming made me smile every time and really sold the world, also the break in the pattern of "all our trolls are busy at the moment. Please be patient. We hope you die" made me laugh the most.
Something about the end and the frustrations the patient had during the repeated we hope you die felt off.... Jeff knows this is how it works and while I want to yell at the people who manage my insurance it's tough knowing they are people too or (sometimes on weekends) working through a language gap.
I think the doctors genuine care is important to why we believe in this system and something missing might be the idea from your brainstorming of the troll thinks they're helping. The we hope you die is really funny, and creates a great disconnect; an idea might be for the patient or another patient to be like "well they say I hope you die, but that's just how a troll shows he cares"
after all the healthcare system wouldn't saddle itself to something inhuman and destructive to life if they didn't care about you.... It couldn't be for something like profit.
..... I feel weird offering advice or opinions up the chain since you're imparting sweet knowledge nuggets to us, but thought it might be helpful and I might learn more from it.
This is so helpful! The tips in the beginning are great, but watching them play out through the new sketch helps so much.
And I can't wait to share the term "vomit draft" with all my friends, they're gonna love me.
Hi Mike Trapp! I didn't know where to ask a general question so I put it here. But, if there is a better place, please let me know! I have been loving these. I was wondering if you have advice or thoughts on developing solo sketch? I am most interested in using sketch elements in a solo performance.
This is a fine place to ask, since I don’t have a general question thread. One person sketches are hard to write, because so many tools are taken away from you. The most successful ones I’ve seen are those that play off structures where a single person might be talking a lot in the real world: press conferences, author readings, safety instruction, political speeches, etc. Your games need to be clear and strong, since you won’t be able to show anyone reacting to the unusual thing. And you need to have solid jokes almost constantly. As I said, they’re very hard to write well, but I’ve seen some very funny ones before.