So You've Got A Good Idea... Now What?

Brainstorms & Outlines

All right! Let’s get back to writing!

Since the post about coming up with ideas you’ve had two weeks to roam through the world with your comedy eyes on. You’ve been reflecting on strong emotions, looking for patterns, and looking for ways that two very different things might be connected. Hopefully you have at least one idea you think could be a sketch. It might be in an embryonic “is this just a tweet?” phase, but you’ve got something that makes you say, “there’s something funny here.”

So, now what?

How do you turn one sorta funny sentence into four pages of consistently funny sketch?

Your next step is to do a bit of brainstorming. Some of you are going to want to skip this, and you really shouldn’t. And, hey, I get it. This kind of work can feel very unsatisfying. It’s intangible. It takes time. There’s no way to measure when you’re done. You might feel like this is an unnecessary step preventing you from writing, but it’s actually the opposite. This is writing. It’s as much a part of the work as putting words on paper. If you find yourself in a writers’ room, you’ll spend as much time brainstorming, refining ideas, and exploring pathways as you will scripting. So don’t discount the value of pre-writing. Get comfortable with it. Savor it. Treat it like the important step that it is.

Is this Rembrandt’s “Lieven Willemsz. von Coppenol, Writing Master” or is it a picture of you, ready to write with a big, scary blank page in front of you. Who can say?

The Brainstorm

Get a blank sheet of paper (or open a word processor of your choice) and start writing down any thoughts you have about the sketch. This should be free-form and unstructured. Chances are you already have a line of dialogue, a game beat, or a setting in mind. Write it down. Don’t be self-critical, or worry about how the pieces might fit together; just let the ideas roll out of you in one scattered stream of consciousness. Will it all be funny? Absolutely not. Hell, it won’t even all be useful. That’s fine. These thoughts are your raw materials, the lumpy, ugly, messy clay that you’ll later mold into something beautiful.¹

I’d recommend spending anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour on this. If you slow down and suspect you’re out of thoughts, give yourself five more minutes just to see if there are any last minute, wild ideas rattling around your head. Sometimes those last thoughts you have to reach for are the best ones.

What if you’re staring at a blank page and nothing is coming? Commit to ten minutes of thinking and don’t worry about how much you produce. If after those ten minutes you still don’t feel like you have enough, write the game at the top of the page and then ask yourself the following questions.

• How might the game heighten? If this is a repeating pattern how can I continue it or subvert it? If this is a juxtaposition of contrasts how might I exaggerate each side of the juxtaposition?

• Something unusual is happening in your sketch. If that is true what else does that imply? What else must be true about this world?

• Where is the best place to set this sketch? What setting makes sense for this idea, or lets the funny part of the idea stand out the most? Is it a public place or a private place?

• Who do I need to make this game work? What is the lowest number of characters I need? How do they relate to each other? Does one have status over the other or are they equals? Which choice would best serve the game?

• What kinds of things would happen in the setting of the sketch if everything were normal? How might those things change now that there’s an unusual element?

• How can I break the game? How might a straight man escape it? How would people realistically try to avoid or stop the unusual thing? How can I counteract those strategies to make the unusual thing continue?

Ideally, by the time you finish you’ll have at least three beats of your game scattered somewhere throughout this document. You probably also have a vague idea of who your characters are and where this sketch takes place. You might have also discovered a few moments that surprised you. This is all great, usable stuff. In fact, it might be enough to start writing!

Yes, this messy, nearly incomprehensible brainstorm page is all the outlining I usually do for sketches these days. I think of it like a toy box. I start writing and when I feel like it’s time for a beat I look in the box to see what would be the most fun to play with. Then, after I finish my first pass, I’ll see if overlooked anything too good to omit. If so, I’ll try to find a place for it. There will always be things in the toy box that never make it in to the script, and that’s okay. The script should have exactly what it needs and nothing more.

This is a chaotic way to write, but I find that chaos to be helpful. Since I don’t totally know where I’m headed, I’m able to surprise myself while I’m writing, and if I’m surprising myself I’m probably surprising the audience too. I also find my dialogue improves when I don’t know the next beat. Which, makes sense: I’m not trying to artificially maneuver the characters into position for the next joke. Instead, I let the characters respond in ways that feel natural or make me laugh, and hope that something in the ol’ toy box is a good fit for the moment.

So, if you’re impatient, or like discovering things on the page, this might be all the outline you need. Put your brainstorm page somewhere nearby and start scripting! Just be forewarned that this method shifts more work to the writing and editing portion of the process. Scripting will probably take longer, and rewrites have the potential to be bigger. You might wind up throwing a lot of your writing in the trash before you get to your final draft. If you want more of a plan before writing you might consider spending a little more time outlining instead.

The Mini Outline

Before I got comfortable writing straight from the brainstorm page, I went through a period where I would write mini outlines for my sketches. Here’s what it would look like:

GAME: _________
BEAT 1: _______
BEAT 2: _______
PATTERN BREAK: _________
BEAT 3: _______
END: __________

Write the game at the top. This is a reminder that it needs to be established early and a reminder to yourself what the sketch is about if you start getting lost in the details a few pages later. Pick out your three favorite beats from the brainstorm sheet, and put them in order from least heightened to most heightened. If have an idea for an ending, write that down at the end. Finally, add some kind of pattern break between the second and third beat. A misdirect, maybe. A new character. Something that was on-game, but a little more unpredictable or unexpected. This might be easier to discover while you’re writing, but if you already have an idea, write it in here.²

This mini outline is the sketch’s skeleton. It gives you some structure, but it’s not complete. The sketch gets fully fleshed out while you’re writing by adding reactions and connecting all the beats together. Establish the game, let the characters react, hit the next beat, let the characters react, hit the next beat, let the characters react, and on, and on. It’s sort of like a pop song structure. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, end.

The benefit of this method is it gives you clear direction where you’re going, while still allowing some uncertainties to be discovered. You don’t have to worry that you’re not heightening or that a move is off-game because you’ve sorted all that out before the scripting starts. You still have your brainstorm sheet to use as a toy box while you’re writing, but you also have a reliable structure that usually works well.

I say “usually” because there are some downsides to outlining a sketch like this. Relying on this structure too much makes your sketches predictable. This, of course, only becomes a problem if you’ve written a few sketches with this method. In that case, make an active choice to switch things up in your next sketch. Alter your mini outline. See if you can do more beats faster. Add more misdirects. Explore more. Or try doing a sketch with a completely different format, like a parody or a list sketch. Or try writing without the outline. Make sure that the tools meant to help you don’t become a crutch you rely on.

More detailed outlines also have the downside of encouraging unnatural character moves. You might be tempted to have a character do or say something that isn’t totally logical, simply because you know they must make those moves in order to get to the next beat. You know it feels off, but it’s easy to convince yourself that no one will notice these moments. I regret to inform you that everyone will.

For most people, the mini outline or the brainstorm page should be enough to get you started, but if you really need to organize your thoughts you could construct a full outline.

The Full Outline

The full outline starts the same as the mini outline, but you keep adding to it. Take everything you like from your brainstorm sheet and add it to your mini outline in the place where you think that moment might go. If it’s a full beat, make it it’s own line. If it’s a bit of dialogue or a visual note, make it a sub-bullet of that beat.

This takes a lot longer to organize, but it makes the scripting process go a lot faster. The outline has everything you need, in the exact order you need it. You’ve basically written assembly instructions for your own sketch!

Unfortunately, that means that writing sketch from an outline can sometimes feel exactly like that: mindless assembly. There’s not as much room for discovery when you’ve planned this much, and I personally find it a little boring. I did all the fun discovery parts while I was outlining! Now the writing is a slog. And if I’m bored while I’m writing, it makes me worry someone will be bored while they’re watching it.

But if you crave order and fear uncertainty, this may be the method for you. Just don’t use the outline as a way to put off writing the actual script. It doesn’t do any good to have a near-perfect outline and no sketch.

Wrappin’ It All Up

These are only methods I have tried, and I’m sure there are many more. The best method is the one that works for you. What will make the writing fun for you? Will you enjoy yourself if you feel like you’re discovering things, or would you prefer the security of a fully planned road map? Or maybe somewhere in the middle.

Whatever you do, give yourself time to explore your idea before you start scripting. Really explore the idea. Look at every angle. Get big, weird, and stupid. This is generative brain time, not critical brain time. There are no wrong answers; just a million options. This is your chance to discover as many of them as you can.

Exercises

• Brainstorm! Pick your favorite angle from your favorite idea and give yourself 15 - 60 minutes of brainstorming. When you’re done, if you think an outline will help you, try outlining with whatever method feels right. You’ll eventually use it (or the brainstorm page if you don’t decide to outline) to write your rough draft in the very near future.

TIP: Don’t worry too much about picking the “right” sketch idea. This can lead a paralyzing pursuit of perfection. Instead tell yourself you’ll eventually write all these ideas. Now you’re not writing your “only” sketch; you’re simply writing your “first.”

1. “Fart Gorilla, the Gorilla who Farts pt 2: Still’ Fartin’”

2. Careful readers will note that this is exactly the structure of “Philosophical Truth or Dare” which we dissected last week.