Are you gonna do more advertising for Chuffah ? I feel like clicks have been going down lately and I wouldn't want you to get discouraged as I have greatly learned from this.
I'm working on Chuffah on the side while I'm working on a new, upcoming show. This means I'm currently taking a fairly laissez-faire approach to marketing and advertising at least until the room wraps. So don't worry about this fading away -- I'm extremely adept at talking long after people have stopped paying attention to me. You can't discourage my desperate need for attention that easily!
Thank you Mike, very nice. I especially appreciate you verbalising tactics, and giving us another tool to examine the sketches, i.e. finding what the status dynamics are. Are there other tactics that you omitted? Pivoting and distraction are the only two I can think of and they might also easy be part of the tactics you presented above.
Also humans are logical indeed, and trying to maintain and acquire more status is a logical thing your subconscious constantly tries to do, even when you are a hermit: https://youtu.be/ZMvCFlIwMas
I was wondering if you could cover writing sketches with two vs more characters?
I think a lot of submitted sketches up until now could benefit from more characters and character differentiations.
Also; can we re-submit a sketch that we have improved on?
Oooh, couple interesting points and questions here:
- Labeling these tactics are only valuable if they feel valuable to you. Tactics can include almost anything in the full spectrum of human action and it's sort of up to you to decide how you might lump or split them together. Is "pivoting" just another example of "avoidance"? Maybe, but it's a different manifestation of that. I wouldn't necessarily havea. big list of "types of tactics" on hand or anything -- the important thing is to remember that people try a lot of different things. A lot of early sketch writers default to anger exclusively and before all else. It's a lot of characters yelling at each other. Which makes sense -- anger is a BIG emotion and is a natural way a lot of people react to confusing and unfamiliar situations. Just remember it's not the only one and sometimes (as in the Fantastic Four sketch) a heavy sigh can be as meaningful and funnier than furious yelling.
RE: number of characters -- the process of writing a sketch with two characters vs more is the same, but more characters will give you more points of view to play off of. I feel like one structure you see a lot is an unusual character, a straightman opposed to that character, and an enabler/peacekeeper who keeps the other two in conflict with each other (when it would be more logical for one of them to leave). DON'T take this as a surefire formula, it's just a structure you see a lot. But it also points to a good principle: you should only add a character to your scene if it helps the game in some way. That extra character should have a different point of view about the unusual thing, or their presence should affect perceptions of status, or they should heighten the game.
I'll try to pick a sketch with more characters for the next round of notes!
And I'll say, yes, you can resubmit a second draft of a sketch. I'll probably try to do a few more rounds of first draft notes, but if I get a few second drafts maybe we'll revisit those. A lot of times second draft notes are less interesting than first drafts!
Thanks, the list is useful to me to sift through when building the sketch, to see if one tactic works better and I will definitvely try to explore more reactions.
As far as the number of characters, I often wonder if some sketches would benefit from being writen at a different character count but most of it seems to be dialogs between two people.
Chuffah has become something I really look forward to, keep up the good work!
Are you gonna do more advertising for Chuffah ? I feel like clicks have been going down lately and I wouldn't want you to get discouraged as I have greatly learned from this.
I'm working on Chuffah on the side while I'm working on a new, upcoming show. This means I'm currently taking a fairly laissez-faire approach to marketing and advertising at least until the room wraps. So don't worry about this fading away -- I'm extremely adept at talking long after people have stopped paying attention to me. You can't discourage my desperate need for attention that easily!
Perhaps it is up to us to do it? Word of mouth?
Thank you Mike, very nice. I especially appreciate you verbalising tactics, and giving us another tool to examine the sketches, i.e. finding what the status dynamics are. Are there other tactics that you omitted? Pivoting and distraction are the only two I can think of and they might also easy be part of the tactics you presented above.
Also humans are logical indeed, and trying to maintain and acquire more status is a logical thing your subconscious constantly tries to do, even when you are a hermit: https://youtu.be/ZMvCFlIwMas
I was wondering if you could cover writing sketches with two vs more characters?
I think a lot of submitted sketches up until now could benefit from more characters and character differentiations.
Also; can we re-submit a sketch that we have improved on?
Oooh, couple interesting points and questions here:
- Labeling these tactics are only valuable if they feel valuable to you. Tactics can include almost anything in the full spectrum of human action and it's sort of up to you to decide how you might lump or split them together. Is "pivoting" just another example of "avoidance"? Maybe, but it's a different manifestation of that. I wouldn't necessarily havea. big list of "types of tactics" on hand or anything -- the important thing is to remember that people try a lot of different things. A lot of early sketch writers default to anger exclusively and before all else. It's a lot of characters yelling at each other. Which makes sense -- anger is a BIG emotion and is a natural way a lot of people react to confusing and unfamiliar situations. Just remember it's not the only one and sometimes (as in the Fantastic Four sketch) a heavy sigh can be as meaningful and funnier than furious yelling.
RE: number of characters -- the process of writing a sketch with two characters vs more is the same, but more characters will give you more points of view to play off of. I feel like one structure you see a lot is an unusual character, a straightman opposed to that character, and an enabler/peacekeeper who keeps the other two in conflict with each other (when it would be more logical for one of them to leave). DON'T take this as a surefire formula, it's just a structure you see a lot. But it also points to a good principle: you should only add a character to your scene if it helps the game in some way. That extra character should have a different point of view about the unusual thing, or their presence should affect perceptions of status, or they should heighten the game.
I'll try to pick a sketch with more characters for the next round of notes!
And I'll say, yes, you can resubmit a second draft of a sketch. I'll probably try to do a few more rounds of first draft notes, but if I get a few second drafts maybe we'll revisit those. A lot of times second draft notes are less interesting than first drafts!
Thanks, the list is useful to me to sift through when building the sketch, to see if one tactic works better and I will definitvely try to explore more reactions.
As far as the number of characters, I often wonder if some sketches would benefit from being writen at a different character count but most of it seems to be dialogs between two people.
Chuffah has become something I really look forward to, keep up the good work!