According to comedy producer and tutor Simon Nicholls

With an award-winning CV that includes Titting About with French and Saunders, Ed Reardon’s Week, Miles Jupp sitcom Party’s Over, Dave Gorman’s Genius and Bridget Christie's Utopia, comedy producer Simon Nicholls knows a thing or two about funny.

Simon leads the UK’s only online master’s degree in comedy writing. Run by Falmouth University, the course teaches in-depth comedy writing skills as well as the street smarts of how to navigate the comedy industry to the next generation of comedy writing talent, and graduates have gone on to great things, from writing for the BBC, to developing TV and audio comedies with production companies.

Here, the former BBC Studios executive has compiled his list of dos and don'ts for new writers putting together their scripts.

Dos and Don’ts

DO thoroughly plan your sitcom premise, characters and script in advance. It means your half hour script won't take you 18 months to write.

DON'T start writing your script without a thorough story plan. You wouldn't build a house without a plan: who wants to open a front door and walk directly into a wardrobe?

DO make sure that your sitcom's plot matters to your main character. If what your main character is trying to achieve feels authentic, then it will matter to the audience. (On paper, we shouldn't care that in one episode, Frasier and Niles want to run a restaurant, but because the writers establish that it really matters to them, we want to stick around and see if they succeed).

DON'T come up with a plot that doesn't matter to your main character. If the story doesn't really affect the main character, why should we care? Come up with a story that doesn't have any guts and your plot will have all the drive and emotional connection of a sweet potato. And I do like a sweet potato, but have you tried watching or listening to one for half an hour? Exactly.

DO write a pilot episode where your show's main premise is evident from the very beginning. So, if your set-up is a sitcom about a taxi-driver, let your main character be a taxi-driver from the off and show that in action.

DON'T write a pilot episode full of set-up where in the final scene, your main character becomes a taxi driver. Producers and agents want to see what a typical episode of your sitcom looks like: they're not after the origin story of your character - unless your sitcom is called Batman Begins and you're Christopher Nolan.  If you must have a bit of origin story in Episode 1, consider writing Episode 2 as your pilot script instead: where your main character is already up and running and the reader can clearly see what a typical episode of your show is.

DO write and send out a full pilot script to producers and agents. Not a deal-breaker, but if you can include a short clip that you’ve filmed or recorded to go alongside the script, to help bring your idea to life, then that’s great too.

DON'T send out a treatment ("treatment" = look/feel) for your idea with no script. You want to show producers your comic voice and writing skills: how you handle dialogue and plot. There's no better way of doing this than with a full pilot script. And on that note, there’s no need to send a producer scripts for a whole series. All it takes is one script to start a conversation.

DO focus on making your main character’s dialogue and manner as distinctive as possible. If you're finding this difficult to do, imagine which actor or comedian you'd cast in the role and write the character's dialogue with the actor or comedian’s voice in your head. This will give you a starting point to build on as you make your characters’ voices as unique as possible.

BONUS DO: To help make your comic character  memorable and properly figure out what makes them tick and funny, put them through a personality test. Answering questions like ‘what’s my character’s favourite film and why?’ will really help you figure out who they are as people and the specifics of what makes them funny. (You can find lots of these tests from a swift Google).

DON'T give up with making your central characters distinctive! One way to do this is imagine them together in a room talking about one subject. For example, blue cheese. What does each character think about blue cheese? Why do they think that? Do they all know what blue cheese is? If two of your characters share the same opinion on one subject, play around with them so they don't. You want your characters to have clear, differing points of view on life. If they all have similar opinions and viewpoints, that’s going to be dull.

DO go to the loo or for a walk if you hit a brick wall with your script. Staring at your computer screen, becoming increasingly frustrated with a weak plot point or a character that's not funny enough, won't solve the problem. I have first-hand experience of this working: I used to produce a BBC comedy series fronted by brilliant stand-up comedian Dave Gorman called ‘Genius’. Whenever we hit a script problem, Dave would go to the loo and come back with the solution. Now it's possible that Dave had The Coen Brothers locked in his toilet. Or - and perhaps more likely - it could be that the process of taking 'a time-out' and doing something completely different is perfect for unlocking your brain and coming up with script solutions.

DON'T consider never going to the loo as an option in life. You'll eventually burst and create quite a mess.

DO come up with surprising twists for your story. Remember when you've watched a show or film and figured out what happens next? After the initial sense of believing you're really clever, do you remember how unsatisfying and annoying it is? Unfortunately for you as a comedy writer, people are clever and have watched almost everything. So, coming up with surprising twists isn't easy. But like vegetables, sunlight and pedestrian crossings, plot twists that keep the audience hooked are a necessary.

DON'T give up creating a surprising twist for your comedy script if it’s proving difficult. Push your brain to think of ten different ways a moment could play out. By forcing yourself to come up with so many, your brain will go to places it didn't know existed and - ping! - you'll surprise yourself with what you've come up with. All you need is one of the ten ideas to be a surprise and a winner. Surprise yourself and you'll likely surprise the audience. And if that doesn't work, go for a walk or to the loo (you may find The Coen Brothers in there).

DO try writing for different mediums. Have a go at writing a TV comedy. Write for online. Write audio comedy. Don't say ‘I don't listen to audio comedy, so I won't bother’. If you do that, you're closing yourself off to potential income, and it might be where you really shine. If you don't listen to audio comedy, then your challenge is to write something you'd want to listen to. Audio actively employs new comedy writers, while TV can be harder to break into. Don't be a closed shop. Give everything a go!

DON'T be a chump! Sign up to Falmouth’s online master's in Comedy Writing, hone your comedy writing skills and gain the street smarts to make a career out of comedy writing. It's created and led by award-winning comedy producer, Simon Nicholls (that's me, being one of those ‘describing myself in the 3rd person’ weirdos). FYI, this kind of line is known in the comedy industry as a 'shameless plug'.

• If you’d like to meet Simon and ask questions about the course, join a Live Q&A on  December 6.

Published: 28 Nov 2022