by Abigail Burdess

Abigail Burdess – whose credits include Tracey Ullman’s Show, Watson and Oliver and That Mitchell and Webb Look – shares some of the tips she’s picked up along the way…

1. Just Desserts. Sitcom is moral. Things go wrong BECAUSE of your character’s traits. If your character falls into a bin it’s bc they are looking at someone’s pecs, or dreaming about cash, or INSERT REASON HERE… not because the bin was there. Give your character what they deserve!
2. Just Desserts Again. The question in sitcom is always ‘Will this character get what they deserve?’ and the answer's ‘yes’. A comic punishment is social and proportional: pretentiousness is punished by ignorance being unmasked rather than by, say, being put in a threshing machine.
3. Know Your Character. In comedy, I think of traits not flaws: lustful; aggressive; lazy. Give a one-scene character one trait, a two-scene character two traits, and a protagonist three. Characters aren't people. People are infinite. Characters are knowable. Comic characters are instantly knowable.
4. Make A Promise. Introduce your characters at their most typical. The audience is looking for clues as to who these guys are from the moment they appear. This moment is a promise you make to the audience, and if you break it the audience will feel short-changed.
5. Know Which Idiot Wins. When a character has more than one trait think about which takes precedence. Say a character wants to punch people and bang people - it's good to know, if someone turns up who they want to punch AND bang, will they punch them first or bang them first?
6. Create Archetype. Clusters of traits produce types we recognise: the Know-It-All (Frasier, Liz Lemon); the Doofus (Alice in Vicar of Dibley, Joey in Friends); the Schemer (DelBoy, Jez in Peep Show); but avoid stereotype by dissociating such types from ethnicity, religion etc
7. Share Out The Goodies. Good character design means sprinkling traits around. Maybe don’t give two characters the same trait unless you are deliberately ‘twinning’: Dumb and Dumber, Pretentious and Pretentious-er, Jez and Superhans, Frasier and Niles, Patsy and Edina.
8. You Are God of Your Story World. Design characters to reveal each other’s traits and to motivate plot. If your character wants a quiet life, why not marry them to a big-mouth? Or INSERT JOKE HERE. You are the God of your universe. You can choose!
9. Fit The Sit. Design character for premise (or plot) and vice versa. You have a misanthrope? Put them in showbiz (Curb). Same on a scene level. You need a one  scene guy to, say, stop your hero giving away his cash? Fit the trait that’s most fun (IDK, they give it away first).
10. Circle Back. We don't watch sitcom to learn but to forgive ourselves for universal human failings. Comic plots mimic a drama plot and take characters on a journey – only for them to fail to learn, or to learn in tiny increments. The characters don’t arc they circle back.
11. Keep Your Promises. A great sitcom character exists forever in the ether, unchanged. Plot and character in sitcom are the same thing. Characters become archetypal by being consistent. So don't suddenly give your hero a trait she never had before. Keep the promise you made.
12. Keep Them Hungry. Sitcom characters always want what they can't have, either because of their essential nature or the ‘sit’ they find themselves in. Del Boy wants to be a millionaire. When he actually becomes one, the show ends. Don’t make your heroes millionaires too soon.
13. Give Your Hero Visible Goals . They don't want ‘love’ – they want 'a Valentine card'. Not ‘success’ but 'their name at the top of the board'. Often comic heroes achieve goals in the wrong way: the Valentine from their mum, their name is top of the ‘most wanted’ board.
14. All Eyes On What? In comedy the audience have to be looking at the same thing at the same time. Confused audiences don't laugh. If the audience are ah-ing at a puppy they won’t be laughing at the pratfall. Some comedy writers call non-deliberate mis-directions a ‘ruffle’.
15. No Ruffles. Avoid non-essential info. If someone turns up in a white dress it's a promise. We think it'll get soaked in crap or they'll be mistaken for the bride. If you mention the steps to the caravan we expect them to collapse and deposit our hero in a bottomless puddle.
16. Hook Them In. Punchlines are great but so are hooks. Punchlines often let the air out when we want to inhale. Keep them guessing what'll happen next. If you can, craft a punchline which is a hook too. If you can’t, ask a question at scene end after the punchline.
17. Keep Them Guessing. Don’t answer all your audiences’ questions at once. Make them ask the questions you want, beat by beat, scene by scene. Anything you write which isn’t plot will go if the length is over. Don't write a great pilot where the punchlines get edited out!
18. Take Your Time. Comic timing's out loud. Give your character time to ask their question and the audience time to read them asking it. If they have an internal decision to make, verbalise it in the script, ‘Should I put the jiz in the bin? Or maybe hide it… behind this urn?"
19. Keep Them Stupid. An audience is much cleverer than a writer. An audience is infinitely cleverer than a character. If plots get sticky dial down your character’s self-awareness. If Frasier had said ‘Oh, I see, I’m dating my mother’ it wouldn't have had a gazillion episodes,
20. Make Pretty Patterns. You can fulfil expectation in a satisfying way, you can exceed expectation in a satisfying way, or you can subvert expectation in a satisfying way. I call this 123, 128, 12fish. Some call it the rule of three. Set up, reinforce, JOKE!
21. No Good Sex. Controversial opinion alert! Good sex has no place in a sitcom pilot unless whoever's having it is about to get squashed by a plane or break their genitalia. If I want to watch someone who’s having better sex than me I’ll drive to an M4 lay-by on a Friday night.
22. Steady Your Stakes. Know your archetype’s power position. Amy in Superstore is a Del Boy, not the capricious authority. When she becomes the boss we see more of ‘Corporate’. Glen's a Baldrick – an idealistic fool, so when he’s demoted he keeps the same stakes. Great show!
23. Where's the Wit? Make your characters witty, sure, but not all of them. Chandler, (Friends), has wit, but it’s an obstacle to getting laid. I bet your favourite characters are funny not just for the things they say but the things they do because that’s WHO THEY ARE.
24. Stay Hopeful. Optimism, or mad confidence, is a great trait to give a heroine in a sitcom. When your characters give up hope so does your audience. NEVER GIVE UP NEVER SURRENDER. And that seems like a good note to end on! Thanks for making it this far!

• Abigail Burdess has written for TV comedies including Tracey Ullman’s Show, Watson and Oliver and That Mitchell and Webb Look and for for children’s TV including Sorry I’ve Got No Head, So Beano and  The Adventures of Paddington, Her book Mother’s Day – a dark comic thriller, is published by Wildfire Books on Thursday. 

She credits, among others fellow comedy writer James Cary, Kay Stonham, her colleague in The Female Pilots’ Club collective promoting women writers, and her brother Dominic Burdess as inspiration for this list.

Published: 27 Feb 2023