Northern Laughs 4

How would you advise selling sketches?

Micheál: It's just very, very hard selling sketches. What I always advise is, rather than writing half a dozen sketches and sending them to everybody you know, target who you send them to. So if you think I've got a really, couple of really good Armstrong and Miller ideas, send them to the producer.

Jeremy: And I can confirm we read them. Armstrong and Miller have taken the odd non-commed thing.

Micheál: But radio's really good cos there's Recorded for Training Purposes as well as the new Seven show. And once you've sold something, you can then talk to the producer you've sold it to and build a relationship with them. It's just that narrative work is much easier. It's very difficult to give notes on a page of sketch show.

How valuable are screenwriting courses?

Jeremy: I did an MA in screenwriting. The good thing about a course like that is you're making a commitment to doing it.

The only way to learn how to write is to write. And it never stops. But that is another way to go. And there's certainly value in it.

Phil: Funnily enough, we were doing the mentoring thing today [for the Northern Laughs scheme], and I didn't realise how much I'd picked up over the years. And it's just there. When you've been doing it for a while, you know when you're getting a decent idea and you craft it a little bit. It is practice. It is just writing and writing and writing.

Jeremy: It's true. I've recently started script editing in the past two or three years, which is something I never used to do, and I found that the ability to do that just comes from having done it over a period of time. The only way you learn the stuff is by failing again and again and again and gradually it goes in. There's no short cut.

We live in a climate where it's instant fame and the talent show mentality, the overnight success. And that is not how it is. Writing is something that takes years and years and years. You look at the great writers. Most of their careers don't start till their forties. Someone like Alan Bennett, who's been writing for a long time, hits his stride at about fifty and then gets better and better and better. Or Larry David.

You've got to have lived. To write well you've got to tell us something about what it is to be a human being. And you can't fake that. It comes from doing it. Writing is a lifetime's commitment and you have to pay your dues.

Kate: And I think the other thing is not to let rejection put you off.

Jeremy: Rejection doesn't stop. Every time you go out there with something new you have to earn it all over again.

Is it best to get try and get an agent, or to send things in directly?

Micheál: It's a very chicken and egg sort of question... Because agents will really only be interested if you've already achieved something on your own or you've put a play on that people come to see. Some companies won't read scripts unless they come via an agent.

I'm not sure agents are important really [when you're starting out as a writer]. It's just being sort of cunning and determined. And I always think it's a very good idea to send scripts to producers. But producers are generally really, really bad at reading things and responding. So it could go very, very quiet.

I'd be tempted to write to a producer who's done something you like. (Because it's ninety per cent certain that they like it too. And ten per cent they might have just been given the job.) But I'd write to them and ask them if you could send them a script, rather than just putting one in the post or emailing.

I really don't like it when somebody I've never heard of sends me a movie script and says: "Can you do notes on this for me?"

So it's just nice to be polite, really, and respectful.

Are there opportunities for comedy writers working on the web or for mobile phones?

Micheál: I think that's a particular skill doing webisodes, which seem to be two minute things. It's a bit like sketch writing. If you're a good sketch writer you can probably do that. But the best sketches are to do with character and telling the story. If you've got the skill to do that then there's massive potential.

I think that the problem now is that it's so easy to shoot stuff that looks immensely professional - so it looks great - but the content isn't necessarily always there.

Jeremy: Peter Serafinowicz's sketch show was taken up because he'd done some stuff on YouTube. So it's another good way in.

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