Writing Sit-Coms.

Before I tried to write a sit-com I should have read Brian Cooke's book. In it he wrote:
"After Johnny Mortimer and I finished a script we went through a process we called 'ticking the laughs'.... ticking off the lines which would get a laugh. We liked to see three or four ticks on each page i.e. every 3rd or 4th line. If there weren't enough ticks on the page we'd do something about it.... not stick in an obvious gag but strengthen the lines in situation or maybe trim or tighten up some of the plot lines."
Well I wrote an episode of a sit-com about a man who had retired and decided to go to college because he felt he had missed out. OK, there'd already been a film with Bing Crosby on the same subject but Shakespeare had pinched his plots so why couldn't I?
I sent it off somewhere and, of course, it came back. Yes, the idea was useful (which meant they might use it themselves some time) and the characters were neatly drawn (which meant they didn't like them) and so on. And, O yes, there was a joke on page three.
Sod them!