Skip to Content
Television and Screen Writing, 4th Edition
book

Television and Screen Writing, 4th Edition

by Richard A Blum
April 2013
Beginner
336 pages
7h 59m
English
Routledge
Content preview from Television and Screen Writing, 4th Edition

12

How to Write Professional Scenes in Sitcoms

Sitcom Characters and Dialogue

In sitcom, the comedy has to focus on the lead characters in the series. Comic dialogue must match the characters we’ve come to know and love. The “A” story must set up a driving force for the main characters, with some susceptibility, to face a crisis. Comedy lies in an effective setup and payoff of the action and dialogue for the characters. The “B” story might deal with other secondary leads in the series. Producers are particularly finicky about the familiarity of characters to set up the comedy to work properly.

Sample from “Frasier”

Let’s look at a “Frasier” script, entitled “Hot Pursuit.” This is a first draft written by Charlie Hauck. Each of the lead characters—Frasier, ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Sound for Film and Television, 3rd Edition

Sound for Film and Television, 3rd Edition

Tomlinson Holman
Directing, 5th Edition

Directing, 5th Edition

Michael Rabiger, Mick Hurbis-Cherrier

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780240803975