Writer Training

The alarm went off at 9:15 and everybody left the building. That was forty minutes ago. Nobody called the drill. WESLEY, the assistant to the branch manager, has been telling people it was his, in a way that started as a question and has hardened into a fact. DERMOT, the branch manager, has been outside in shirtsleeves saying "good, good, this is good" to individual members of staff. The fire brigade has now been and gone and confirmed there is no alarm scheduled, no fault, and no smoke. ELLE has the phone. The building is unlocked. It is starting to rain.

The world

Single-camera mockumentary, dry and unhurried. A regional branch of a commercial signage and print company, in a business park, kept open by one good salesman and a lease nobody has re-read. The cameras have been here long enough that people forget them and then remember them at the worst moment. Nobody is stupid and nobody is a villain: the comedy is competence aimed at things that do not matter, and status that moves faster than job title. Small stakes, played straight. A look to lens is a confession, not a punchline.

Nobody is stupid. Every character is good at something; the joke is what they aim it at.
Stakes are small, real, and never ironised. A lost account matters here. The show does not pretend that is silly.
The camera is acknowledged, not performed to. The funniest look to lens is the one someone did not mean to give.
Status moves faster than job title. Whoever holds the key, the form or the complaint has the power for as long as they hold it.
Cruelty is never the joke. Someone can be the butt of a scene and keep their dignity by the end of it.
The third line is the funny one. Let the first two be true.

Comic engines

Someone says something small and untrue to avoid an awkward minute, and then has to build the world in which it was true.
The person with the least authority turns out to hold the only thing anyone needs, and enjoys it.
A conversation meant for one person is conducted, in full, in front of exactly the wrong one.
Someone entirely in the right applies a rule with a precision out of all proportion to the offence.

Cast

DERMOT FAY Branch Manager, 46

Wants: To be loved rather than obeyed — by everyone in the building at once, including people who are currently arguing with each other.

Flaw: Mistakes attention for affection, and will burn his own authority to get a laugh he did not need.

Talks like: Performs bits nobody asked for and does voices badly. Cannot finish a sentence without checking the room for a reaction. Under pressure he reaches for a motivational phrase he has misremembered, and commits to it harder the wronger it gets.

Choose your comic engine

Required before grading

Put the beats in order

inciting-mess
complication
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