Elephant Bucks. Sheldon Bull

       STRUCTURINGYOUR STORY

      Early in my career; I drove over to Paramount Studios for a meeting with Lowell Ganz. (He'd go on to write a bunch of hit movies, including Splash, City Slickers, Robots and Fever Pitch.) At the time, Lowell was the Head Writer of Laverne and Shirley, which was a big hit series at the time. Number one in the ratings week after week. Lowell explained to me and a group of other young freelance writers how to structure a story for Laverne and Shirley. Lowell's advice to us went something like this: “First, we think, 'Wouldn't it be funny if Shirley's head got stuck in a cake?' Then we construct a story that gets Shirley's head stuck in a cake.”

SEVEN PLOT ELEMENTS

      When you're trying to develop a TV sitcom story, and you haven't done it before — or you haven't been able to do it successfully — I've found that it helps to break the story down into Seven Plot Elements. Sometimes this process can oversimplify the structure, and certainly there are exceptions to the rule, but if you're just starting out and trying to get a handle on how to cobble a sitcom story together, I'm confident that these Seven Plot Elements will help you.

      First Goal (Active Main Character) or First Problem (Reactive Main Character)

      The Main Character discovers something that he or she wants or is con-fronted with a problem that he or she must solve.

       Obstacle

      Something or someone gets in the way of the Main Character achieving the goal or solving the problem.

      First Action (unwise decision)

      The Main Character must take some action to overcome the Obstacle and achieve the goal or solve the problem. In sitcom, this action almost always involves the Main Character making an unwise decision.

       Act Break

      The First Action backfires, and the Main Character finds himself even further from the goal or with an even bigger problem to solve.

       Second Goal

      The Main Character devises a desperate Plan B to solve the new problems created by the First Action and get back on track toward achieving the First Goal or solving the First Problem.

       Second Action

      The Main Character puts Plan B to work. Things get even worse.

       Resolution

      The goal is achieved or the problem is solved. Sitcom Resolutions often involve an ironic twist. An Active Main Character may discover that he or she has been pursuing a false or superficial goal. A Reactive Main Character may discover that the problem could have been solved more easily with a “wise decision” rather than with the unwise decision that the character chose.

USING THE SEVEN PLOT ELEMENTS TO DEVELOP YOUR STORY

      To get you familiar with how to use these Seven Plot Elements in developing your spec sitcom story, let's develop a story for a spec episode of Frasier.

      I chose Frasier instead of, say, Seinfeld or Everybody Loves Raymond, or even a current series like My Name Is Earl, for a number of good reasons:

      1) I say “learn from the best.” So let's learn from one of the best sitcoms ever.

      2) Strong central stories. Seinfeld followed all the rules that I'm about to lay out for you, but I want a series that had a strong central story in each episode. Seinfeld used complex multiple story lines that are more difficult to master if you're just starting out.

      3) Active Main Character. An Active Main Character like Frasier is a better learning tool than a Reactive Main Character when you are just starting out because it's easier to see how the Main Character drives the story. If you can learn to write an Active Main Character like Frasier, you can easily adapt those skills to a Reactive Main Character like Ray Barone.

      4) Familiarity. Almost everyone has seen Frasier, so I don't have to spend time getting you familiar with the premise or the characters. When I teach classes, I find that I save myself a lot of time and save the students a lot of confusion if I talk about series that almost everyone already knows. If perchance you've been living in Uzbekistan for the last two decades and haven't seen Frasier, it is running somewhere in syndication every day. At the time of this writing, Frasier reruns could be seen daily on Lifetime. Frasier episodes are also available for rent on DVD from NetFlix.

      5) Avoiding temptation. If I used Two and a Half Men or another well-written current series as an example, some unscrupulous reader might be tempted to borrow from what is discussed in this book. Frasier is out of production now, so you won't be writing a spec episode of that series.

      6) The vagaries of fate and television scheduling. Even if I decided to flaunt temptation and show you how to write a spec episode of some current hit, how can we be sure that current hit would still be on the air once you read this book? Remember Eight Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter? I bet a lot of aspiring writers wrote spec episodes of that series. Why not? It was a good show and a big hit. And then John Ritter, the star, tragically died.

      The strong yet simple premise of Frasier, and the unusually well-developed characters, make it the best tool that I could find for explaining how to use the Seven Plot Elements to structure a sitcom story.

      So here we go: To create a story for Frasier, we'll use the premise of the series about Dr. Frasier Crane, the intellectual and neurotic psychiatrist from Cheers who was spun off as the host of a Seattle call-in radio show produced by the randy Roz Doyle. Frasier shares a luxurious apartment with his father, Martin, a down-to-earth retired cop, and Martin's quirky physical therapist, Daphne Moon. Frasier is frequently involved in one- upmanship with his equally snobby brother, Dr. Niles Crane.

      Frasier's pomposity, his insecurity, his desire to prove himself was central to his character on Cheers, and became the driving force behind his character on Frasier.

      We know from the series formula that in nearly every episode Frasier's ego and his insecurity are going to get him in some kind of trouble with his family, his co-workers, his neighbors, or with the high-society world in which he circulates. We'll let our premise and the personality of our Main Character work together to generate a story.

      If your series has an Active Main Character like Frasier, your story needs a First Goal for that character that springs organically from the character's established personality. Remember how Lucy wanted a new hat because Caroline Appleby had one? What kind of similar goal can we create for Frasier? As regular viewers of Frasier, we know that Frasier is always trying to improve his social status. He's a snob. He's competitive. He's highly sophisticated and equally childish. So as a First Goal, let's say that:

      1) Frasier wants to be president of his opera club. He happily begins