Tuesday, 7/8

I think it turned out pretty well. At least, I hope it turned out pretty well.

This week's TV piece was both a joy and a challenge to write. It was a joy because it was one of those ideas that came to me in a flash, and as I was writing it the gags and the ideas easily flowed onto the page. It was by the time the flowing was done that the challenge presented itself--

As originally written the piece would be about four minutes long. And since I only have two minutes each and every week, you can see where the challenge came from.

Over the past few months I've actually gotten pretty good (if I must say so myself) when I write these the bits. For some bizarre reason, when I first write (most of) them they're quite close to the two minute mark. Unfortunately, that was not the case this week, as I discovered to my horror the first time I read through it. That meant there was a big editing job ahead of me.

That also meant that a lot of the gags had to go.

I usually don't mind the edits I need to make after I've written the first drafts of the pieces. After all, like I said, when I originally write them I just let the thoughts flow, and quite often a thought that made sense when I was typing it often needs more context or less verbiage to make sense when spoken. In all honesty, whatever quality these pieces have is, in large part, because I edit my original thoughts to make them more coherent.

So I really don't mind doing it.

But when you have to remove almost half of a piece; that's when it could start to get tricky. Sure, you can tighten things up and sure, you can even take a thought or two out. but to get rid of almost half of it, while still retaining both the original thoughts you wanted to convey and the jokes you wanted to use to prove that point...well, that's when it gets a little tricky.

Of course, if I did what I was hoping to do correctly, you would have no idea that I removed almost half the words. So check it out for yourself, and see if I did indeed do it correctly--

Hopefully, the points I wanted to make were still there, even if most of the jokes I wrote to make the points were cut.

(jim@wmqt.com), editing machine.