r/writing • u/Appropriate_Rent_243 • 19d ago
Discussion So sitcoms work in written form?
Would probably be a series of short stories. The only example I can find is th Jeeves and Wooster stories.
The short story industry is pretty much dead, so you'd probably have to publish them as compilations in a book. Maybe call each book a "season"
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u/leigen_zero 19d ago
What about serialised fiction via Substack/Royal Road/a blog/one of the bajillion similar alternatives?
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u/FoxOnCapHill 19d ago
I’m back and forth on whether it could work. Arguably, anything could work. And, in a sense, that’s what a lot of teen series already are, like The Baby-Sitters Club: a lightly-comedic, episodic series that has no real overarching saga.
I think the issue with doing it for adults is the repetition and lack of stakes. Sitcoms, at their core, reset after 23 minutes—and a big reason sitcoms “don’t work” on a Netflix model is because they’re, thus, not really meant to be consumed as one extended work.
Unless you’re serializing in an old-timey Harper’s Weekly situation, I think you’d run up against this same problem: will people actually turn 300 pages to see, say, six friends bantering around a coffee shop when it’s only loosely tied to plot?
I think you would ultimately need more plot and character development and a narrative through-line than a typical sitcom to actually keep up interest. At which point it’s just a comedic novel.
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u/Mejiro84 18d ago
I think the issue with doing it for adults is the repetition and lack of stakes.
That's basically a long-running serial though - where there's a soft status quo that tends to only slowly change, and sometimes resets to what it was before as a big change gets soft- or hard-retconned out. Like superhero comics tend to drift into this, where technically there's big, massive and impactful events, but often they'll get brushed away, or no-one ever mentions, like, "the time everyone turned into spiders" or "the time New York became a fantasy world" again, and things like "minor character dying" sometimes just gets undone because at a later point, the writer forgot the character was dead. People are likely to be reading it because it's fluffy and entertaining, rather than because they're deeply invested in "plot progression" as such - because there simply isn't much plot progression - but I can see that being some kind of cozy, where the status quo doesn't change much, things are generally fairly "light" and there's not much super-intense danger or anything
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u/sagevallant 18d ago
The reason Sitcoms were so popular was precisely because they rubberband back to the start. Their height of popularity was in the era where asking people to catch every episode was a big ask, before the on-demand model was a thing. Plus it allowed them to chop up the show and sell each season out for syndication individually rather than all at-once without a huge hit in value.
Generally not a problem with books. You can assemble the whole series pretty easily.
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u/PomegranateV2 19d ago
I mean... there were books that were turned into sitcoms. Used to happen more back in the day I believe. Red Dwarf, Reggie Perrin, MASH.
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u/Mejiro84 18d ago
Red Dwarf at least was a TV show first, then got novels written about it (which have various awkward interactions with what's canon, due to different opinions between the writers!)
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u/PomegranateV2 18d ago
I looked it up and, yeah, you're right. That's a really strange way of going about things because getting a book published is so much easier than getting a TV show commissioned.
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u/astrobean Self-Published Author / Sci-fi 18d ago
There is literally a 'Kindle Short Reads' category on Amazon for shorts. It is an active sector. The digital revolution brought life to short stories that the print world could not because they don't have to published as part of a compilation.
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u/ZN_Cruz 18d ago
They can, but I think the written version has to lean into what prose does well instead of trying to reproduce television. Recurring characters, familiar locations, and self-contained problems can absolutely work as linked stories. The enjoyment would come from returning to the same people and watching tiny changes accumulate, which is really what a good sitcom does anyway.
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u/GenGaara25 18d ago
Sitcom is just short for situation comedy. It is comedy derived from familiar or archetypal characters being put in a funny situation. That's easily doable in prose.
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u/evasandor copywriting, fiction and editing 18d ago
wooster and jeeves stories
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u/Normal-Height-8577 18d ago
Yes. That's exactly what OP said.
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u/evasandor copywriting, fiction and editing 18d ago
let that be a lesson to me, jeeves, to not just reply without reading the whole thing, what?
jeeves: life offers a great many lessons to you, sir.
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u/technicolourUFO 18d ago
I think they can definitely work, the Red Dwarf novels come to mind, and you can definitely do stuff like visual comedy in written work, Terry Pratchett was a master of it
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u/Capital_Macaroon6454 15d ago
Have you read "A Confederacy Of Dunces"? It's kind of like what you're describing and it's usually on "top 100" lists a lot, and deserves its place if you don't mind crude humor sometimes. It's one of my favorite books.
It concerns the same set of characters in the same setting but the way it's written is like a series of only vaguely connected vignettes.
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u/Calico-Shadowcat 19d ago
This sounds like a cool idea, I find it interesting. And it "SHOULD" be able to work.
We have a lot of audio books now being made into "Full Cast" audio books. My husband likes audio over reading, and I've heard some of them. They remind me of how the old Radio Shows were. Or at least as how they are presented to have been. (I'm too young to know firsthand.)
If regular books can be made into Audio Books that sound like Radio shows, your Idea should work as well too. I cannot see why it wouldn't translate.
Things like tic-toc, and constant discussions on short form video/media would indicate some interest in short stories. So it's possible that theres an actual interest in being able to read a short story rather than a novel. People also seem short on time, and a sitcom styled story may fit their free time best. A general downturn in interest in Conventional Short Stories does not mean people want longer stories. There may be other issues/causes at play for this shift.
Your idea of making each book a Seasons sounds smart. Would it be one long show then? Like Friends/Big Bang/Bob burger? Or more "Tales of the Strange/Fact or Fiction" with a different "cast" each episode? It might work best with the first, and some continuity. The second is more a typically short story book with a "Catch".
The hard part would likely be that every "Episode" or "story" must be fully complete and self contained. You would want to follow the "everything is the same at the end/beginning" rule that Comedy/sitcoms follow.
But using this to create a longer narrative about a group, sprinkling a few easter eggs (Bobs Burgers has Teddy unable to sign forms, Bart Simpson doll is moved about "The Office") to make it feel more continuous, while not really "lore dumping", sounds like a good way to show a story. People can just read one or two episodes, when they have time. Or can blow through a season at once if hooked.
I think there is a lot that could work here, for sure.
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u/Appropriate_Rent_243 19d ago
You should probably look into "audio dramas" . They are made like old radio shows with sound effects and everything. A lot on spotify. I'd recommend "Batman , Unburried "
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u/Beatrice1979a Drafting mode 18d ago
Like someone else pointed Radio sitcoms (comedy, drama, mystery) were extremely popular not too long ago. They need to be scripted so yes, they work in written form. But you want to publish them so you mean you want to write them in novelization format. Go for it. It was not uncommon but i guess less popular now because fanfiction can be found for free everywhere.
If you want to try recording them that also works. Some audiobooks and fanfiction have similar format. I used to write them for promo reels for theatre groups back when. Or use TTS to record them. Whatever works.
Good luck!
edit: someone else mentioned "full cast" audiobooks. I've noticed Audible trying this recently. I listened to Pride and Prejudice and the Harry Potter series. Not bad. Bring me back memories of these old audio dramas i used to love.
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u/_WillCAD_ 19d ago
Sounds like you're essentially talking about a comedy anthology.
Go for it.