Four more things we learned writing "Mankind's Last Hope"

A week or two ago I took a crack at jotting down a few lessons learned from the MLH experience. Here are four more before it all fades into sandy dream fragments......

1. There are life-enhancing creative outcomes short of Hollywood-style success
Several years back I ended a lengthy writer's block by figuring out that there were plenty of worthwhile things you could write that weren't novels. Like screenplays, for example. And poems. And ditties.

This time around I learned that there are plenty of lovely things you can do with a screenplay short of getting it a slot next to 30 Rock. Not that I wouldn't love a slot next to 30 Rock if you happen to know Tina Fey. She's so funny.

2. Sugar can be chemically transformed into giggles
One of the shows was a little rough, in part because the theater was particularly warm. The next day I was talking with a Hollywood-style writer about the heat. He told me there's a rule of thumb in sitcom-land that they keep the theaters at 60 or somesuch. He also said they hand out lots of cookies before the show. So we brought donut holes that night, opened the windows for the whole show and: hey presto -- slightly overweight humans laughing! (Actually our audiences were remarkably fit. Disturbingly fit. It was weird.)

3. Ti-ming? Time-ing? Timing
One of the most interesting things for me and co-writer Jeff was seeing lines that we didn't think were especially funny get some of the best responses. "Spencer" in particular had this one line: "That is disturbing on so many levels" -- huge roar every night. Even when the house was too hot and there tweren't a cookie in sight. It's not a bad line. Not a great line. But really, the line didn't matter. It was all about the timing. He was on the beat, like a point guard feeding the power forward a pass that's right on the bounce. Slam dunk.

4. The audience needs to be in on the joke
The night before we opened we had a preview show for a select few. The cast did great but the response was low-key. We talked about it afterwards and concluded that the problem was that we hadn't told our remarkably fit audience what to expect and how we wanted them to behave. The next night, director Bob stormed the stage with a rousing monologue that set the show up. told people where the commercials were going to play, where we'd roll credits. He told them we wanted them to laugh loud. To boo the bad guys. And it made all the difference. It seems obvious now, but it's easy to forget: If you're asking people to laugh, you gotta bring them along for the ride.