3/17/2012

How I write a Red Squirtle episode

Now for something new! I have a free night, so I will try my best to explain how I write an episode of The Red Squirtle. On my Red version, I have my Red Squirtle file, where I follow (almost) everything Red does. I have all his pokemon (with some HM slaves) and I only use Squirtle, Squirtle (Pikachu), and Growlithe (unfortunately not uber-glitched)

 For this explanation, I'm gonna use Episode 14: Saucy! as an example. All of our episodes begin with an explanation of what happened in the last episode. In most episodes (including this one) I like to open with an unrelated funny bit. Here is what we did...

Red- So…you dragged me out of there?
Squirtle- Squirtle
Red- Ah…okay. That solves that plot hole. Thanks flanger hanger danging durgen
Squirtle-…Squirtle(kinda quiet)
Red- Excuse me?
Squirtle- SQUIRTLE
Red- Flanger hanging danging durgen…is something bothering you?
Squirtle- Squirtle!
Red- You don’t like your five star name?
Squirtle- Squirtle!
Red- Oh…I didn’t know
Squirtle- Squirtle!
Red- I’m…I’m sorry
Squirtle- (sniff sniff) Squirtle (crying like)
Red- I didn’t think it would hurt you so much. I hope that one day you’ll forgive me
Squirtle- Squirtle(no)
Red- Fine….if you want it that way…I’ll leave…..and scene! Flanger hanger dangen durgen, if we ever get our own serious show, we will get such high ratings
Squirtle-…squirtle
Red- oh…you still want to change your name?
Squirtle- Squirtle
Red- oh okay
 I feel doing this is a good way to get into the story of the episode, so you don't begin too heavy. Soon after, Red goes off on a new path, this is where I start going on online guides as well as my Red Squirtle file for information about the new area. In this case, there are a bunch of trainers. Here I'll have either a battle or a small bit of dialogue. Here I just chose a lot of dialogue with various people

Red- I swear that pathway wasn’t there before…
Guy1- Hey no shoving
Girl1- I need my space
Guy2- really? You need that much room?
Girl2- maybe if you lost a few pounds you would get more room
Red- Hello people in a line!....whatcha doing in a line in the corner where no one walks and some people are facing a wall…
Guy3- ummm…waiting for people to walk infront of us…
Red-…yeah I don’t think any sane person will walk up there
Guy4- like what you are starting to do
Red-huh? What? LEGS WERE GOING THE OTHER WAY!
So Red made it to a new city, I'll spend a lot of time walking around the city, talking to people, deciding what Red should do. This is where I really get into what the episode is about. Here, Red goes through the pokemon mansion and gets the Eevee, which he finds out later, is very saucy. So the episode is focused on Red going into a new city and getting the Eevee. What better way to introduce a pokemon than a battle? I look around and find a battle Red could get into without the battle lasting too long. I look on the online guide and find a medium sized battle around 3 or 4 pokemon. I found a gambler with poliwags/whirl.

Battles can be hard to write for. If its just attack then attack then attack, it can be boring. Looking back to older episodes, I did not perform the art of comedic battling well. I think in this episode it is done fairly well especially since we did something completely unexpected, the singing part. This helps keep the audiences attention. So Red wins and I decided I accomplished what I was going for in this episode. So I let the announcer summarize the episode and give a small hint to the next episode and I call it a night. I'll come back to the episode later a few times, read it out loud by myself and make sure everything sounds right. I'll make changes if I need to (which pretty much is 100% of the time) After a few revisions, I send it over to the others, if they catch anything I change it and resend it. Also right before recording, we do a read through as a group and if any else needs to be changed, it is.

Hope this gave you a small insight on how I write the episodes, I thought this was fun to write. See y'all later!
~Alex