Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the long-running hit cartoon South Park, have revealed a surprisingly strict rule that guides the writing of their episodes.
The show, which debuted in 1997, has aired more than 350 episodes and is renowned for its sharp satire and viral moments.
A video has emerged showing Trey and Matt visiting the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, where they shared a specific rule followed by the South Park writers’ room.
Trey explained: “Our whole writers' room, one whole wall is a whiteboard. We have it split up into three acts, and I walk around with markers to create funny scenes. Each individual scene has to work as a funny sketch, and we found this really simple rule. We can take these beats of your outline, and if the words, 'And Then' belong between those beats, then you're f**ed.”*
He added: “What should happen between every beat that you've written down is either 'therefore' or 'but.' So what I'm saying is, you come up with an idea and THEN this happens. No no, it should be 'this happens' and 'therefore, this happens. BUT 'this happens' therefore 'this happens'. Sometimes, we'll literally write this out to make sure we're doing it. There are so many scripts from new writers and things we see that break this rule.”
This strict narrative guideline — ensuring that each scene flows logically with ‘therefore’ or ‘but’ instead of ‘and then’ — helps maintain the tight, satirical pacing that has made South Park a consistent cultural phenomenon for more than two decades.
