Ideas for Comedy Writers Read online

  ‘Keep your hands off my daughter,’ an irate father might tell him. Naturally he has no intention of doing anything of the sort. Or he’ll touch her with every other part of his body instead.

  ‘Keep your hands off my new car,’ his boss might tell him. You can practically guarantee that he’ll be doing wheelies and doughnuts around the car park in it by the end of the chapter.

  He might not be intentionally naughty – other people might egg him on or make dares or bets with him. He’s probably accident prone too, though unfortunately he doesn’t seem to realise it. Or he tends to forget until it’s too late.

  38. Edinburgh Fringe.

  One of the biggest chances a comedy writer has of getting spotted is by putting on a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. This is one of the world’s biggest comedy festivals and is held in Scotland every year throughout August. You’ll need to be able to either perform your material live or get together with someone who can perform it with you or on your behalf. Most performers will jump at the chance to perform there – they’ll never get a better chance of ‘making it’. Putting on your own show at the Fringe is easy, and the festival organisers will give you plenty of support. Full details are on the excellent Edinburgh Fringe website (www.edfringe.com).

  It’s a good idea to go along to a few performances yourself and see what everyone else is doing before attempting to put on your own show. And you could always offer to write material for some of the people you see there, especially if you think they have a big future and you can adapt your writing to suit their performance style.

  39. Elaborate lengths.

  You can create a very funny situation by having a person in charge who is desperately trying to keep something secret from everyone else. He’ll go to increasingly mad lengths if he thinks anyone is close to discovering the truth. So he tells elaborate lies which he then has to back up with proof – which doesn’t exist.

  Think of a situation where something serious has happened, and then imagine that someone like Basil Fawlty is in charge. He’ll try to reassure everyone that things are just as they should be. And he’ll be desperately trying to resolve the situation but just making things worse. And he’ll be quietly going mad. Your character needn’t be quite so manic though. And it’ll probably take a woman like Basil’s wife Sybil to step in and sort out the mess properly.

  40. Exaggeration 1.

  Exaggeration means making something appear more significant, less significant, bigger, smaller, easier, or more difficult than it really is. If someone is known for having a large nose, for example, describe it as if it’s really huge. Compare it with other well-known large noses, then large objects that are vaguely nose shaped, then buildings, landmasses, or even whole countries whose size and shape this nose reminds you of.

  [EXTENSION] That can be pretty funny, but you can push it one step further. Let’s say that you’ve just compared the local mayor’s nose to Mount Etna. You can then go on to say that his nose is but a pimple compared to the one on the deputy mayor’s face. Gales of laughter will ensue as you go on to describe this new nose and find even larger landmasses and countries, or even whole continents to compare it to. Talk about how it has been featured in Mountaineering Monthly, the expedition that’s being planned to climb the north face, the previous attempts that have failed, the amount of oxygen and provisions they’ll need for the climb, the new features that have been discovered in satellite images. Not to mention the Yeti that lives in the left nostril.

  41. Exaggeration 2.

  Another good way to start is by considering a character who is 100% something. For example, he’s not just angry, or very angry, or purple with rage – he’s 100% angry. What might that look like? What would he say and do? What if he was the angriest person in the whole world? How could you make that funny? If angry doesn’t work for you, choose something else; perhaps he’s drunk, forgetful, or worried. But not just drunk, forgetful or worried in an ordinary way – he’s 100% drunken, forgetful or worried – perhaps the most extreme example of it on the whole planet. You might not want to write a whole story about this person, but you could certainly include some of the things he does, and maybe have him in the background at other times, getting into trouble, upsetting people, and so on.

  And what if he meets someone who is 100% something else? For example, if he’s 100% angry, what if he’s forced to travel with someone who’s 100% rude, or happy, or calm, or a liar? How do they get on? What do they get up to? How do they relate to other people? How can they use each other’s afflictions to get what they want and do things they wouldn’t be able to do on their own?

  [NOTE] If you’re a full member of ideas4writers, we have a long list of 100% characteristics you can use – click on the Extras link at the top of the members’ home page after logging in at www.ideas4writers.co.uk

  42. Exaggeration 3.

  The situations in your story may be perfectly normal, but you can exaggerate certain aspects of your characters’ personalities – their mannerisms, foibles and flaws, for example. They make mistakes or wrong decisions far more often than a normal person would. Your readers will laugh at the characters, but they can also see themselves in the same situations, so they laugh at that too.

  There are many examples of this. American actor and film director Woody Allen exaggerates his hypochondria and neurosis. Laurel and Hardy were incredibly accident-prone – the frequency of their catastrophes was greatly exaggerated. Charles Dickens exaggerated many aspects of his characters.

  So think about how you can exaggerate your characters’ personalities and whether this makes your writing funnier. You’ll need to think about this carefully though: many people don’t find slapstick funny any more, for example. But there are plenty of other types of exaggeration that they will laugh at.

  43. Exaggeration 4.

  Monty Python fans will recall the sketch where a group of Yorkshiremen try to outdo each other about how tough their childhood was. (If you want to see it again it’s on YouTube – search for ‘Monty Python Yorkshiremen sketch’.) How about adapting this idea into other areas of life and business? Start off with a fairly realistic example and gradually keep extending and exaggerating it until it descends into outrageous impossibility.

  [EXAMPLE] Requirement: to lay a pipeline across the Grand Canyon. Exaggerate it: we could lay the pipe in one day and put up a bridge at the same time. Further exaggeration: we could lay the pipe and build the bridge at the same time, all in one day and for half the money. Keep going and you might end up with them agreeing to lay the pipeline, fill in the entire canyon, pave it over, and build a giant hotel on top of it. All of this would be done by one man in under an hour, and not only would it not cost anything, but the man would actually pay for the privilege of doing the work.

  See if you can think of some other ideas like this. When it starts to sound silly you have to keep pushing it even further. You eventually come out on the other side of silly and it starts to become funny, then funnier, then hilarious. It works particularly well when performed live.

  44. Excuses.

  You can use funny excuses in just about any comedy situation. In fact the excuse itself doesn’t even have to be particularly funny. Imagine, for example, that a character is a little dim-witted and always says ‘Because I have a headache’ when asked to explain why he hasn’t done something, or why he failed to perform as well as expected. Perhaps he heard someone say it once (possibly just a few moments ago) and it seemed to work, so he adopted the same excuse for himself. The more times he uses this one and only excuse, the funnier it will be. Your audience or readers will already know what he’s going to say, and they’ll think or speak the line along with him.

  Think of some more excuses, and then try using each excuse over and over again for lots of different situations. Some will be so absurd that they’ll be very funny. You could also try repeating the same excuse several times, starting with ordinary situations and continuing into the more unlikely ones.

>   And think about what the consequences of all this might be. What action might his employer take if he seems to keep getting headaches and they’re affecting his work? What action will people take in response to the other excuses you came up with?

  45. Experiencing comedy.

  Take every opportunity you can to read comedy or see it being performed. If you’re just getting started, put aside a couple of weeks to create a laughter file. Every time you see or read something funny, make a note of it. Give each item some sort of tag or keyword so that at the end of the two weeks you’ll be able to see what sort of things you laugh at most. During that period try to experience all kinds of comedy, including real life incidents, slapstick, jokes of various kinds, sitcoms, stand-up performances, sketches, spoofs, movies, cartoons, tall tales, short stories, novels, comedy songs, surprises, TV shows that feature video clips of funny animals, people having accidents, things going wrong, and so on.

  Keep adding to your file as and when you come across other funny items. And think about how you can use what you’ve learned.

  46. Extending a funny story.

  Let’s say that you’ve come up with the beginnings of a funny story, but it’s not quite there yet. Imagine that you’re telling it in front of an audience. They’ve had a few drinks, they’re very happy, and they’ll laugh at anything. What can you add to your story? Or perhaps you could begin it in a slightly differently way so it leads them in another direction. Which way of telling it would they find the funniest? Remember: this audience absolutely loves you and they’ll laugh at anything, so you can’t lose. This is your chance to experiment, try things out, and be daring. Once you’ve got them laughing, how can you keep them laughing? How long can you keep them laughing without letting them pause for breath?

  47. Failure.

  Failure fits in well with comedy. In other genres a successful outcome is always expected. But in comedy the outcome doesn’t have to be successful at all. What your characters aspire to and what they’re actually capable of are often completely different things, especially if fate is involved. And it’s sometimes much funnier if a character fails. Some of the funniest stories ever written are about situations where everything falls apart completely – if it can go wrong, it does go wrong. The big event that everything has been building towards goes horribly wrong – or never happens. You might like to choose some of your favourite novels and stories from non-comedy genres (or even from real life) and ask yourself: what if everything went wrong – but in the funniest possible way?

  48. Farces.

  Farcical comedies are easily created by having one of the characters over-compensate when something minor goes wrong. This in turn leads to other events that are also over-compensated for, until the whole thing spirals out of control. It doesn’t have to be the lead character who over-compensates and causes the trouble – he might be on the receiving end of it. Think about where it will all lead and how everything will come to a satisfying conclusion – probably when there is nowhere else left for it to go.

  49. Fate and karma.

  ‘What goes around comes around’ is a well-known saying. So is ‘you reap what you sow’. And that’s certainly the case for the main character in this story. Fate and karma are catching up with him – all the bad things he’s done to other people during the course of his life start happening to him. And he’s done some very bad things. Some of those things haven’t happened to him yet, but based on what’s happened so far it’s only a matter of time – he can even predict some of the dates when they’ll happen.

  He needs to make sure he’s perfectly safe and not doing anything that’s likely to get him into trouble on those dates. But his memory is a bit hazy when it comes to remembering exactly when he did some of those bad things, and what order he did them in. So he gets some of the dates wrong and bad things do happen to him. But even if he can remember the dates and the order of events, and even if he’s expecting something bad to happen to him, and even if he’s taken every precaution he can think of … fate still finds a way of reaching him.

  Is there anything he can do to prevent these bad things happening to him? Could he ‘find religion’, or change to a different religion, or have his soul cleansed, or be forgiven for his sins? Or something else? By now, he’s willing to try just about anything.

  [CAUTION] Be careful if you decide to have him try to put right all the bad things he did in his past, because that’s the plot of the TV series My Name is Earl – and that got cancelled after 4 seasons. Your version would need to be different.

  50. Getting ideas.

  Comedy is everywhere: TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, comics, advertising, greetings cards, clubs, pubs, on the internet, and even in the workplace. So why not use it? Always carry your notepad with you and make a note of everything that is, in your opinion, a particularly good example of comedy.

  [TIP] If you spot something funny and you don’t have your notepad with you, you should be able to make a note of it on your mobile phone. Just write a text message and save it – there’s no need to actually send it.

  51. Hecklers.

  If you’ll be performing your work live, don’t forget to write some brilliant put-downs for dealing with hecklers. The way you deal with audience abuse can be just as much fun as your main act, so don’t get upset when people shout things out – just anticipate what they’re likely to shout, and make sure you have some great responses prepared. Handle the situation well and you’ll earn the audience’s respect, so they’ll want to see you again – and you’ll sell more stuff at the end of your performance.

  52. Heroic quips.

  If you’re writing a comic novel – or a novel with humour in it – try making a long list of one-liners for your hero to deliver throughout the story. These might include puns, self-deprecating remarks, jokes, humorous observations, irony, revelations from his past, confessions, embarrassing mistakes, and so on. Think about his personality, the people he meets or sees, and the situations he finds himself in, and you should have no difficulty coming up with the lots of great quips, one-liners, insults and put-downs.

  53. ‘Hilarious’ novels.

  How many novels have you read that claim to be ‘hilarious’, but don’t even make you smile? Far too many if your experience ins anything like mine. So please don’t let yours be one of them. When you’ve decided on your theme or storyline, write as many jokes, puns and one-liners as you possibly can. Aim for at least one joke per page, but write twice as many as that because half of them will be terrible. If you can manage two or three jokes per page then do it. But make sure you test them out on people – a broad cross-section of people, not just your friends. If they don’t laugh, ask them why they didn’t find it funny and how they might change it to make it better. If their version is funnier than yours, thank them and steal it. Now see if you can find a way of squeezing all the best jokes into your story without interrupting the flow.

  If the blurb on the back cover of your book says it’s ‘hilarious’ and it isn’t then I’ll probably never read another one of your books. And I might even give you a bad review on Amazon. But if it really is hilarious then I want to read every book you write. And join your fan club!

  54. Hopeless.

  Complete hopelessness can be very funny. Examples include Homer Simpson, Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones. Think of a situation that you know well, then stick a hopeless, ineffectual character in the middle of it and watch it all fall apart – with hilarious consequences of course.

  Homer Simpson isn’t just hopeless of course – he works in a nuclear power station and hasn’t got a clue how to do his job. If he had a regular job and was hopeless at it, that might be a little bit funny. But to have him being hopeless at such an important job is absurd. Which makes him doubly funny!

  55. Hospitals.

  Hospitals are wonderful places for comedy. Despite all the suffering and tragedy, many patients tell jokes and amusing tales about their lives, their illnesses and injuries,
their families, and all sorts of other things. You just need to hang around long enough and collect them. So visit hospitals as a volunteer – you’ll be helping them and they’ll be helping you; chat to the doctors and nurses; talk to people who have a friend or relative in hospital, or go along and visit them yourself; and so on.

  If you ever have to spend time in hospital yourself, collecting amusing tales like this will help pass the time – and make you feel a lot better. You can then decide what to do with them: publish them as a collection; turn the best ones into snippets, letters and fillers for magazines; or use them in your own stories, perhaps adapting or embellishing them to make them even funnier.

  56. Humorous horror.

  Comedy horror stories are popular with readers and cinema-goers. Start by coming up with a basic horror story plot, and then make it funny using the ideas in this book.

  [EXAMPLE] Let’s have a group of amateur ghost hunters who have been called in by a neighbour to expel a malevolent force from his house. This is their first attempt at doing such a thing, and they’re not well prepared. They have a book that instructs them to draw pentagrams to protect themselves, but none of them knows how to draw one. They wanted garlic to repel vampires, but they couldn’t get any so they bought garlic capsules from a health food shop. Why on earth they thought there would be vampires is anyone’s guess! You can have endless fun as their inept investigation continues – regardless of whether or not there really is a presence there. And if they’re accident prone with the lights on, just wait until its dark!