The rules of writing are pretty much the same regardless of the genre you're writing in, but comedy writing has its own particular set of difficulties. Like sex, comedy is a highly subjective thing -- what makes one person laugh makes another person roll their eyes.
For me, comedy is something that has to grow out of the characters and/or the situation. It should be natural, not something that's forced -- which is easy to say but not so easy to describe, but here's a shot:
Natural humor is something that comes out of the situation -- for example, The Office draws a lot of its humor from corporate culture. Red Dwarf, a British science fiction comedy, draws on the idea of making two of the main characters the maintenance crew on a giant spaceship. P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories center on the idiocy of Bertie contrasted with the supreme efficiency of Jeeves. Once you know the point where the humor is supposed to come from, it becomes easier to draw it out into the story.
Forced humor is that which doesn't come from the situation, but which is pushed into it. It's jokes for the sake of jokes, situations that rely on everybody in the setting being a complete idiot and/or ignoring common sense in order for the joke to work. A lot of romantic and/or situation comedies rely on this kind of idiot plotting -- ditto a lot of 80s teen sex comedies.
The best way to work on comedy writing, besides writing it, is to study comedy in various forms -- standup routines, funny movies, funny shows, funny books and see what does and doesn't make them work.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-07-10 02:39 am (UTC)For me, comedy is something that has to grow out of the characters and/or the situation. It should be natural, not something that's forced -- which is easy to say but not so easy to describe, but here's a shot:
Natural humor is something that comes out of the situation -- for example, The Office draws a lot of its humor from corporate culture. Red Dwarf, a British science fiction comedy, draws on the idea of making two of the main characters the maintenance crew on a giant spaceship. P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories center on the idiocy of Bertie contrasted with the supreme efficiency of Jeeves. Once you know the point where the humor is supposed to come from, it becomes easier to draw it out into the story.
Forced humor is that which doesn't come from the situation, but which is pushed into it. It's jokes for the sake of jokes, situations that rely on everybody in the setting being a complete idiot and/or ignoring common sense in order for the joke to work. A lot of romantic and/or situation comedies rely on this kind of idiot plotting -- ditto a lot of 80s teen sex comedies.
The best way to work on comedy writing, besides writing it, is to study comedy in various forms -- standup routines, funny movies, funny shows, funny books and see what does and doesn't make them work.