You're Funny. DB Gilles
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your state of mind, and whatever your reason for taking the leap from funny person with friends, family and co-workers, to someone who earns money from your talent, you're starting the journey at an opportune time.
A whole new, expansive audience is waiting for you to make them laugh.
Let's find out the best way for you to do this.
How to Know for Sure You Should be Writing Comedy
You know you're a comedy writer if you would much rather be playing “Grand Theft Auto” than be in a book club discussing the works of Teilhard de Chardin. Instead of going to therapy, you ridicule people who do. You can't get through a day without trying to make every person you know laugh. You believe that your sense of humor can get you out of any awkward situation. You joined “Second Life,” where you created not only a Second Life, but a Second Second Life and have contemplated starting a Third Second Life.
If you're a guy, you get little if any exercise and spend too much time indoors – usually online – and you've visited way too many porn sites. You've subscribed to Fangoria since you were a kid, still have every issue, and look forward to passing your collection on to your son and watching your favorite splatter films with him. You have to think twice about whether you would rather make a woman laugh or have sex with her.
If you're a woman, you worry that you'll never find Mr. Right because none of the dullards you meet get your sense of humor. On a date, you have to restrain yourself from making wisecracks and clever observations for fear that the guy will resent that you're funnier than he is. You reject the historically accepted female virtues of modesty and submission in favor of telling a good dick joke. You have to hide the fact that you love gross-out humor, especially fart and bodily function jokes. You have to think twice about whether you would rather make a guy laugh or have sex with him.
Only kidding!
Well, not really. Comedy writers do tend to be a little strange, weird, and off-the- wall. I should know. I'm one of them. Therapy helps. A little.
PART 1
Two Jews Walk Into a Bar:
Comedy Writing Basics
I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.
— Herman Wouk
Introduction
Somebody Laughed
Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declarationof man's superiority to all that befalls him.
— Romain Gary
There was a moment in your life when you acknowledged to yourself that you were funny. Maybe you were trying to be funny. Maybe you weren't. Maybe it just slipped out.
But somebody laughed.
Or giggled.
Perhaps someone just smiled.
It might have happened when you were in second grade or freshman year in high school, or when you were a senior in college. You did or said something that got a rise out of your teacher and snickers from your classmates.
Or it could have happened when you were out of school and into a career when you got that first reaction from a coworker at the photocopy machine.
Maybe your boss laughed at something you blurted out at a meeting. Maybe a group of people laughed at what you said while you were in an elevator. Or you realized that a thought you had or a remark that slipped out was incredibly witty or clever or, well, funny.
Perhaps you had a knack for making cute, endearing remarks that made your relatives laugh at family gatherings.
You liked the feeling. Maybe you even loved it. But one thing for sure: You knew deep down that you needed to hear that laughter. So you tried to get your laughs wherever you could. Depending upon how shy you were, maybe you limited it to your siblings or parents. You'd do goofy stuff or say nutty things and get your laugh fix from your family.
Once you had them in the palm of your hand, you may have decided to test the waters outside the safety of your home. So there was school or the sports teams you played on or the clubs you joined. The people here were a tougher audience. Maybe the silly things you did at home were too easy. You had to be more creative. So you'd take a shot. Sometimes you'd get the laugh. Other times you'd crash and burn.
Crashing and burning was probably more the norm. But on the days when you got the laugh, it made the failures worthwhile. Getting the laughs did something to you. Maybe it built up your confidence. Made you feel cool. Hip.
Perhaps your sense of humor got you into a more high-profile crowd. If you're a guy, maybe it got you a cuter girl. If you're a girl, maybe it got you a better-looking guy. But you were too young to be thinking about what to do with this talent you had to make people laugh. Maybe you were too young to even realize it was a talent.
All you knew was that you liked making people laugh and you got a lot of satisfaction from doing it.
Maybe it was enough just to make your friends and family laugh. Maybe people liked being around you because they knew you were the funny guy or the funny girl.
Or maybe you didn't do anything. You just kept saying funny things and getting laughs. You'd reached the point where you knew you were funny. It was expected of you and you embraced that feeling, whether at work, school or, for that matter, anywhere.
Then one day it hit you. You were watching a lousy sitcom or a mediocre sketch on Saturday Night Live or you had just laid out twenty bucks at your local cineplex for a comedy with hardly any laughs. Then, as if possessed by the ghost of Groucho Marx, you thought or uttered seven words that would change your life:
“I could write funnier stuff than that.”
That's when you hit your first brick wall. Could you really write funnier stuff than that? You'd never tried to write anything funny before. Not for real. Maybe in high school or college you channeled your comedic ability into a satirical essay for an English class or you dashed out a humor column in the school paper. You might've written a couple of skits for a school talent show.
But you never, not ever, tried to write a sketch or an episode for your favorite sitcom or a Top 10 list a la David Letterman.
And you definitely never wrote a joke. The only jokes you told were the ones you heard from other people, just like everyone else. But to actually write an original joke? No way had you tried that. And to actually create a funny sketch that would be on a par with the best of SCTV, Mr.Show, or Kids in the Hall?
No way had you tried that.
And to write an episode of your favorite sitcom? You definitely never tried that.
And if you had the idea of being a stand-up comic, of creating a persona and of writing an “act” – No way in hell did you ever try that. (You weren't even sure what an “act” meant.)
Once you accepted the fact that you were going from being the funniest person in your crowd to being a comedy writer, you had one really large question: How do I go about doing it?
That's where I can help.
If you're interested in breaking into the world of sitcom writing, I'll take you step-by-step through the process of selecting the right show to write a script for, from vague idea to outline to first draft to second draft to polish. If sketch writing is your thing, I'll give you suggestions and tips on avoiding the pitfalls that even the best-written sketches fall victim to. If it's writing for late night television, writing screenplays, parody, short humor for magazines, or humorous fiction, I'll walk you through the steps.
Maybe