Comedy Writing Self-Taught. Gene Perret
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that we have explored beyond the average amount of possibilities.
It prevents us from quitting too soon: To me, this is one of the biggest faults of comedy writers—we quit too soon. We give up much too early on both the premise we’re working on and the specific joke we’re working on. Our tendency is to say, “Well, I’ve written a joke, now I can start writing the next joke.” But is that joke you’ve written in the best possible form to extract laughs. Would a word change improve it? Would a more well-defined setup line help the punch? Would a different payoff be funnier?
This advice to write more applies not only to the quantity of writing but also to the quality of your writing. If you give each joke a little more thought, you may provide better jokes.
We may also quit too soon on a premise. If we’re writing a sitcom, we may assign action and dialogue to the characters and then move on. But might there be different actions the characters could take in this situation? Are there different words they could say? All of this is worth a little more consideration.
I’ll repeat these ideas again because they will be useful in teaching yourself to write comedy and because they will be extremely helpful to you throughout your comedy writing career. Write to a quota and overwrite.
The PAL was a big deal in our neighborhood when I was young. PAL was an acronym for the Police Athletic League. The local police precincts would form youth teams and play against each other around the city. I played baseball for them, as did almost every other kid in the area. One day, the sergeant who managed our team invited us into the gym in the basement of the 41st Precinct. To us youngsters, it was spectacular. It was a regular gym, just like we would see in the movies. It had punching bags and dumbbells, and the pièce de résistance was an actual boxing ring right there in the center of the room.
The policemen who ran this precinct’s PAL were putting together a boxing team. They gave us a few lessons on how to jab and protect ourselves from a jab and a little bit of basic footwork for a boxer. It was heady stuff for kids our age, and we all decided to become boxers. I thought it would be a wonderful life because all of the fighters I saw were famous, they were rich, they dressed nice, and they were surrounded by gorgeous women. It was everything a twelve-year-old longed for in life.
After our fundamental boxing lessons, the policemen paired us off for a few rounds of actual sparring. I was put in against a kid I didn’t even know, but I was quick and clever so I thought he’d be no match for me.
I threw a few jabs as we were taught, and I blocked his as I was taught. Then he abandoned the standard moves and launched an uppercut that stunned and staggered me. The cop who was refereeing immediately stopped the boxing and told me to go take a break. I was happy to.
I went into the bathroom and threw some water on my face to refresh my woozy self. When I glanced in the mirror, I noticed that all my teeth were outlined in blood. My opponent didn’t knock any of my teeth out, but he did jar them loose from their moorings a tad. He also jarred loose my desire to become a famous, rich, well-dressed, womanizing boxer.
My dreams of becoming a vicious, determined fighter who would waffle opponents around the head and face were appealing to me. Once it dawned on me that other folks might want to waffle me around the head and face, I wisely opted out of that particular sport. The purpose of this parable is to illustrate that any profession you aspire to will probably have some hidden setbacks in it. Comedy writing is not exempted. You may have your teeth figuratively but ignominiously jarred loose from time to time.
Before we throw ourselves into the craft of comedy writing, we should take a realistic view of the business. Look at what’s ahead and be prepared for it. The following are a few of the realities you should foresee:
Not every joke you write will be great: Some days, none of them will be great. As in any profession, you’ll have “on” days and “off” days. The good news is that you don’t have to produce brilliance with every line you write. A fair percentage is all you need to succeed in the comedy writing business. If you can create good comedy material, that’s enough. It doesn’t matter how much of your work you send to the trash can. You don’t get penalized for the gags you throw away; you do get rewarded for the ones you sell.
This doesn’t imply that you can take it easy and just produce a few good lines. Not at all. You strive to turn out the funniest material each time you tap on the keyboard. The reality, though, is that you won’t. A baseball player tries to get a hit each time he comes to the plate, but he doesn’t. If he bats .300, he’s a star. But he still has to try to get a hit each time he comes to the plate. If he relaxes two-thirds of the time, he’ll bat only .100. That will get him sent back to the minors. Likewise, as a comedy writer, you must offer full effort and devotion to everything you write, but you must be resigned to the fact that you won’t ever bat 1.000.
Enthusiasm is one of the greatest attributes a comedy writer can have. It fuels your inspiration. It makes you turn out more and better material. It keeps you striving. If you look too hard at the mediocre material that you will inevitably produce (because everyone, and I mean everyone, produces some mediocre material), you’ll get discouraged. You can lose the necessary enthusiasm.
One time I handed in some material to Bob Hope. He hefted the envelope in his hand (we used to kid that Bob Hope bought jokes by the pound) and said to me, “Is this stuff brilliant?” It wasn’t, and I had to confess that. I said, “Actually, Bob, it’s really not.” He was stunned a bit by my honesty, but then he said, “That’s OK. The other guys will be on.”
That’s the realistic attitude you should adopt about your own writing. If today’s production was only fair, that’s OK. Some other day you’ll be great.
Your career will progress one step at a time: When professional climbers plan to scale a specific mountain, they spend much time in preparation. They gather equipment, clothing, and whatever else a mountain climber needs to climb a mountain. They realize the trip will be arduous and must be done in increments. Very few professional mountain climbers will gaze at Mount Kilimanjaro and say, “I think I can do this in one jump.”
A career in comedy writing is accomplished in increments, too. You try to get a foothold somehow and then you use that to proceed to the next level. Your career grows according to your credits.
It’s good that your career will grow in stages, because at each level you learn something about your writing. Each writing experience should make you a better writer. It also slows you down—which actually will help you establish a more accomplished long-term writing career. When we begin any endeavor, we’re eager to succeed in it. The achievement always seems much more satisfying than the apprenticeship years. We all tend to want what we want now. The danger in that is you could go into a difficult profession unprepared.
You often hear that many new business ventures fail because they were underfunded. The entrepreneurs weren’t financially prepared to go the distance. In comedy writing, it’s to your advantage to spend a little more time in the formative stages, so that you’re ready for whatever comes your way when you get your break. Should you get your break early and you can’t handle the demands, you could be out of the profession. If that happens, it’s much more difficult to get back in.
You could price yourself out of a career: Successful comedy writers make pretty good money. But you may not . . . yet. As we discussed, your career usually progresses in graduated steps. Probably your financial rewards will, too.
Now don’t get me wrong. Earn as much as you can as quickly as you can. That’s only good business. But be wary of trying to make too much too soon.
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