by Linda Venis
An area that’s always particularly rich to mine is your own personal experience, something that happened to you or someone you know that can be fashioned into a story. For instance, when Julie was a rebellious young teen, she snuck onto a field trip for a class she wasn’t enrolled in to hang out with her best friend. That germ of an idea was behind the “Heartbreak” episode of The Wonder Years, which David wrote, and which depicted Kevin working his way onto a field trip with Winnie.
There are plenty of stories every day in newspapers, in magazines, and on the news. Maybe one of them can be adapted to fit into your story. Perhaps a phrase or a situation hits you as funny. One caution about using true events, whether drawn from your life or the outside world: Beware of too much fidelity to what really happened. The event has to serve the story; the story can’t just be documentary reporting on the event. “But it really happened that way” is a bad excuse for overloading a story with unnecessary details or tangential occurrences.
The plotting of classic comedies can sometimes be adapted into a story for your show. Shakespeare has been pillaged countless times for stories, and the Bard himself often adapted stories he’d read or heard to create his timeless comedies and dramas. Classic characters can give you attitudes that could work for your story too. Think of the miser, the misanthrope, the hypocrite, and the hypochondriac from Molière. If a character on your show has any of the comic traits of classic characters, look for ways to milk their comic flaws by observing how the greatest comedy writers have done it.
Another time-honored way to think about your story is to start with the question “What if…?” Use the comic traits of the characters and milk those with a “What if…?” question. For example, on The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon is well established as an obsessive-compulsive germophobe. So, what if Penny gets a new armchair Sheldon thinks is extremely comfortable, until he discovers she got it off the street? They did that on the series, and Sheldon’s story in that episode had him going through comic contortions as he obsessed about doing everything he could to get the defiled armchair out of Penny’s apartment. If you think of your series and the characters’ comic flaws and ask “What if…?” questions, you may find some very funny and workable material.
As soon as you begin to ruminate about what your story might be, a little bit of self-congratulation is in order—you’ve taken the first steps in creating your outline. Just make sure that you are prepared, since you never know when a funny notion will hit you and the muses rarely visit on a defined schedule. Carry a notebook around so you can jot things down, or make notes in your cell phone. Few things are more aggravating than having an idea that’s so good you know you won’t ever forget it, and then when you go to write it down a couple hours later you’ve forgotten it.
You Don’t Have to Reinvent the Wheel
Mine the History of Comedic Stories
Since you’ve watched a lot of situation comedies over the years, you know certain stories turn up again and again because those stories are common human dilemmas that are imbued with comedic possibilities and can be twisted and turned to fit into many different series and situations. Sometimes it’s useful to consider those tried-and-true story areas and see if you can put a fun spin on them. Here are a few examples.
“What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Stay in Vegas”
A lead character discovers a secret and, though sworn to secrecy, blurts it out to someone or inadvertently reveals it. Once he does, things get increasingly complicated with cover-ups, dissembling, and other ruses as he tries to avoid responsibility for revealing the secret.
“Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire”
A lead character tells a lie during a weak moment, perhaps to impress someone, or cover up something, or avoid being caught in a compromising situation. This generally leads to the spinning of more lies and the lead character’s being caught in that web. It may be resolved with the truth being revealed, or perhaps not. Sometimes a clever twist allows the character to escape with his dignity.
“Wait, I Thought You Said…”
A lead character misinterprets something she is told or something she overhears and acts on that misunderstanding. The audience is way ahead of the character and enjoys watching her make things worse.
“Decisions, Decisions”
A lead character must choose between two very bad (or two very good) things and goes through comedic convolutions figuring out what to do. Often there’s a moral dilemma involved, and while she might make the right choice, in today’s sitcom, she just might make the wrong one.
“Trust Me, What Could Go Wrong?”
The lead character gets involved in a surefire scheme to make money or solve some pressing problem. The audience knows what could go wrong—just about everything. And when things start to go wrong, bad decisions and foolish risks follow as surely as night follows day.
“The Boat Rocker”
Something upsets the lead character’s equilibrium. An incriminating e-mail or old letter is found, or a disliked relative threatens to visit. Whatever it is causes panic, and questionable choices follow.
“The Clock’s A-Ticking”
The lead character gets into a predicament in which she has to accomplish or avoid something by a certain time. The harder she tries, the farther away the goal seems to get.
“The Corpse”
The lead character is stuck with a dead body (or more likely, something incriminating or embarrassing that’s a bit shy of a real corpse). He has to get rid of it without linking it in any way to himself.
“Role Reversal”
The lead character is stuck in a situation where he has to behave exactly the opposite of how he normally would. The contortions and discomfiture he experiences create the comedy.
“The Green-Eyed Monster”
The lead character finds a reason to be jealous of someone, or she is the object of someone else’s jealousy. Naturally, the reason driving the jealousy proves to be false or at least misapprehended. But in the meantime that jealousy, or the reaction to it, drives the comic behavior of the lead character.
“Mr. Fix-It”
Something is broken in a seemingly trivial way and the lead character decides to fix the problem. Unsurprisingly to the audience, the fix only makes the problem increasingly worse before it ultimately gets better—maybe. (Note: We don’t recommend using a physical problem—for example, broken plumbing, electricity, or a car—for your spec, because that kind of story depends so much on physical comedy, which is in stage directions, not dialogue. But if you have a really funny take on the physical problem and can work a lot of funny dialogue in, then go for it.)
These are a few examples of classic story areas. You may be able to come up with more on your own. We don’t recommend you just choose one of these and simply replicate it, though that can certainly work. But think of how to mix and match them in fresh ways. Recombine them, play with them, or go against the grain of how these stories are usually told.
Structuring Your Story
Whose Story Is It?
What did you notice about each of the classic comedy stories we just ran through? For one thing, they conform to the basic necessities of all stories: A lead character decides to pursue a goal and then encounters multiple obstacles along the way. The lead character’s actions drive the events, and the lead is who the story is really about. We can’t emphasize that enough.
Turn Your Spitballs into Springboards…and Listen to Aristotle
Now it’s time to take your spitballs, the basic nuggets of ideas that will yield comedy gold, and turn them into springboards. A springboard is the episode’s premise, or core idea, which leads into the heart of the story. It kicks off the beginning of the story and indicates what kind of funny stuff will be going on in the middle but doesn’t necessarily tell you how the story ends.
For example, here’s a springboard for the “Soda Tax” episode of Parks and Recreation, which is based on a real news story: Mayor Bloomberg’s law concerning
large-size soft drinks in New York City. The lead character, Leslie Knope, wants to make a splash in her first action as a new city councilwoman in Pawnee, Indiana, and decides to advocate a tax on large-size sugary soft drinks, believing it will help stem the rise of diabetes.
Once you have the springboard, you then figure out how the story moves ahead and finally resolves: In short, create its beginning, middle, and end. In the Poetics, Aristotle stated that a story has “a beginning, middle, and end. It will thus resemble a living organism in all of its unity.” The old Greek has been right for twenty-five centuries. There is a deeply rooted human hunger for stories, and fans of half-hour comedies are no exception.
Kick Off Your Beginning with the Inciting Incident
As you’ve already learned, you inherit an on-air show’s “normal world,” so your first order of business is to create an event that upsets the balance of that world, for good or ill. This is called the “inciting incident,” something that causes the lead character to take advantage of an opportunity or try to set things right, and it should happen almost immediately. In our Parks and Recreation episode, Leslie’s decision to propose a soft drink tax at her first city council meeting is the inciting incident and is established within the first fifteen seconds on-screen.
Be Sure the Story’s Action Rises in the Middle
What Leslie thinks is a great move to boost the citizens’ health, however, almost immediately goes south, as the restaurants in town oppose her plan. There you have the kickoff to the A story and the middle complication. (Although they won’t be discussed in this chapter, the episode also has a B story and a C story, which is typical of how that series works. Depending on the series you choose, you will probably have to come up with multiple springboards to fill in your show.)
Here’s where the complications and obstacles set in, what’s often called rising action. Suppose Leslie proposed the tax and it passed without any trouble. She sets a goal and meets it; hooray for her. But there is no story, so the main character needs to encounter some resistance to her idea, and that’s what happens: Leslie meets with a representative of the restaurants in town who tells her that her proposal will cause a hundred people to be fired. How will Leslie resolve her dilemma as a politician? She must make a tough decision: Is she willing to risk the loss of jobs in order to help the overall health of the town?
That’s a complication to the lead character’s plan, but a single complication followed by a clear, effective choice doesn’t add up to a satisfying story. In the world of successful half-hour comedies, the action must continue to rise; things must grow more complicated. When Leslie comes into the city council the next morning to vote on her proposal, she’s a wreck. She’s been up all night, stewing about her decision, and drinking lots of sugary soda from a supersize cup. (Leslie’s been established as a bit of a sugar freak herself.) When the vote comes up, what does she do? She vomits into her huge plastic soda cup and then requests a recess. It’s funny, she’s humiliated, and she still doesn’t know what to do. The action of the story does indeed rise.
Move the Story Ahead with Each Scene
Even after you’ve set up rising action in your episode, you want to make sure that each scene moves the story forward. Professional writers have no qualms about getting rid of scenes if they slow down the story. You must do the same. Maybe there’s a scene with a couple funny jokes you love, but if it doesn’t move your story ahead, cut it. Maybe you can find a home for those jokes in a scene that does.
Bring It All Together
In an hour-long show or a movie, there would probably be further complications. But in television comedy, you only have twenty-one minutes and change of story time to work with, and here’s how this episode of Parks and Recreation goes: Leslie’s at a loss and needs to make a decision. She seeks advice from her old boss Ron, who tells her that she’s so annoying he almost fired her four different times. But he always stopped short because he admired her determination and the fact that she wasn’t “a wishy-washy kiss-ass.” Her morale boosted, Leslie returns to the city council meeting and provides the decisive vote to pass the soda tax.
This is a fairly typical episode, so let’s review its basic storytelling elements. It begins with an inciting incident (Leslie’s desire to make her mark as a new city councilwoman), followed by the lead character’s having a plan (Leslie wants to pass a tax on large sugary sodas), then encountering resistance (restaurants say the tax will cost jobs), which forces her to make an uncomfortable decision. Next, there’s anxiety about what she should do (she stews all night while drinking sodas), and when we expect the situation to resolve, it doesn’t, but actually becomes worse for the lead character (Leslie humiliates herself by throwing up and asking for a recess). Yet the problem still needs a resolution, so Leslie seeks counsel (Ron tells her she’s annoying and disagrees with her, but he admires her conviction), which leads her to resolve the problem in a way that is true to her character (she provides the decisive vote for the soda tax).
As you look ahead to putting together your outline, make sure each story in it has these necessary plot points, the events that push the story forward: an inciting incident, a character making a plan, the plan running into an obstacle, the character trying to come up with a new plan or making a clear decision, some further obstacles or indecision, and then finally resolution—that is, a satisfying ending. As our old friend Aristotle said, the best endings are both surprising and inevitable. The viewers don’t see it coming, but when it happens, they feel it makes perfect sense. In “Soda Tax,” this happens when Ron, who’s well established on the series as someone who hates government, is the one who inspires Leslie to vote for further government regulation.
Don’t Neglect the Emotional Story
When you put the building blocks of story together, it’s important not simply to think of what would be funny (as important as funny is), but also what will get the audience emotionally engaged with the characters. Emotion is the bridge between the audience and the characters, and even if the viewers don’t approve of a character’s particular actions, they have to feel for her and be invested in her achieving her goals.
If you lay in an emotional arc for a character—that is, provide some emotional growth from the beginning to the end of the story—the audience will be satisfied. For example, on the “Mike Likes Lasagna” episode of Mike & Molly, Molly wants them each to write their own wedding vows. Mike is panicked, but Molly is a bit smug since she was an English major. Yet as Molly tries to write her vows, she only comes up with flowery and overcooked prose. Mike, who’s a cop, shares his fears with his partner, Carl, who asks Mike to tell him about the lasagna at a restaurant he really likes. When Mike waxes poetic about the dish, Carl tells him to substitute Molly for the lasagna. At the end of their story, Mike shares his vows with Molly, and she’s impressed but must confess she has nothing. They then work on her vows together.
So, Mike begins the story fearfully and Molly begins pridefully, but by the end, Mike is confident and Molly is humbled, yet happily so as she and her fiancé work together on their wedding vows. Both lead characters followed an emotional arc to a satisfying conclusion.
It’s good to remember that all good comedy writing requires the study of human behavior. Not just the funny behavior, but all of it. Comedy isn’t just about jokes, per se. It’s also about being able to portray recognizable behavior in humorous (and sometimes not so humorous) situations. If you wander too far afield from how humans actually behave, you lose the “willing suspension of disbelief” necessary to sustain the audience’s attention. Believable emotions provide the support system that gives comedy life.
We Know It’s Comedy, but Logic Counts
Focus on both the story and character logic of your episode and make sure it is airtight. One of the biggest mistakes aspiring writers make is to bend the story logic or ignore the logical glitches that inevitably come up whenever they are trying to fashion a story. A second big mistake new writers mak
e is to distort the way a character would behave in order to make the story idea work. Both these gaffes in logic are convenient for the writer, but they neither serve the show nor work for the spec script. So be certain that the story unfolds and characters behave just as they do on the series.
Ordering Your A Story, B Story, C Story, and Runners
In addition to matching how many stories your series uses in a typical episode, it can be helpful to figure out your A, B, and C stories separately. The next step is to figure out how to routine them—that is, how you will order the scenes for each story in your outline. A rule of thumb as you’re putting the scenes in order is that you don’t want to put together back-to-back scenes from the B story or the C story. You can have two or three straight scenes from the A story, but if you’re running together scenes from the secondary stories, unless it’s for an explicit comic purpose that can be done no other way, the episode will feel out of balance.
Also, many shows often employ runners, or story threads. These are small running story lines or jokes that may never truly resolve as stories but provide a few intermittent funny bits along the way. If your show uses these, you should, too.
Don’t Neglect Your B Story
While constructing a solid, funny A story that’s true to the show is absolutely critical, one thing we hear from Savvy Readers is that the difference between a good script and a great script is often found in the secondary stories. A fair number of writers can come up with a solid A story, but to make your whole script jump to the top of the Savvy Reader’s pile, take the time and effort to come up with an exceptionally funny and surprising secondary story.
For instance, on the New Girl episode “Fluffer,” the main story is about Nick’s acting like a “boyfriend without benefits” for Jess, while the B story is about Schmidt’s discovering that an attractive girl thinks he may be one of Mitt Romney’s sons. (The episode was very topical, airing during the 2012 election season.) She’s a big Romney supporter and Schmidt plays it for all it’s worth. He’s about to seduce her when two of her friends, also Romney supporters, show up abuzz with questions for him. When Schmidt’s memories of his “dad” strike a false note, they begin to get suspicious of his claim and find a Romney family picture on the Internet. Schmidt is exposed. The emotional story for Schmidt concludes with Cece urging him to call his own father, from whom he’s estranged, to try to reconnect.
