Ideas for Comedy Writers

by Dave Haslett

  Or he might forget to lock the office one night, with the result that some valuable equipment gets stolen. What does he learn from this? Perhaps he learns that the local police don’t conduct very thorough investigations. This might lead him to conclude that if he was to steal things himself he’d probably get away with it.

  Think about some mistakes your character might make. Then see if you can come up with a list of ten things that he might learn from each mistake, half of which are unconnected to his mistake, or are an indirect consequence. Then see if you can arrange things so that half of the things on your list make him want to make the same mistake again, and half make him want to never make that mistake again – but perhaps not for the reasons most people would expect.

  19. Characters – switching roles.

  How about switching roles? Have the bad guy forced by circumstances to take the role of the good guy, while the good guy is forced to take on the bad guy’s role. Both of them will be appalled by their own behaviour – and by the other person’s – but neither of them can do anything about it. The consequences could be hilarious.

  20. Characters – the two types.

  There are two types of character in comedy.

  The ordinary character who finds himself in extraordinary situations – with hilarious consequences.

  Example: Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who finds himself travelling the universe in his dressing gown when all he really wants is a nice cup of tea.

  The extraordinary character whose hilarious consequences arise out of mundane or everyday situations.

  Example: the aliens (in human form) in the TV shows My Parents are Aliens and Third Rock from the Sun who only have a partial understanding of how life on Earth works, and so make comical mistakes.

  Which sort of character will yours be? Will you have both sorts in your story? Or different groups them? Once you know what sort of characters you’re working with it’s much easier to find the right situations to put them in so that you always get comical results.

  Or you might start with the situation or plot first. An extraordinary situation demands ordinary characters, while an ordinary plot demands extraordinary ones.

  21. Combine and polish for tons of jokes.

  If you combine the ideas in this category with the techniques in our Getting Ideas category you should be able to come up with lots of jokes on any given subject. It might take you a while, but you’ll get there.

  The next step is to practise this over and over again, until coming up with jokes is a natural, quick and easy process. So for the next two weeks pick a different subject each day and write twenty jokes. No excuses – just do it. By the end you’ll have 280 jokes! Fewer than half of them will actually be any good though, or be capable of being reworked into something you can use. But that should still leave you with around 100 really good ones. Good work!

  The other benefit of this idea is that the more you practise the quicker and easier it becomes – like doing crosswords or logic puzzles. You get used to linking subjects in unusual ways, thinking laterally, and thinking funny.

  Never throw away any of your ‘bad’ jokes. Look back through them from time to time and look for ways to rework them. Perhaps if you change the subject and give them a little polish, some of them might become fantastic.

  22. Comedy clubs.

  Comedy clubs are becoming increasingly popular and you can now find them in many towns and cities. They aren’t all in buildings labelled ‘comedy club’ though – many of them are monthly events held in local theatres. Try searching online for ‘comedy club’ plus the name of your town, county, or nearest city. Not only are they great places for a night out, but you’ll learn all sorts of new comedy techniques, and perhaps be able to meet comedians who need writers.

  23. Comedy clubs – supplying the gags.

  Go to as many comedy clubs as you can and take notes. Which types of humour work best, and which don’t; which style of delivery works best; and so on. You can learn a lot from other people’s mistakes too – so it’s even worth watching the newcomers who aren’t very good yet.

  If you think your own brand of humour would suit one of the comedians, ask him if he would be interested in using some of your material. Take along some samples of your work just in case, and make sure they have your contact details on them. Don’t ask for payment at this stage – it’s the experience you need. If he becomes more successful as a result of your work, or if he incorporates your jokes into his regular act, then he will pay you. Other comedians might also wish to use your services, so you could approach several of them. If you’ve seen them before, either live or on TV or video, you should be familiar with their style. So you could pre-write some jokes specifically for them before you go and see them. Meanwhile you can also be working on that great sitcom or comic novel, refining it and honing it as you learn more from your comedy club visits.

  24. Comedy clubs – the route to fame.

  If you think you’ve written some good material, have you got the nerve to get up there and deliver it yourself? If you think you’d be even halfway decent then have a go! Good comedians are always in demand, and really good ones become well known very quickly. As a writer, getting yourself known is exactly what you want. The better known you are, the more interested publishers will be in you, and the more books you’ll sell.

  The ability to write great gags, deliver them well, and write great books is not particularly common. But if you possess such an ability you could make a lot of money. You’ll be able to sell your books, plus CDs and DVDs and other products, at each venue you appear at. You’ll probably sell a lot more of them by doing this than you would by selling them in shops.

  So, use a hairbrush as a microphone, stand in front of the mirror, and practise delivering your hilarious gags.

  25. Comedy doesn’t travel well.

  As any well-travelled stand-up comic will tell you, some comedy doesn’t travel well. Some jokes that go down a storm in London won’t even raise a smile in Newcastle, and might get you beaten up in New York. On the other hand, some comedy is universal and gets laughs everywhere. How do you know what reaction your jokes will get? Without plenty of experience, you don’t. But this knowledge is vital, especially if you want to write books or stories for radio and television where there will be a national (or international) audience. If you haven’t got this experience yourself, you’ll need to talk to people who have, and run your jokes past them.

  A good way to start is to find a local comedy club and see if any experienced comedians would be willing to talk to you. Also look out for comedy writing workshops, which are sometimes held in conjunction with comedy and literary festivals, or at the comedy venues. If the subject of regional variation doesn’t come up on one of these courses, make sure you raise it.

  [ALTERNATIVE] Another good idea is to go to several performances by the same comedian at different venues across the country, and see how he modifies his performance for different audiences.

  26. Comedy persona.

  Here’s an example of a comedy persona you can give yourself when you (or a performer you write for) are on stage. Feel free to use this one, or make up one of your own.

  Start off your routine as normal, then suddenly and without warning switch into your comedy persona. Maybe stick on a false beard and a white lab coat, adopt a high-pitched, mock-serious, earnest voice and wave your arms around a lot in the style of a mad professor giving a lecture. Now explain the reason why belly button fluff is always blue (or whatever it was you were talking about in your normal routine). You can either give the real reason or make up your own much funnier version.

  Now have your character say something like: ‘Well that’s what I think anyway. Of course I’m just a scientist and I spend all my life in a university, surrounded by test tubes, text books and students.’ (Now switch to a deeper, lascivious voice.) ‘Ah, students; young boys and girls with their fine, supple bodies. And beer of course. Very chea
p beer.’ (Now point to a girl in the audience.) ‘You, my dear, would you like to come back to my rooms and see my latest tattoo of Robbie Williams?’ (Now point to the fellow next to her.) ‘Got any coke, mate?’

  At this point you might want to end your act by having the show’s host come on and drag you off-stage, apologising to the audience.

  27. Comparisons.

  You can have great fun with objects and comparisons. For example, one of your characters might think that his friend has a nose shaped like a carrot. He urges him to have a nose-job, and keeps making less-than-subtle references and insults about his nose. He might even put a collection box in the local pub or bar, asking people to donate money towards the cost of surgery. Meanwhile the owner of the nose refuses to have surgery and says he’s perfectly happy with his nose. But he’s starting to become more self-conscious about it because his friend keeps on about it all the time. He might even buy a computer program or find a website that shows him what he might look like after a nose-job. Or how his face might look if his nose keeps on growing – which his friend insists it is.

  When the collection box is emptied there won’t be much money in it, of course, but there might be plenty of other amusing objects that people have generously donated: an old chisel, bandages, photos of people and animals with famously large noses, a paper bag to put over his head ... you should be able to think of plenty more. There might even be a small amount of money, but nowhere near enough for a nose-job.

  The owner of the nose becomes rather worried, though, when his friend goes off to spend what little money there is, saying he knows just the thing. When he comes back with an electric vegetable slicer, the owner of the nose runs away and hides. He doesn’t realise that this is just a birthday present for his wife. So what did his friend actually spent the nose-job money on?

  What other humorous comparisons can you come up with, and what storylines do they inspire?

  28. Confounding expectation.

  A good way of making your readers laugh is to confound their expectations, or shock them. Lead them along a certain path that they feel comfortable or familiar with. They’ve already worked out in their minds what will happen next – they’ve seen or heard it all before. But at the last minute you switch the ending and pull the rug from under their feet. They’re thrown completely off-course. They’re startled. They’re shocked. And they laugh. Whenever you find yourself writing something that seems flat and predictable, consider whether it might be appropriate to switch the ending and get a laugh out of it.

  [EXTENSION] A clever writer hides hints and clues to the true, shocking ending within the story, so it doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. You need to plant these in the story in such a way that they’re missed or overlooked or disregarded the first time through. It’s only when your readers reach the end of the story, or read it for a second time, that their true meaning and importance becomes apparent.

  29. Confusing words.

  Confusing certain words can be great fun. Perhaps your character thinks he’s saying one thing but is actually saying something quite different. Or perhaps the person he’s speaking to mishears or misunderstands the word – with hilarious consequences. For example, your character might intend to say that he’s an ‘exhibiter’ at a trade show, but calls himself an ‘exhibitionist’ instead. What other words can you think of that might be confused in this way, and how could you include them in your stories, sketches and comedy routines?

  30. Cooking the books 1.

  The governments of the world go to a lot of trouble to ‘adjust’ certain statistics to make things look better (or very occasionally worse) than they really are. Think about some numbers that might be adjusted for comedic effect. You can of course make them implausible or absurd if you want to.

  [EXAMPLE] We know that the higher up a mountain you go, the lower the temperature and air pressure become. Let’s imagine that this also affects the instruments used to measure them – but nobody realised this until now. As a result the heights of the world’s tallest mountains have to be recalculated using a new scale – according to which many are now below sea level. And perhaps a new temperature scale might have to be used for measuring very hot things, with the result that the boiling point of water is now below its freezing point under certain conditions. What other measurements might need to be recalculated, seasonally adjusted or otherwise manipulated? And what are the consequences?

  31. Cooking the books 2.

  Think about the other official figures that governments manipulate. Not just the number of unemployed people, or the length of hospital waiting lists, or the performance ratings of particular schools. What else might they adjust in their favour, how will they do it, and what will people say (or do) when they find out what they did – and what the true figures are?

  32. Corporate accounts.

  Companies (including ideas4writers) are forever looking for new ways to promote themselves. Humorous or viral emails can work very well. People forward them to their friends and spread the company’s message all over the internet. So why not choose a company in an industry you’re familiar with and see if you can come up with some really funny jokes (especially topical ones), or funny but true (allegedly) stories? Then send them to the company’s press office. You probably won’t get paid initially, but if you keep sending them in, and the company keeps using them and profiting from them, ask them to start paying you if they want any more. Hopefully they will. If not, there will be other companies in that industry that might, so try them instead.

  While you’re doing this, you’ll also be building up a collection of jokes relating to a single subject or industry. This could later become a joke book – such as The Big Book of Building Jokes – that you can sell to people in that industry. Or you could give very entertaining speeches at corporate events.

  33. Danger.

  Comedy stories that feature a strong element of danger are often successful. Make a list of your worst fears, nightmares and phobias: heights, flying, rats, spiders, or whatever it might be. Then write a comedy story about it. Many people who suffer from the same phobias will want to read your story – they’d love to be able to laugh at something they find terrifying. It doesn’t really matter what the story is about, or how terrible the plot is (though your plot will undoubtedly be brilliant), or whether it’s romantic or scary or mysterious or exciting. It just needs to include this particular phobia or danger – and be very funny.

  34. Darwin Awards.

  There’s a very entertaining series of books called The Darwin Awards which give details of idiotic people who have removed themselves from the gene pool by killing themselves in stupid ways. You could use some of these in your own stories, as a good way of killing off unwanted characters. You will of course need to alter the details slightly to make them your own. Or you could make up a new one from scratch – though whatever you come up with is unlikely to beat the true stores in the books. There is also a Darwin Awards website where you can see some of the latest stories that will be featured in future editions of the books – as well as some that won’t be.

  35. Deliberately inaccurate.

  As writers we normally do research and go to great lengths to ensure the details are as accurate as possible. But how about if you deliberately used inaccurate details for comic effect? For example, you might have cavemen wearing watches, lighting fires with cigarette lighters and carving the entrances to their caves into gothic arches. Or a group of Roman slaves might grow sick of carrying water for their master’s vineyard and build a wind-powered pump – or even a solar-powered one. You can have hours of fun coming up with more examples like this and weaving them into your stories. And they’re great fun to read too.

  36. Differently famous.

  Write a book that imagines what it would have been like if various famous people (ancient and modern) were given roles such as Prime Minister, Chancellor, King, Queen, Mayor of London, President, or chairman of a major corporation. Who might build
a wall around central London and sell off all the suburbs? Who might fall victim to a law of his own making? Who might be immediately voted out of power again? Who would make promises he couldn’t keep? All you need is a list of prominent roles, a list of famous and infamous people throughout history, and a wicked imagination!

  [VARIATION] Another option is to consider the celebrities of the past and present and imagine that they were famous for something else. Perhaps Michael Jackson was actually a brilliant sportsman, for example. Or Jimi Hendrix was a NASCAR driver. Or Muhammad Ali was in a rap band.

  37. Disobedience.

  A disobedient character can be a lot of fun. Children love to read about naughty children – it’s what they’d like to do themselves but wouldn’t dare. But naughty adults have their place too. So how about a character who treats every rule as a challenge rather than an instruction?

  ‘You have to be at your desk by 9.00 am every morning,’ his boss might tell him. So now he has to think of ways of getting there after nine without losing his job. Or perhaps he will get there by nine, but nobody said he had to actually start working then, so he’ll read his newspaper for the first hour.