Ideas for Comedy Writers

by Dave Haslett

  [TIP] Many performers have Twitter accounts and Facebook pages now, so perhaps you could send him a message and ask him if he’d like to perform other types of material if someone were to write them for him.

  166. Writing for other performers 4 – getting live experience.

  Even if you have no intention of being a performer yourself, if you write for other people and expect them to perform your material in front of an audience then you ought to put yourself through that same experience at least once. Put together a simple (but funny) act, get up on stage at an open-mike slot at a comedy club, and perform it as confidently and competently as you can. This will give you first-hand experience of how it feels to be a performer and how it feels to be in front of a comedy audience. You’ll quickly discover the things that work well and the things that don’t. You’ll hear the groans and coughs as well as the giggles and laughs. And you’ll see where you need to make changes to your material. You learn how to time your act, how soon to start talking again as the laughter dies down, and so on.

  Yes, it’s scary, but it’s also exciting, and it can be great fun. Whether you succeed or fail doesn’t really matter – it’s all about getting the experience (possibly only once in your life) and in my opinion that’s vitally important if you’re to be a successful writer. You don’t have to give your real name. And if you go to a club well outside the area where you live then nobody need ever know who you really are. You might even find that you enjoy it, and you’re really good at it, and you want to do it all again.

  167. Writing for performers who don’t use writers.

  Would you like to write comedy material for a well known performer? Dare to be different. Even if he (apparently) writes his own material, perhaps he’s getting short of ideas, or he’d like to ease up a little on his workload and would be willing to work with someone else for a change. It’s worth making an approach anyway.

  Most writers will follow the conventional advice. They’ll check the TV credits, and say, ‘Oh, he writes his own stuff so I’ll try someone else’. Meanwhile the poor, near-exhausted performer is working flat-out to come up with enough material for his next tour or TV series, and he’d love some help – if only he could find someone whose writing suited his style.

  It will help if you have a proven track record of comedy writing – the all-important CV. But even if you just have some good ideas that would suit his performance style, send them in anyway. If he says no or doesn’t reply, send in some more a few months later – to remind him that you’re still available and still writing good material. Don’t ask for payment at this stage. That can come later.

  168. Writing partnerships.

  The most successful comedy is often created by writing partners. Comedy is such a subjective thing that you need someone else to tell you whether or not your jokes are funny. And if you come up with something funny, the other person might be able to twist it, or add to it, or throw it back at you from a different angle and make you crease up with laughter.

  If you’re on the same wavelength as someone, and share the same sense of humour, ask him to be your comedy writing partner. If you often find yourselves howling with laughter at a private joke while everyone else stares at you as if you’re both mad – that’s exactly the right person!

  It’s important to write things down immediately, because all too often the best material is created on the spur of the moment, laughed at, and then almost immediately forgotten. What a waste! An even better way might be to record every session and get someone to transcribe it for you afterwards. You can then go through the text pulling out all the best material.

  This material might need to be adapted a little, of course, or reworked so that it fits different situations or routines. Some of it might even have to be thrown away. What the two of you found hilariously funny needs to be made universally funny so it appeals to everyone else too. Simply retelling the same private joke in front of an audience often doesn’t work. It was funny at the time, when you both came up with it … but ‘you had to be there’.

  169. Writing sitcoms for a specific actor 1.

  Sitcoms are very difficult to get into production. It’s not just the quality of writing that matters; many of them are created as a vehicle for a particular actor to star in. Consider which actors you think might best fit the lead role in your own sitcom. Most importantly, they must be starring in a current show or soap opera that you expect will end within a year or so – or at least their contract will expire, even if the show continues without them.

  Now you can rewrite your sitcom with that actor in mind and build up the lead role so he’ll see it as a boost to his career – because you’ll need to enlist his support to get it into production.

  The next step is to find out who his agent is – a quick enquiry on Twitter will usually get you the answer. Then send in an outline of the sitcom, a completed sample episode, and a synopsis of the other episodes in the series. Tell the agent that it was written with that particular actor in mind for the lead role. If the actor and his agent like it then you’ll have two people on your side who will do whatever they can to help you get it into production. Their support could make a huge difference. And most importantly, they have the inside knowledge and contacts that you probably don’t.

  170. Writing sitcoms for a specific actor 2.

  If you’re going to write a sitcom for a particular actor, you need to find out as much as you can about him. What hobbies does he have? What jobs did he have before he started acting? What charities and causes does he support? And so on. If you can include some of these in the storyline then he’s more likely to want to do it.

  171. Storyline – An unlikely chain of events.

  How about a situation where a man has broken into a woman’s house and is holding her at knife-point? She has upset him for some reason, and now he’s out for revenge. But he’s not the only one she has upset, because while she’s being held there, another man breaks in and sets fire to her house. And while all this is going on a third man, who the woman has also upset, is driving a stolen truck towards her house with the intention of driving it straight through her front wall. What the driver of the truck doesn’t realise is that someone with a grudge against the truck company has planted a bomb under it. So he might never make it as far as her house. In fact the truck company might belong to the woman’s husband (or the woman herself), and the person who planted the bomb might be yet another one of the many people she has upset.

  So what exactly has this woman done to upset so many people and provoke such an extreme reaction? And how many more people are planning to harm her? Meanwhile the knifeman now has to escape from the burning house. Will he take the woman with him, or leave her to die? Perhaps the exploding truck blows up a water pipe which puts out the fire. But what happened to the arsonist? Keep adding more and more implausible attempts to kill the woman or get revenge on her. But all the attempts are interconnected in some way, killing, injuring or driving away the people who mean her harm, while she remains unscathed.

  172. Storyline – Computer dating clear out.

  Here’s an idea for a romantic comedy in which a dating agency tries to clear out all the odd-ball characters from its files – the ones who have never had a single match. Perhaps a new owner takes over the company and can’t believe how many no-hopers are on its books. They need to be removed as quickly as possible. How can he do this? Perhaps he could simply pair the odd-balls up with each other at random and see what happens – that should get rid of a few of them. The remainder will need more unorthodox methods: sedate dinner parties, speed-dating, wild drunken parties, kissing competitions, training courses to de-geek them, and much more.

  Gradually they do pair off and the numbers dwindle. But what about the real odd-balls that remain? Could they be given a refund and told to go away? No, that’s against the company’s policy: there’s someone for everyone, no matter how long it takes. Things are getting desperate now. The new boss really wants to get
rid of these people. Why does he want to do this so quickly? Why can’t they just be left in the system forever? What’s wrong with these people anyway? Do they need plastic surgery? Personality transplants? Hygiene lessons? Well, let’s offer them that as well then!

  Do all of them end up with a partner in the end, as the company originally promised? Perhaps as a twist the new manager is so obsessed with solving the problem that his own marriage fails and he find himself entering his own details into the computer. Perhaps he tells himself it’s only to test the system. But if he does happen to come up with a match or two …… Perhaps he’s spent so long agonising over finding a match for the last remaining odd-ball that he realises he’s grown to love her. But what will she think?

  173. Storyline – Computer game addict.

  Here’s a story about a man who finds himself in all sorts of situations because he bases his whole life on the thousands of hours he’s spent playing computer games. He might go for a job interview, for example, and they ask if he can drive. Well, he’s pretty good at driving games, and it can’t be that much different in real life. So he says he can. And they send him out in their delivery van – with hilarious consequences. Then there’s his love life. He’s confident that he can get any girl he wants because he’s played plenty of ‘adult’ games on his computer – and he knows all the special cheats too. So he uses the same techniques in real life. They might even work sometimes – with a certain sort of girl. Somehow he muddles through life, and by amazing luck maybe he ends up with a great job, lots of money, an enormous house, and a beautiful wife. Of course, he could lose the whole lot in an instant. Because he’s played gambling games on his computer too, and he knows how to win, and he knows all the cheats. It’s an easy way to make money. And those games are exactly the same in real life, aren’t they?

  [ALTERNATIVE 1] He might not have any success at all in real life.

  [ALTERNATIVE 2] He might decide that real life is a different sort of game (but still a game) and he has to learn all the rules, special moves and cheats, just as he does on his computer. Will that work?

  174. Storyline – European integration.

  In an effort to better integrate Britain into Europe the government encourages everyone to join in their Nations programme. The idea is that everyone adopts the customs, lifestyles and attitudes of one of the other European countries for a month at a time. In month one everyone acts French, for example, and in month two everyone becomes German, and so on. In conjunction with this, TV programmes about that country are broadcast throughout the month, schools and colleges run short language courses and evening classes, performers from that country are invited over, cookery shows focus on that country’s recipes for the month, and some of that country’s TV programmes are shown, either with subtitles or dubbed into English. A great idea, but there are bound to be problems. Lots of them in fact. Particularly when it comes to the ‘attitude’ part. And what happens when the British public spends a month being British as part of the scheme? It’ll probably be a very concentrated form of Britishness – and that can’t be good. How about if other European countries join in the scheme too, and they have a go at being British for a month? Oh dear.

  175. Storyline – Granny gang.

  Here’s a story about a gang of innocent-looking grandmothers who con people by pretending to have locked themselves out of their houses. They knock on people’s doors and ask for some help to break into a particular house, which they claim is their own, but it isn’t. They’re very successful as few people know who their neighbours are these days. If they get caught out they simply feign confusion and forgetfulness and say they’ve got the wrong street. At this point they burst into tears, and the person who caught them out usually invites them in for a cup of tea. This is a bad move, because they’ll then help themselves to that person’s valuables. They get caught in the end, of course – but how exactly? Why have they been doing it? For fun? For excitement? What have they done with all the money? Imagine the jokes and taunts the detective will get from his colleagues when he’s assigned to the case!

  176. Storyline – Historic crime detection.

  Here’s the story of an innovative historical detective. He tries to introduce new methods to detect and solve crimes, but is foiled at every turn by people (especially senior managers) who can’t grasp what he’s talking about or see how it might be useful. He might use early photography, for example, to take pictures of criminals, convicts and suspects. But he needs them to keep still for several minutes while their photo is taken. Criminals soon adopt a habit of surreptitious ‘weaving about’ so the photos are always too blurred to use. He might also use artists to paint the criminals’ portraits, or to paint courtroom scenes for the press. But the artists are such perfectionists that they demand several sittings with each criminal and then spend weeks mixing their oil paints trying to achieve the perfect skin tone, so their portraits take months to produce. Think about some other ways in which early arts and technology (and plenty of misunderstandings) might help or hamper his attempts to modernise criminal investigations. Think about modern policing and crime lab methods and how they might have been performed in the past using the limited facilities available – and some innovative lateral thinking.

  177. Storyline – Holiday guests.

  A couple meet some people on holiday and they exchange addresses. One day those people come to stay – just for one night. But that night their house catches fire and they have nowhere else to go. So they stay for a while longer. You could turn this idea into a sitcom. In each episode, the couple visits their unwanted guests’ fire-damaged house to see how work is progressing and how much longer they might be staying. But there’s always some sort of setback, and the length of time before the house will be finished actually increases with each episode rather than decreasing.

  Meanwhile their guests have made themselves nicely at home in the couple’s house, replacing furniture, having the place redecorated, rearranging everything, inviting their friends round, partying, and so on. Let’s say that there’s some sort of insurance issue so they can’t afford to go and live in a hotel. Or perhaps there’s a legal issue and the court has ordered them to remain at their current address (the couple’s house) until everything is sorted out.

  See how many other situations and complicating factors you can come up with. You might include: spending Christmas together – with two sets of families all squeezed into one house; their guests hinting that they’d like to try wife-swapping; undesirable friends who come to visit; one of their guests deciding to start working from home – perhaps bringing customers back for meetings; the guests running up huge debts, and bailiffs arriving to take away the couple’s possessions and cut off various utilities; the guests leaving ‘adult’ material where the couple’s children, friends or parents can see it; and so on.

  Perhaps the couple eventually start spending their evenings and weekends helping to rebuild their guests’ house. Because by now they’ll do anything to get rid of them. And since their guests have taken over their own house so completely, perhaps the couple move into the fire-damaged one, once the work is eventually finished.

  178. Storyline – In charge of a city.

  Do you know the computer game Sim City, in which you get to build and run an entire city? When you play the game you are in charge of all the services, maintaining budgets and keeping the residents happy.

  Imagine if it was a real city and a very amateur ‘player’ was running it. Perhaps he was elected after promising to remove all taxes – a sure way to win the popular vote. Perhaps he then brings in a bunch of equally incompetent cronies (or fellow players), and the havoc really begins. Or how about if a businessman ‘plays’ the game and starts selling off all the city’s assets? Where is the money going? What will happen when there’s nothing left? How will the city manage without its assets? Will they be able to oust the businessman and replace the assets he sold – without raising taxes to such a degree that it causes a rio
t? There’s a great deal of scope here for some very humorous stories.

  179. Storyline – Lord Peeping Tom.

  Rumour has it that the Lord of the Manor is a bit of a Peeping Tom. He doesn’t do anything as unseemly as peering through curtains or sitting in trees with a pair of binoculars, though. He does it all from the safety and comfort of his manor, using CCTV cameras and high-power telephoto lenses. So how do people know he’s a Peeping Tom? Well, somehow they do know – or at least they have very good reason to suspect it.

  So the local police force, which has been receiving complaints about him, joins forces with the engineers who maintain his CCTV equipment. They install an extra camera that the Lord doesn’t know about, which monitors the bank of screens he looks at and sends the signal to the police station. Sure enough, our naughty Lord is indeed looking through ladies’ windows with his cameras. But now the young police officers who are monitoring the monitors have all become Peeping Toms (by proxy) too – and there’s never any shortage of volunteers for unpaid overtime. So one of the sergeants suggests that they should install a hidden camera in their own monitoring room, to catch the young constables at it. But who will monitor that? And who will monitor them? This one could run and run – at least until the ladies who live within sight of the manor start closing their curtains at night.

  180. Storyline – Misleading dream.

  Many of the world’s greatest scientists, inventors and writers have said that their best ideas came to them in dreams. Often the whole thing was fully formed and all worked out. All they had to do was write it down, or build the thing exactly as they saw it, and fame and fortune was theirs. So let’s write about a character who has a dream like this. He wakes up hugely excited; this thing is going to change his life. Perhaps he has finally solved a problem that everyone thought was impossible.