Ideas for Comedy Writers

by Dave Haslett

  Once you know all of these things, you can be sure that any new sketches you write for them will be exactly what they’re looking for. This greatly increases the probability that your sketch will be used rather than someone else’s.

  131. Sketch shows.

  Just as important as the actual sketches are the gaps in between them. Having one sketch end and the next one begin is a wasted opportunity – you can cram extra comedy into the gap. If you’re innovative enough, your audience will enjoy the gaps between the sketches as much as they enjoy the sketches themselves. Here are some ideas you could use:

  If you have a large stage with wide wings you could put a desk onto a trolley and pull it across the stage. An actor could then sit behind the desk to announce the next sketch – or say ‘And now for something completely different’ as Monty Python did.

  If you’re short of stage space, stand your announcer on a skateboard or roller skates and have someone pull him across the stage using string.

  Put the title of the next sketch on a large board and cover it with balloons. Find a way of bursting the balloons to reveal the title – either use some sort of mechanism or have someone come on and pop them with a pin.

  Have someone walk across the stage (in character) on his way to the next sketch.

  If you have a local town crier get him to announce one of the sketches.

  See how many other ideas you can come up with.

  132. Sketch shows 2 – working with limited space.

  As you’ll probably be very restricted for space, consider using the same set throughout. For example, you might have a waiting room, either at one end of the stage or off-stage, and an office with a desk taking up the main stage. An actor sits behind the desk – possibly the same actor throughout. He simply changes the nameplate on his desk between sketches so that he plays a different part in each one. Or, if the nameplate would be too small for the audience to read, perhaps someone from the props department could pin up the name of the office on the wall in large print, or put the character’s name and job title on the door.

  Suitable situations might include a job interview, someone getting fired, or visiting a doctor, careers advisor, school principal, sales director, customer, accountant, tax inspector, private detective, psychiatrist, and so on.

  133. Spoofs.

  Write a spoof of a well-known story. Or take all the main ingredients of the genre of your choice and make them into extreme or outlandish stereotyped examples, creating a comic spoof of that whole genre.

  So a horror spoof, for example, would have a creepy castle, a mad scientist making creatures from spare body parts, a weird servant, a car breaking down in a thunderstorm and the people seeking help at the castle, ghosts, suits of armour, spiders, snakes, rats, and so on – all with plenty of humour.

  A romantic spoof might see the poor couple kept separated or their plans thwarted by an increasing unlikely, implausible and unfair set of circumstances. Again with tons of humour.

  Something else that’s very popular is to cram in as many movie references as you possibly can. (And maybe book references too!) In fact the whole story might consist of nothing but spoofs of scenes from lots of different movies and books. Though you’d probably also need a few very short scenes that link them together, introducing the characters and showing them movie from one scene to the next.

  134. Spoofs and parodies.

  Spoofs and parodies are always popular. But you need to know the original story, or even the whole genre, intimately. You can then add characters from other stories – and it’s even funnier if they don’t quite fit in. Make them more clueless than the original characters, and have them misinterpret and misunderstand situations. Consider adding a foreign character who no one can understand, or who has funny customs. Perhaps change the setting or the time. Change the nature of the quest, so the characters go in search of something really trivial. Change the adventures they have along the way. Make everything more comical than the original story. Make the jokes obvious and inane – but include a few very clever ones too, so the intellectuals don’t feel left out.

  Fantasy, adventure and horror stories work well as spoofs, but you might also like to consider the other genres such as romance, crime and mystery. Remember that you still need an entertaining and dramatic story behind all the comedy. But in this sort of story the focus is more on the characters and the comedy than the plot.

  135. Spoof articles.

  Magazine articles often give instructions on how to accomplish useful things. But how about writing some spoof articles that show readers how to accomplish things they’d never want to do? How to make your partner have an affair. How to set fire to flame retardant material. How to get your prison sentence extended. How to get bullied at school or at work. How to make everyone hate you. And so on. Or you could give instructions that could never work, use materials that aren’t available or haven’t been invented yet, or are just downright ludicrous. For inspiration, simply read genuine, practical magazine articles.

  For more ideas, find some self-help books in a library or bookshop and think about what the opposites would be, or how you could extend them beyond the realms of plausibility or make them ridiculous. But remember this is comedy – we don’t want to see any genuinely useful advice!

  136. Spoof letters of complaint.

  How about writing a collection of spoof letters of complaint? Individual letters could be used in humour magazines and on websites, and the whole collection could be turned into a book.

  [EXAMPLE] A man takes his car to a garage for repair, but is unhappy with the result. His letter of complaint describes how the car was used in a robbery while it was in their care, how he was falsely accused of that robbery, extradited to a foreign country, tortured and imprisoned, barely escaped with his life, kidnapped on his way to the airport, and so on. The story becomes more and more absurd as it goes on. But what does he expect the garage to do about it? Does he require compensation? If so, is it for an outrageously large amount? Or a ridiculously small one? Or perhaps he’s just unhappy that after all he’s been through the car still pulls to the left, which is why he took it to them in the first place.

  That’s just one example. You should be able to think of plenty more. Just let your imagination go a bit silly for a while – it’s great fun!

  137. Spoof letters to the press.

  For an interesting change, try writing some humorous spoof letters and send them to local and national newspapers, political and celebrity magazines and websites, or adult comics (such as Viz in the UK). Just pick a topical subject, address it to the person concerned (Dear Prime Minister, for example) and then write your letter. You might write what everyone is thinking but dare not say out loud. Or you might link two events that until now seemed completely unrelated – the price of postage stamps and swine flu, for example. Or you might just make a silly remark. By keeping it humorous you can get away with it – it’s satire rather than an insult. You can make the person you’re addressing look like a complete fool, without sounding too offensive. Readers will love it.

  138. Spoof newspaper.

  Compile your own newspaper, including the editorial, features, business and financial news, sport, horoscope, weather forecast, TV schedule, and all the other things you’d expect to find in a typical newspaper. But your newspaper is a spoof. Every single item in it is fictional or satirical, designed to induce a laugh, a smile, a groan, awry grin or a chuckle. You could start by distributing the newspaper locally (printed in the form of a newspaper, not a book or magazine). But it should soon catch on and you’ll be able to ‘go national’. Watch out though, because people will expect you to do more of them, so things could get busy!

  There are already several spoof news websites, but as far as I’m aware they only publish spoof news stories. None of them has yet replicated every single section of a regular newspaper. I have seen a spoof horoscope application on Facebook, though.

  139. Spoof TV commercials.
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br />   Many comedy shows act out spoofs of popular TV commercials. Find a show that has these, pick a commercial they haven’t done yet, and write a spoof version of it for them to perform. Keep sending them in until they decide to perform one of yours. If you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, try a different show. Rewrite the spoofs you’ve already written and adapt them for the other show. And if you still can’t get anywhere, try getting some local amateur actors or students to act out your spoof commercial, record it on video, and put it on some of the video sharing websites such as YouTube. Your video might become an internet sensation – so make sure it has your contact details on it in case shows want to contact you and get you to write new spoofs for them.

  [ALTERNATIVE] You could try going straight for the video sharing websites rather than approaching TV shows with your ideas. Then, if your videos become a huge success, the shows will come to you!

  140. Squirrel assault course.

  Have you seen the video of the squirrel that has to follow an assault course to reach the nuts in someone’s garden? After successfully negotiating a series of fiendish tasks he finally gets his reward. How about if you keep this same basic storyline but use a different character in place of the squirrel? How about a school bully who’s trying to steal someone’s lunch box? Naturally, in the comedy version there will be a sting in the tail and he’ll be outwitted in some way. Perhaps the lunch box will turn out to be his own, or maybe the intended victim anticipated his plan and filled the box with worms. His look of glee and his bullish sneer will soon turn to dismay or revulsion!

  141. Stand-up novel.

  Writing stand-up comedy routines can be terrific fun. But what if you’re too nervous to perform in front of an audience? One option is to get someone else to perform them. Or you could try to overcome your nerves and give it a go yourself. Or maybe you could write a novel instead – but that novel could include your entire comedy routine, broken down into chunks.

  Perhaps the main story is about something that happens while a comedian is on stage – performing the routine you wrote. You can interweave the action with chunks of his performance. If the show is being broadcast on TV then the action could take place anywhere where at least one of the characters can see and hear a TV. Perhaps someone is listening out for a coded message hidden in a joke. Or perhaps a particular joke is their cue to take some sort of action.

  Or perhaps your hero is a detective on an overnight stake-out. He’s sitting in a car watching someone’s house, and at the same time he’s listening to a recording of a comedy show to keep himself awake. But the comedy show is the stand-up routine you wrote yourself (but were too scared to perform!)

  Have a think about this idea for a few minutes and you’ll probably come up with lots of other ways of incorporating your entire stand-up routine into a novel, a play or a screenplay.

  142. Storylines.

  If you’re writing a comedy story or a script rather than a sketch or stand-up routine, you need to think about more than just getting laughs. There needs to be a proper storyline, not just a series of loosely connected jokes. The characters need to be well-developed, with individual personalities, hopes and fears. And although the focus may be on the comedy, you should also consider including moments of danger, high drama, and even sadness. This makes your story more rounded and makes the comedy elements stronger. If you watch any comedy movie you’ll see this done in virtually all of them. If your story is nothing but comedy then you’re inviting rejection. Because, no matter how funny it is, it will lack depth and human interest.

  143. Subject comes first.

  Trying to come up with jokes is extremely difficult if you don’t have a subject in mind. Once you know what the joke is going to be about, you’ll find it much easier to write. You can use lateral thinking, brainstorming, Mind Maps, and all the other tools and ideas in our Getting Ideas category. This will give you a whole series of potential jokes in no time. Now you just have to pick the best ones, work on them, and then try them out on people to make sure they’re as funny as you think they are.

  A good way to find a subject is to look at today’s news stories. Then try to find unusual or unlikely connections, and play around with the words to come up with the joke.

  144. Surprise.

  The element of surprise is an important tool in comedy. The secret is not to use it too often, otherwise your readers or audience will see it coming. Lead them along a particular path. Let them work out what they think will happen next. Let them become comfortable with the idea that things are going to work out exactly as they expect them to. Then switch the ending. The new ending still has to be funny of course, but it’ll seem much funnier in the context. The audience were expecting the standard ending, and they might even have added their own joke or punch line. But suddenly their expectations have been shot to pieces. Ideally, pointers to the alternative ending would have been there all along, but they missed them. Perhaps because you cleverly hid them, or because they were (deliberately) overshadowed by things that seemed much bigger and more important.

  145. The internet.

  The internet can provide a fantastic source of comedy stories. For example, you might like to write about someone who sets up his own online business after reading about big dotcom success stories in the press. He sets up his website with little thought, not much of an idea about what’s involved, no idea what the purpose of his site is or who it’s aimed at, and so on. So it’s not too surprising that the end result is a complete mess that just leaves people confused. He expects to get rich overnight – people like him always do. But, of course, nobody ever visits his site, because he hasn’t told anyone about it. And even if they did come, they’d quickly leave again without buying anything.

  [ALTERNATIVE] You could turn your story into an educational guide, showing all the steps involved in setting up, launching and publicising a website, and showing your character doing all the wrong things and failing miserably. Perhaps he also has a friend who does everything the right way and reaps the rewards.

  146. The Stage.

  You can advertise your services as a comedy writer in The Stage newspaper (www.thestage.co.uk). Read the adverts from other writers to see what sort of things they offer, then write one of your own. Don’t just knock up an ad on the spot though. That’s what most people do, but you can do much better.

  Consider exactly what you’re offering and how you can market it in the best possible way. How will what you’re offering benefit your clients? Why is your offer better than any of the other offers? Would you pick your offer, if it appeared alongside the others? What are the benefits of your offer as well as the features? What is your experience and track record? What types of material can you produce? What subjects do you cover? What background knowledge do you have in particular industries, sports, hobbies and so on?

  Consider all of these things before you write your advert. Write them all down on a large sheet of paper so you can see them all at once. Decide which are the most important elements, then write the advert in a way that entices people to contact you. And make sure you include your contact details.

  You could also consider having some leaflets (or even posters) made and put them up in local comedy clubs or leave them in a place where comedians will be able to find them easily. I don’t recommend designing the leaflets or posters yourself unless you have excellent design skills. Something that looks like it was put together by an amateur will just put people off. Use a professional design company. You’ll get much better results – and better clients.

  147. The worst thing that could happen.

  A great way of finding comedy ideas is to think of the worst thing that could possibly happen in any given situation. Or think about the worst thing someone could say at that moment. Or you could turn it around – what would be the last thing you wanted to hear if you were in that situation?

  [EXAMPLE] A missile is being transported to the Middle East, but it falls off the plane and lands on a motorw
ay in England. It doesn’t explode but it’s badly damaged and it’s only a matter of time before it goes off. Traffic backs up for miles while the army tries to defuse it. Meanwhile a family gets out of their car and sets up a picnic in the middle of the road. The woman points at her husband and says to a passing soldier: ‘He goes off like a bomb if he doesn’t get his lunch at 12.30’. The bomb disposal engineer is having a tough time working out which wire to cut. If he cuts the wrong one he’ll kill himself and everyone else in the area. Sweat trickles down his face; he’s sure it’s the blue wire, but there’s just a chance it could be the green one. The couple’s children sit at the table arguing loudly about which colour packet of crisps is the cheese and onion flavour: ‘It’s the green one’, ‘No, it’s the blue one’, ‘No, it’s the red one’.

  Not funny enough? Well now you know how it’s done, make up your own!