Speaker's ToolsDon't confuse originality with humor. We met this before. It's not original concepts that make people laugh it is your humorous treatment and approach.
"Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs." G. H. Chesterton.
This ain't brain surgery folks. We write material, we give it to somebody - they give us some money. I know I sound harsh but in the beginning that's all you need. Comedy, the art form, you learn as you do. Let me tell you something. After you hear Joan Rivers do your joke on the Tonight Show three times, you say, ‘that's nice - where's the money.' It really doesn't mean anything folks.
You may have times when you are in a creative mood and material comes as if by magic. That's wonderful. Like being on a blind date and everything goes well. When that happens that's great. But by and large it doesn't happen that way.
And when you have deadlines to meet when you aren't inspired, you just have to work harder and that's when a technical skill will help. Those who only write when the mood strikes them are not able to discipline themselves long enough to succeed in comedy writing. If you're sick, hung-over, lonely, drunk or whatever - you can still uses these techniques to create on demand. These techniques work.
Okay, that's it with me talking. We're now going to get into the nuts and bolts of comedy writing.
ASSOCIATION LISTS:
I am going to arbitrarily give you some assignments to write on in class. We're going to create a chunk of material on two different topics.
One, get out a blank sheet of paper - a blank sheet of paper. Okay. I told you to bring lots of paper. If you go through it we have paper back there. Now - don't write anything down yet. Just listen to me and then we will write.
We are going to write one chunk of material on concrete copy which is an automobile. You can see an automobile and it's got very specific items. They are all pretty much the same. They have an engine. They've got a trunk. They've got wheels. They're pretty much the same. That's concrete copy.
Also there's nothing intrinsically funny about an automobile. Wait until you see how funny we can make it. When thinking about an automobile, think about your own or your neighbor's automobile.
The second topic we are going to write on is a little more abstract - it's an office. When I say office, there's no universal agreement on what an office is. Some have receptionists, some don't. There are certain similarities, but they are not identical. It is a little more abstract.
These principles apply to physical concrete items like a car or an abstract concept like an office. It doesn't matter what the subject is. It is not the topic.
Now - automobile. Anytime you get an assignment, the first thing you should do is make an association list. Now you can write. Divide your paper into four columns - four columns...
