Comedy Writing

Comedy Writing Weekend

Lectures about writing are like poems about swimming: they may be inspiring but they don't improve your technique.

The only way to learn how to write is by writing.

In this weekend workshop you'll participate in intensive, practical exercises that are designed todevelop the basic skills you need to make your material funny in any format or medium you're writing for: film, television, radio, theatre, stand-up, or print.

Whether you're a complete beginner or rusty and needing a work-out, by the end of this weekend you'll have the confidence and the tools to up the humour in your scripts.

Working on your own, in pairs and in groups, you'll:

• write gags, quickies and sketches;
• create and develop comic characters;
• discover your own unique comic persona and write a stand-up monologue;
• write the outline for the pilot episode of your own original sitcom;
• and plunder the best source of comedy material you'll ever find - your own sad, lonely life.

Bring pencils, notebooks and a list of everything you hate about your friends and family.

About the weekend

SATURDAY

• Practice the basic structures behind different joke formats.
• Discover the dynamics of status in character and relationships.
• Write comic dialogue for stock characters.
• Write a topical sketch working from stories in the day's papers.
• Discover and develop the comic persona you never knew was inside you and use it to write a character monologue.

SUNDAY: THE SITCOM DAY

Learn some underlying principles through improvisation and dialogue-writing:

Create characters and storylines:

• develop a counter-character to bounce off your main character, then use this relationship as the basis of a narrative;
• learn how to express character through action and attitude;
• learn about themes and subtexts, set-ups and payoffs, twists, shocks and mysteries, visual gags(show, don't tell);
• leave the day with the step outline of your own original sitcom.