Sorry about the lack of posting action – not been getting much sleep! Or free time not used for writing sketched. However I have been thinking hard about writing sketches and trying to make them as good as I possibly can. I always have certain ideas/ways of working that I keep in my head but [...]
Tag Archive > writing craft
Writing for Newsjack: The hunt for the killer premise
Pity the poor Newsjack sketch reader. By the end of Monday they will know every possible horse meat joke in the history of the universe. That’s not to say you shouldn’t send yours as well, but for the sake of the poor reader do make it original. So don’t you do what I naturally do – [...]
Writing for Newsjack: The Kettle Rule
As promised, here is the first of the tips even I have managed to pick up writing for Newsjack. The Kettle Rules is nothing to do with making tea or coffee (even if that does take up half your writing time). This rule is named after the excellent James Kettle – an experienced comedy writer [...]
Andrew Ellard on naming characters
Andrew Ellard (script editor on Red Dwarf, IT Crowd, and Miranda amongst other things) has a great Storify story on naming characters. His basic point is that you should make the character name evoke (or, perhaps, completely contrast with) the character. E.g. Mr Gradgrind tells you exactly what Dicken’s character is like. On the other [...]
The importance of the Shitty First Draft
(Please excuse the Anglo-Saxon synonym for manure used throughout. It is entirely artistically justified. Well, mostly. And it’s shorter to type.) I asked Father Christmas to bring me the boxset of The IT Crowd this year, partly so I could watch them without watching 20 emotionally needy Microsoft ads on 4OD. (If Windows 8 was [...]
Best comedy writing tip I’ve ever got: Put the funny bit at the end
Now, I haven’t yet scaled to the thin, slippery branches at the top of the comedy writing tree – so I am willing to believe there are other principles of the comedy writing craft I have yet to discover. But of all the tricks I’ve picked up so far this is the one I use [...]
Some rules of joke writing
There are no simple rules in comedy writing. If there were there would already be an iPhone app that cranked out award winning sitcom scripts and whole Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshows. There are no simple rules, but there are things that have proved to help make scripts better and jokes funnier. Here a few I [...]
Joke writing technique: Comic Irony
This is where what is said is clearly in conflict with either the context or something else that is said. That gap between what is said and what the obvious truth is, is then (if we joke writers and tellers do our job right) filled with laughter. For example: (told by a man) “I’m a [...]
Joke writing – The rule of three
There are no simple rules for joke writing. (The only hard and fast rule I’ve found is ”be funny” – and that’s not simple). But there are useful patterns and techniques used by other people trying to write funny. I’ve been keeping notes of the patterns I come across and thought I’d share some of [...]
Writing comedy sketches for News Revue: A few tips.
The News Revue is a (record-breaking) topical comedy stage show which has been running in the Canal Cafe Theatre for the last 33 years. (I’ve already written a post about it here.) It’s (almost) always on and always topical and so it demands huge quantities of fresh, funny material. That makes it a great market [...]
