Time to Write

What's the secret of writing comedy?

So you want to write comedy?

Here's the problem: humor is subjective. What makes one person double over with laughter just elicits a groan from another. That's why writing comedy probably requires a little more self-confidence than writing other genres. At least you have to fake it long enough to finish the script and send it out.

How do you do it? Here's what writer Ian Southwood said about that in Screencraft magazine recently:

"I used to write what I thought other people would think is funny, always second-guessing my own sense of humor...But it never works. Never. Trying to write like someone else is like wearing a rented tuxedo. It doesn't fit. Not like it should. Now I just try to be honest, with the writing and with myself."

To the degree that there's a secret to comedy writing, that's it:

Keep it honest.

Honest to yourself and, equally importantly, honest to the characters.

Never have a character do something just because it's funny.

However crazy what they say or what they do may be, it should feel like something they would actually do.

If you want your character to beat a car with a tree branch (a famous scene from Fawlty Towers, starring John Cleese), create a character who is so full of pent-up frustration that this action is not only funny but believable. 

The source of both the humor and the plausibility is the character's attitude to the world.

Take the leads of the Odd Couple as an example. Oscar is a lazy slob, Felix is a compulsive neurotic. Put them in the same situation and they would have totally different reactions--which could both be funny.

I served my comedy writing apprenticeship with TV writer Danny Simon and I've never forgotten his most important advice: "Never sacrifice a character for a laugh."

What he meant was if you have a character do something they wouldn't really do, you may get a laugh but you've destroyed their believability.

Huh, turns out honesty is the best policy, even in comedy writing.

 

 

Is this the time to (finally) be you?

There's a Zen saying, "Out of the mud grows a lotus."

As I write this, we're in the mud. The coronavirus is still spreading and millions (including me) have been instructed not to leave our homes for at least twelve weeks (eleven to go). Loved ones are dying, the future is uncertain, and some of the people in charge are cretins.

That's the mud.

What will bring out the lotus?

For some people, it's suddenly finding they have more free time (if that's not you, keep reading anyway, we'll get to you). 

How will you spend this time?

The internet is full of suggestions for how to spend your extra time, many of which strike me as time killers.

If anything, the current state of affairs is telling us we never know how much time we have, so killing more of it seems foolish.

As Shakespeare said--or warned--in Richard II, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me."

Why not make your goal creating something only you can create?

Not because you're a genius but because you're you.

The obvious channels of expression, like books, scripts, stories, poems, drawings, paintings, sculptures, etc. are fine if they excite you.

It could just as easily be making a piece of furniture, creating an indoor garden, coming up with original recipes, or using Zoom or Skype to give solace to isolated friends or strangers.

It could be something I've never heard of and can't even imagine.

Finding it is your job.

How to find it

It's possible you've already found it, but you never followed through because you didn't have time.  Maybe you started and you meant to go on, but life and obligations interfered and you stopped. It may be represented by a half-finished novel or a piece of pottery gathering dust, or the intention to connect with friends from years ago.

If you don't know what it is, or you do and you want to recapture the magic feeling it once gave you, use some of your new free time to daydream.

Yes, this was easier when we had the option of strolling through a park or walking along a beach, but you can also do it after everybody else has gone to bed, or before they wake up.

Go to the free site, calmsound.com and listen to gentle rain, or a country garden, or the ocean. If you're inspired by seeing nature as well as hearing it, they also feature videos of the Maldives, a country glen, an enchanted forest, and an Australian beach.

Close your eyes, remember what you dreamed of doing when you were a kid, or what made you happy before you had to stop doing it because responsibilities intervened. 

You'll know it when you see it--or rather, when you feel it. It'll feel like how artist Milton Glaser felt about illustrating Dante's Purgatory: "I can't tell you how much I looked forward to working on it--it is still thrilling to me to be able to sit down in front of a piece of paper and invent the world."

How to do it

You've found it. Now what?

Is there a secret? Something they don't want you to know but that I will reveal to you if you send me lots of money?

No, nobody's trying to keep it from you and there's no charge. It's simple. Not always easy, but simple: 

1. Start
2. Continue
3. Fail (because we can imagine perfection but not attain it)
4. Learn from the failure
5. Continue
6. repeat 3 through 5

Number one is the hardest but the other steps have their drawbacks, too.

So why do it?

Because it means something to you.

Because in some way large or small, you'll be contributing something to the world that is part of you.

It could bring you world-wide fame and fortune, or you may invent something that will benefit millions--but probably not. 

Maybe it'll be a memoir you self-publish that's discovered by a curious great-grandchild years after you're gone, and suddenly a little bit of you will live again.

Maybe it'll be a window garden that someone walking by sees and is reminded that life will blossom again. 

Maybe it'll be a poem nobody ever reads, but having written it makes you feel more complete and that, in turn, makes you a less distracted or frustrated parent.

But what if you don't have more time?

Some people actually have less time these days. They may be working from home and homeschooling their kids. They may have more responsibility for their parents or grandparents. What should you do if that's you?

Exactly the same thing. 

Homeschooling your kids? What greater lesson can you teach them (by example) than to express themselves? Don't expect them to appreciate it now, of course, but the time will come.

Working from home and too busy with work? An article in the Guardian about a palliative nurse who counsels the dying revealed the top regrets her patients expressed :

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

I wish I hadn't worked so hard. (This from every male patient she dealt with.)

I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

I wish I had let myself be happier.

Every one of those, in one way or another, is about being yourself, expressing yourself.

You do have the time.

Cut out 30 minutes of TV or browsing the internet.

Get your kids involved in your creative activity.

Declare a lunch hour and lock yourself in a room, put in earplugs or crank up the white noise machine and do whatever you're meant to do. 

It's not too late

Whether life gives us another week, another year, another decade or more, it's not too late to take that first step.

As Oscar Wilde said (or should have, in case he didn't): "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken."

I hope that when you look back on these dark days you'll remember it was also the time you decided or renewed your decision to be--and share--yourself.

Why not keep a journal of this extraordinary time?

Someday we'll look back on this extraordinary time, and perhaps the people who come after us may find it hard to believe...hard to believe we were so poorly prepared when we had ample warning that such a thing was likely sooner or later...hard to believe that our leaders dithered while people died...hard to believe that weeks before, the prime interest of much of the populace was the comings and goings of a forgotten family named Kardashian...

And they may wonder what it was like to live in this time, day-to-day.

Well, you're living through it, why not keep a journal of what's happening, how it affects your daily life, and your fears and hopes?

It could be a fascinating account for your children or grandchildren to read someday.

FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DANIEL DEFOE

In 1721, Defoe wrote "A Journal of the Plague Year," about the events of the Year of the Great Plague in London. I'm running some excerpts of it on my Facebook page (sample below) but you may want to read the whole thing. It's available free to read or download at Project Gutenberg.

How People Found Out

"We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumor died off again, and people began to forget it as a thing we were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true."

London Was Soon Changed

"The face of London was--now indeed strangely altered: I mean the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered; sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger."

Physicians Could Not Heal Themselves

"I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of the physicians when I say that the violence of the distemper, when it came to its extremity, was like the fire the next year. The fire, which consumed what the plague could not touch, defied all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end. So the Plague defied all medicines; the very physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their mouths; and men went about prescribing to others and telling them what to do till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to oppose. This was the case of several physicians, even some of them the most eminent, and of several of the most skilful surgeons. Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to trust to their own medicines."

Yes, everything old is new again, but there is hope for a different ending.

[image Creative Commons courtesy of National Portrait Gallery)

A better way to decide what to commit to

Do you ever agree to do something or go somewhere in the future, only to find that when the time arrives to do it you wish you hadn’t?

Yeah, me, too, but the other day I found a good tip for a better way to decide yes or no in that situation:

Pretend that it’s happening tomorrow. Would you still say yes?

When we look toward some future date, it’s easy to assume on that day we’ll have more time, or that it will be a good time to attend a lecture on some topic in which we have a vague interest.

Pretending it’s tomorrow puts us more in touch with reality—if that lecture isn’t compelling enough to attend tomorrow, the odds are it won’t be compelling enough three weeks from now.