So you’ve drafted a comedy, and it really works as a story. You started with an engaging premise and built and polished a logline that defines the essential components. The beginning sparks interest, the middle has strong turning points and holds attention, and the ending is powerful and memorable. You love this story.
But it’s not funny enough. It would make a pretty good drama, spiced with humor, but you know it has the bones to be a classic comedy. One that would make Mel Brooks grind his teeth with envy. All it needs is a little sweetening.
If you have a writers’ room full of naturally funny (and highly competitive) people, they could punch this thing into shape before they kill each other (or you). Sadly, you are not at the stage of your career where geniuses have lifting you up and carrying you to fame and fortune on their must-do lists. So try these five tricks and see how far they get you.
1 - Make the endings pop. Humor works best if you withhold it to the very end. My mother-in-law had many virtues, but telling jokes was not one of them. She always led with the punchline. Everything that twisted and surprised came out first. Don’t let that happen to you. Withholding builds tension, and the more anxiety or curiosity there is, the greater the release in laughter. Look through each line to see if the funny part can move to the end of the sentence.
Find the (3-5) beats in each scene. Identify the power shifts and discover the potential for humor in each. (A power shift almost always promises humor.) Arrange them so, as the stakes rise, things get funnier. Now make sure each scene ends with its biggest laugh. And make the last scene in the comedy the funniest of all.
But… don’t toss your earlier version because this might not yield all your story has to offer. This trick is here to explore and create options, not to create final copy. Pacing matters, too.
2 - Manage the energy. This is about setting up, surprising, and trimming. If I told you the funniest story ever written in Estonian and you didn’t speak that language, I wouldn’t get any laughs (or they’d come at the wrong times). Understanding is an essential element to humor. That means being clear and holding attention. So the setup must proceed with clear visuals that let readers/audience process the action, meaning, revelations, and (usually) conflict and concern about the protagonist. Often, people are lured into making assumptions.
Assumptions overturned create surprises, which are central to comedy. If you just fulfill expectations, it’s not likely to be funny. When, in Animal House, Bluto get high on a ladder to spy on sorority girls, we know that ladder is going down. Disappointingly, that’s all that happens. Much funnier is when he inspires his frat brothers to action by saying it wasn’t over for the U.S. when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
Of course, when you raise expectations, you need to come up with something funnier (or at least more interesting) than what people imagine. Just because something is surprising doesn’t mean it can’t be disappointing.
There are surprises that don’t come from assumptions. If you have a completely off-beat character (like Reverend Jim in Taxi), the forward motion can be derailed by a non sequitur. This can be used to distract or as comic relief. For instance, in one of my scripts, a character who has been ignoring a building conflict suddenly comes out with, “Have you ever eaten a cat?”
Finally, cutting out excess verbiage can make what’s funny funnier. Like poetry, humor works best when it’s distilled. Challenge every word.
3 - Play with the language. Yes, K sounds are funnier. And Bing Crosby made an art of reshaping dialogue to include big words. Silly names (in Catch-22, Major Major and Scheisskopf) are memorable and can trigger jokes along the way. The natural rhythm of sentences can suggest comedic timing (or work against it). Puns can work, and rephrasing can be an excellent way to create misunderstandings or irony.
In my experience, of all the sweetening tools, this is the one writers find most irresistible. When language intrudes, unintentionally distracts, or is not appropriate to a character in whose mouth it has been placed, take these darlings and strangle, crush, and obliterate them.
4 - Exaggerate. I can still hear comedy writer Danny Simon, my one-time teacher, encouraging the class to “Make it bigger!” We did. Pitching in real time, making it outrageous so we could get a smile or even a laugh from him. But what do you make bigger? Usually, it’s the character choice. In the classic chocolate factory scene in I Love Lucy, Lucy goes from eating the chocolates she can’t wrap fast enough to sweeping them into her hat to shoving them into her cleavage.
The ultimate payoff of the scene is exaggerating the situation. The chocolates come too quickly so, even though Lucy and Ethel have succeeded in deceiving their manager, their reward is even more chocolates to get rid of. Making the situation more desperate increases stakes and invites people to accept more and more outrageous solutions, so build toward the biggest choices if you can.
5 - Change perspective. Romances typically alternate perspective (with changes to scenes or chapters) between the hero and the heroine. Who gets the viewpoint for the scene? A rule of thumb is to choose whomever has the most at risk. Whose heart would be most ruined. Whose reputation would be destroyed. Who would be exposed or vulnerable. If your comedy allows changes to points of view (and not all do), choosing the perspective of the person most at risk usually turns out best. People will worry more. The character will be more likely to lie or withhold the truth. And make outrageous choices to protect him/herself.
Another way to change perspective is to zoom in or zoom out. In Dr. Strangelove, there’s a famous scene near the end that moves from close-in scrambling to complete the mission to a god-like view of total destruction. This makes the scene more ironic and, I think, more horrifying. Zooming in or zooming out exposes something true that otherwise might be invisible. Truth and irony can make people uncomfortable or add insights, but both also can be used to add humor.
The party on the train scene in Some Like It Hot is hilarious and includes nearly every trick in this list. It’s fun to watch and great to dissect for techniques that can sweeten your story.
One more thing. Don’t cut funny. Humor is particularly vulnerable to wearing out, as anyone who has suffered repetitions of dad jokes knows. As a result, it can be tempting to take some of the best bits out of your comedy. One solution is to mark what brings laughs as early as possible. Protect them until the story is finished. Then read the work to friends (who appreciate your humor) and only remove them if the parts that made you laugh turn out not to be funny.
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I have three online courses coming up: The Promise of the Premise, a Storytelling Workshop, and Developing a Web Series. The first is traditional, with lessons posted, exercising and interaction with me and among students via text. The other two are Zoom meeting, with writing, sharing, critiquing, and lectures. There will also be handouts.
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