Choosing a differentiation and positioning strategy

COMEDY FOR NEUROTICS: A Practical Guide to Writing Funnier Screenplays

and Stage Plays and Sketches

By Scott Winfield Sublett Note to the reader: When I decided to take on teaching this class, I assumed there would exist a good textbook for it. I was wrong, so I have had to write one myself, and this is it. In its current form, this text is intended as a course reader for “TA 13: The Great Comedies.” Its aim is to familiarize you with the nature and techniques of comedy writing so you can better analyze comedies and understand why they’re funny. My ultimate goal is to continue to develop this text until it becomes a viable “how to” book for those who intend to write comedies for stage and screen. (It will be a companion volume for my screenwriting text, Screenwriting for Neurotics, published in 2014 by University of Iowa Press.) This material is copyrighted and you may not share with it others legally. Please help me protect the value and copyright of my original material by not sharing with anyone outside the class. Thank you. Let’s start laughing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Are You Funny?/ Comedy vs. “A Comedy”/A Little About Me/Prepare to Be Funny/Definitions of Comedy/Better Living Through Comedy/A Warning Chapter One: Principles of Comedy The Comic Moment: That’s Wrong!/Deviation From Norms and Standards:Criticism and Forgiveness/Deviation#1:Cultural Norms/The Stereotype and Deviation From the Norm/Airplane! Playing With Norms and Racial Stereotypes/Is Comedy Inherently Unkind or Politically Incorrect?/Deviation #2:From Human Norms/Deviation#3: From Norms of Physical Possibility/Physical Impossibility and the Acton Hero/A Digression About Comic Tension and Comic Relief/Back to Action and the Comedy of Physical Impossibility/Deviation#4: From Artistic Norms/The Forth Wall/Asides and Direct Address of the Camera/Examples of Characters Acknowledging They’re in Fictions/Genres That Depend on Deviation from Artistic Norms/DEVIATION #5:FROM LINGUISTIC NORMS/Non-sequiturs, Mangles Word Choice and “Goldwynisms”/Non- sequiturs and Nonsense/Misunderstanding/Mispronunciation/Puns and Wordplay/The Voices of Performers/Impersonating a Voice and Mimicry/The Linguistic Deviation Expresses Character/Changing Norms and Crossing Borders: A Digression”/Topicality/WHY DOES THE COMIC CHARACTERS DEVIATE FROM NORMS?/Henri Bergson and Automatic Behavior/INAPPROPRIATE Behavior: Comedy, Context and the Fish Out of Water/Selecting a Setting for the Fish Out of Water: Places of Solemnity, Propriety and Theatricality/Proper, Fancy, Rule- bound/Environment/Human Types/ Chapter Two: Comic Characters and Their Behaviors Identifying, Understanding and Creating Comic Characters/Characterization and Comedy: Shharp and Defines/The Single-Mindedness of the Comic Character/ Surprise! The Comic Character’s Mind is Elsewhere/The Moment the Audience Realizes, “So That’s What He’s Thinking!”/Setting Up Comedy With Character/Putting It Together: Mastery and Delight/Obliviousness/Dishonest and Misrepresentation: Lying, Disguise, False Identity, Trickery, Hypocrisy and Pretension/Acting “As If”: Intentional and Unintentional/Pug/The Mask: Hiding the Unacceptable/Misperception and the Pleasure of Perception/Types pf Dishonesty/The Moment of Comedy: The Mask Slips and the Mystery Is Solved/Comic Flaws/The Dark Side of Comic Character/How Bad Can a Comic Character Be? When is It OK to Laugh?/Why Do I Laugh Instead of Slapping You/Likable Characters, and Characters That Make Us Laugh/Show Your Character’s Pain/Tragedy Plus Time and the Question of Black Comedy/Creating Comic Character: Hybridization of Type/Overreaction and Underreaction/Deadpan/Pauses/Back to Overreaction and Underreaction/ Chapter Three: Comic Types The wit and the butt/Wit, Sarcasm and Snark/The Witty Charater: Wit is Surprising, Daring, True, Agile, Clever and Definitely Knows “How Things Should

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Be”/Snark/Sarcasm/A List of Comic Types/Comic Types in History/Commedia dell’arte/Mture Artists Steal…Inspiration/ Chapter Four: The Comic Character Worksheet Analyzing and identifying Comic Character/Comic Character Worksheet (with commentary)/Comic Character Worksheet Chapter Five: The Moment of Comedy: Behavior and Dialogue Putting It Together: Comedy Happens in the Head/Not Too Much Information—But Enough/It’s Funny Because It’s True/One the Nose and Not on the Nose/The Comic Moment May Be Complex/The Butt Reveals Himself Inadvertently/The Wit Reveals Himself Intentionally/Obscure References/Comic Relief: Tension Precedes Release/ Chapter Six: Comic Dialogue Comic