  Comedy
This week: Comedy As A Genre Edited by: Jeff  
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"The wit makes fun of other people; the satirist makes fun of the world;
the humorist makes fun of himself."
-- James Thurber
Comedy Trivia of the Week: The Second City is an improvisational comedy organization that opened in Chicago in 1959. While many people aren't familiar with The Second City or its work directly, we've almost all heard of its alumni. A great many of our most popular comedians have roots in The Second City, including - among many, many others - Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Tina Fey, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Andy Dick, Jim Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Bill Murray, John Belushi, Harold Ramis, Peter Boyle, Fred Willard, Joan Rivers, and Alan Arkin.
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COMEDY AS A GENRE
Around this time last year, I attempted to write a comedy screenplay. I'd never tried writing one before and, in retrospect, probably will never try again. I ended up writing the first act of the movie and showed it to a comedian friend of mine, who pretty much flat out told me that it wasn't a comedy. It stung, initially, and I was stuck staring at my pages wondering why he could possibly say it wasn't a comedy. There were jokes... maybe they weren't all gut-busters, but there were some pretty good ones in there. Any my friend agreed with me; many of the jokes were actually funny.
Which only left me more confused.
Ultimately, when we sat down to discuss my script in more detail, he said something that struck me in a really profound way. He told me that my script had comedic moments in it, but it wasn't actually a comedy because the humor wasn't what was driving the story. I'll spare you the specifics of the plot, but he was right. I was writing a dramatic story and trying to fill it with little comedic bits as often as I could. There was nothing inherently funny about the story itself, the characters, or the conflict. And there simply wasn't enough comedy to go around. He told me that when it comes to comedy as a genre, it's not enough to make the audience smirk or chuckle every couple of pages; you have to make them actually laugh all the time.
After that lesson, I started looking at comedy in a whole new way and developed a greater understanding of what works and what doesn't. It was amazing how many pieces of "comedy" writing I read that weren't comedies at all. Just like my script, they were something else (action, drama, mystery, horror, etc.) with comedic bits sprinkled into them.
The other thing I learned was that when you call your work a comedy, there's an expectation of a certain level of humor that's going to come with the experience of reading or watching it. If you're writing a dramatic comedy (dramedy) and the laughs only come every so often, it's expected. If you're writing an action movie and you make your audience laugh with a scene or two, it's a wonderfully pleasant surprise. But when you're calling your work a comedy and it doesn't get consistent and hearty laughs, your audience will often see it as a failure or as missing the mark because they were expecting to be laughing throughout the experience and instead only found a few select moments that tickled their funny bone.
What I learned from this experience is that I'm not a comedian. I can write humor from time to time, but it's not my preferred genre and it doesn't come easily to me. I am a much better writer when I'm writing something else that I can slip a little comedy into and pleasantly surprise my audience. I'm not so great when I have to be funny funny funny all the time and maintain a certain level of humor in my work. I'm jealous of the people who can be consistently funny all the time, and probably why I enjoy reading comedies so much... because writing funny consistently is so very, very hard to do.
For those of you who write comedy (or like to include comedy in other things), consider the difference between categorizing your writing in the comedy genre, and calling it something else and letting the comedy be a minor aspect of it rather than a genre classification. Depending on what you're trying to write, it could mean the difference between a favorable impression and a disappointed one. The next time you write something comedic, ask yourself whether the piece of writing is actually something that fits in the comedy genre, or if it's better labeled as something else. After all, even here on Writing.Com where you can select up to three genres, a "Comedy / Family / Drama" might give your reader a considerably different impression than a "Family / Drama / Comedy" 
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following comedy items:
"There's no place like home. Which reminds me, John...How soon do we re-enter the earth's atmosphere and land this bad boy?"
"Bernie...We just entered orbit five minutes ago! You know very well that this will be the biggest mission of our lives. How on earth can you already be homesick?" The disgust with his co-pilot was written all over John Baskin's face; it's just that you couldn't see it because he had his helmet - complete with Cool Ray visor - on. "People on earth will be so proud of..."
“Spell dossier, Max.”
“D-O-S-S-I-E-R, sir.”
“There’s no ‘a’ in there somewhere?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re sure?”
“Is it you? I recognized the stripped Ralph Lauren V-neck sweater.”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Hi.”
“Hello. Thank you for coming tonight.”
“Thank you for calling."
“Please, sit down.”
It was my 54th birthday my husband,
and I was all alone, I'd lock the doors,
he unplugged the phone
Incense was burning, the wine was
chilled, he'd taken his Viagra, me
a happy pill.
“Chinese food! Delivery!”
Mariposa looked up from her TV. “Coming!” she called.
At 54, people told her she had the sweetest old lady voice they had ever heard. Mariposa had replied, “Don’t you stereotype me.”
Mariposa was a widow and lived in a large country house in the middle of Wyoming. Her house was the only thing around for miles and miles. A lady richly left, she had never been good at cooking.
It was Black Friday, and Charlie had a mission. He had been awake for twenty-three hours, and here he was at WalMart at 5 a.m. He had already picked up the latest video game console for his son and was on his way to the counter when he spotted the bin of DVD's - one dollar each! He couldn't pass this deal up!
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Feedback from my last newsletter about the universe:
Ralph  writes, "You are pretty good at this, thanks. You read like someone funny. Now then, what is actually funny is like catching fish. No smelling fish. Comedy is not telling her when you weren't fishing, it is just a smell like a joke you cannot tell she knows fishing is boring, she has you snoring. Tell her to go to hell, go fishing. -- RR"
Thanks for the kind words! 
LJPC - the tortoise writes, "Hi SoCalScribe!
Thanks for the great Comedy NL - those were great pointers on how comedy works and how to be funny in a story. I used to feel that "Friends" got a laugh with every single line. Now I think "Big Bang Theory" does that too. Their writers must be well-paid! ~ Laura"
Yes, their writers are very well paid. Very, very well paid. 
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Comedy: February 12, 2013 Issue [#5515]
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