Comedy Is Work
by Gene Perret
Comedy, when it’s done correctly, appears easy, spontaneous. As television writers, we noted that irony. When we did an excellent job of writing, it appeared that we did nothing at all. I recall one time when Bob Hope was hosting his annual golf tournament in Palm Springs, he sent me a list of golfers and said, “These are the guys I’ll be interviewing when they leave the 18th green. Get me some adlibs.” He didn’t want jokes per se; he wanted jokes that sounded like they just popped into his head.
Consequently, good writing appears effortless. The reality is quite the opposite. The “top-of-the-head” quality of the comedy is a result of dedicated work on the part of the writer.
The danger of this phenomenon is that we can sometimes believe the appearance of the comedy. We can convince ourselves that creating comedy is easy. It isn’t. It’s work. We should all commit ourselves to doing the work that’s necessary.
Experts often claim that the only way to learn to write is to write, to write, and to write. Each time you write, you learn something. You learn something either about yourself or your craft. So, to cut to the chase, as writers say, you have to write in order to learn to write. The more you write, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you become.
Many of us hope for and seek out shortcuts to becoming better writers. There are no shortcuts. You must put in the time and the effort to polish your skills.
Now I will correct myself and say there might be a possible shortcut. You still have to put in the time and the effort, but you may shorten the time by increasing the effort. You can do this by cramming more and more writing into the available time.
You can do this by writing consistently. Always have a project in the typewriter (you can tell the older writers – they’re the ones who remember typewriters). The dilemma may be that in the beginning of a career, you get only a limited amount of assignments. You can’t write more than clients ask you to write, can you? The answer is: yes, you can.
You can write anytime you have a blank sheet of paper. And you should. It will shorten your ‘apprenticeship’ dramatically. Imagine two golfers. One plays once on weekends and the other plays five times a week. In any given period of time, the second player will have five times the experience of the first. All other factors being equal, he will improve five times as quickly as the once a week player. That’s how you can shorten your writing experience.
If you don’t have a writing assignment, give yourself one. Write for your own amusement. Give yourself writing exercises to complete. Write some material for your favorite comics, whether they ask for it or not. Give yourself a real test and write and submit some gags to the Humor Files page found on this website. Keep writing and you’ll get better at writing.
That’s your shortcut.
Gene Perret has been a comedy writer since the early 1960’s working for comedians such as Slappy White and Phyllis Diller. He’s been a television comedy writer and producer since 1968. Perret has earned 7 Emmy nominations, including one for original music, and 2 Writer’s Guild Award nominations. He has captured three Emmy awards and one Writer’s Guild Award as part of the Carol Burnett Show writing staff. Gene produced “Welcome Back, Kotter,” “Three’s Company,” and “The Tim Conway Show.”
Gene also worked on Bob Hope’s writing staff for 28 years, from 1969 until the comic’s retirement -many of those years as Hope’s head writer. During that time, Gene wrote for all of Bob’s personal appearances and TV Specials. traveling with the Bob Hope troupe to the war zones of Beirut, the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and on a peace time military jaunt around the world that featured stops at the Berlin Wall and in Moscow. Besides his humorous books and how-to books on the craft of comedy, Gene teaches comedy writing through various avenues, including via e-mail. You can contact Gene through the website www.comedywritersroom.com. This article has been reposted from Gene’s blog.
graphic via shutterstock.com
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