Bonus free comedy script idea at the bottom of today’s post if you couldn’t come up with one – Inspired by Kylie Jenner!
Remember, the deadline for Comedy Showdown is… June 17th! (find out how to submit here)
Now, if you’re a well-behaved screenwriter, you did all your homework this week. You wrote down your character bios AND you sketched out your outline. But hey, if you’re one of these ‘fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants’ screenwriters and you didn’t do any of that because you plan on winging it? I’m not going to discriminate. There’s something “in the moment” about comedy that rewards improvisation.
However, starting now, I’m going to hold you to it. Cause we’ve got one week to write our first act. Only one week to write an entire act, Carson?? Are you crazy!? I am crazy, yes. But this isn’t as difficult as it sounds. The perfect comedy script length is 100 pages. That means we can divide our script down into four literal quarters at 25 pages a piece. Your first act, then, is going to be 25 pages. This means that you’ll be writing about 3.5 pages per day.
This also means you’ll be writing roughly two scenes per day (if that makes it any easier). I don’t care if you’re the slowest writer in the world. Two scenes a day is not difficult. You’re not writing a novel where you’re filling up the entire page with text. This is a screenplay. There’s 80% more white background than this is black text. So, come on. Don’t be a baby. You’ve got this.
Now, before we get started, it’s important for me to remind you of the number one killer of written pages: SELF-JUDGEMENT. Think about it. If you never listened to Critical Voice when you were writing, you’d be able to write 50 pages a day. It’s only Critical Voice that stops you. Tells you this isn’t a good enough idea for a scene. This is a dumb character. Brenda would never say that. This scene doesn’t even make sense. This dialogue is awful.
We’re going to re-invite Critical Voice back to the party for the rewrite. But, for your first draft, I need you to send him away. It’s better to accept that there’s going to be a lot of bad writing in this draft and you’re fine with that than it is to let the Critical Voice take over and stop you from finishing your script. So pack up his bags and tell Critical Voice he has to find somewhere else to stay for the next five weeks. Tell him to call Late Night Pizza Order Voice and stay with him. God knows I don’t need that guy around.
Okay, so, we’re trying to meet some key beats in the first act.
1) TEASER – You have to decide if you want a teaser or not. A teaser is basically a scene that is more about hooking the reader than it is establishing a narrative. Teasers are best known for appearing in horror movies. But they can be used in any genre and tend to give the reader a scene that establishes what the feel of the movie will be. For example, a horror film will start off with a scary teaser. An action film will start with an action teaser. And a comedy will start with a funny teaser. A teaser in a comedy probably shouldn’t be more than four pages.
2) CHARACTER SETUP – If you don’t want to do a teaser, you can start straight with character setup. You might say, “Well, Carson, why can’t you just start your comedy with a character setup scene that’s just as funny as if you went with a teaser?” In an ideal world, that’s what you’d do. But what I’ve found is that comedies will often revolve around a grounded hero. And it’s hard to start right off the bat with some crazy scenario that your grounded hero has been thrown into. It’s easier to control the scene and the setting in a way that best sets up the character for the audience. For example, in Meet The Parents, we meet Greg at his nursing job tending to a patient. It’s a mildly funny scene as Greg has to do some uncomfortable stuff to the patient. But it’s more about setting Greg up as this dainty non-masculine presence who won’t be tough enough for his fiance’s big tough father. It’s far from some gut-busting hilarious teaser.
3) THE CHARACTER’S LIFE – After you’ve given us a scene or two to set up your hero, you want to set up other key characters in your story. Sometimes, for example, you’ll be writing American Pie, which follows four different protagonists. So you’ll need this time to set them up too. Once you do that, you want to set up your character’s everyday life. We have to see the normal for the abnormal to have the intended comedic effect. We have to see the hustling bustling 10,000 family member getting-ready mornings in Home Alone for the Kevin being left home all alone in that big house to have the proper effect.
4) SETTING UP THE PLOT – You are also going to be taking this time to set up the plot of your movie. This is the exposition stuff that the reader needs to know in order for the plot to work. This is when you’ll be establishing that there’s a wedding (in The Hangover) and that the guys are going to Vegas for a bachelor party. This shouldn’t be a separate scene from the character setup and character life sequences. It should be woven in with them.
4) INCITING INCIDENT – This is the moment in your story where a major problem will be presented to your hero. This problem is the whole concept of your movie. It’s one of the easiest scenes to write because it’s the whole reason you wanted to write the script in the first place. This is the moment where Kristin Wiig becomes aware that her best friend who’s getting married has a new best friend who will be getting in the way of all her bridesmaids duties. There’s a lot of debate about when the inciting incident should happen. The truth is, it’s different for each movie. Sometimes the inciting incident happens in the very first scene. Sometimes it’s ALREADY HAPPENED, such as in the case of Zombieland, where the zombie problem began before the movie started. In The Hangover, it’s when Doug, the groom, goes missing, which I think doesn’t happen until 25 minutes into the movie, if my memory serves me correctly? So feel this out. But, if you want to go by the book, it usually happens between pages 12-15.
5) THE RESISTANCE – This moment is often referred to as “The Refusal of the Call” and it basically refers to your hero not wanting to deal with the problem. People don’t like change. They don’t like their life upended. So it’s only natural that when some big problem drops into their lap, they resist. And the great thing about comedies is that this section can be really funny. Because it’s funny when somebody is scared to do something or resists something. So have fun with this part, which usually lasts 2-3 scenes.
6) ACCEPTANCE – After resisting all they can, your hero realizes that he has no choice but to go off on the journey. Or maybe he doesn’t realize that and he’s pulled into the journey kicking and screaming, like some of the characters in Jumanji. It’s a comedy so you can fun with this. This scene or group of scenes will be the last sequence in the first act. By the way, when I say “journey,” I don’t always mean literally. There is a literal journey in the hilarious movie, Eurotrip, because the characters, you guessed it, go on a journey through Europe. But sometimes ‘journey’ is symbolic. It could be Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell trying to co-exist for the sake of the family in the movie, Daddy’s Home.
Now, don’t worry if your comedy doesn’t fit into this formula. The main beats you want to take care of are setting up your characters and setting up the plot. And then just try to be funny along the way. It’s a comedy so you’re always trying to create scenarios that give you the best opportunity for laughter. And that usually comes from constructing scenes that place your characters in conflict or, at the very least, make them uncomfortable.
In the new movie, “Yes Day,” on Netflix, the writers are tasked with setting up a mother who’s very strict. So they come up with a scene where there’s a parent-teacher conference and the teacher plays a video presentation that the mother’s son made in class, and it’s a video that juxtaposes his mom against a number of famous dictators throughout time. That’s a funnier scene than just having a mom yell at her kid. That’s all you’re trying to do as a comedy writer is be creative and search out the scenes that create the most opportunities for laughs.
25 pages by next Monday.
YOU CAN DO IT!
BONUS COMEDY IDEA FOR ANYBODY WHO WANTS TO USE IT – If you don’t have a comedy idea, here’s one for you, inspired by the recent events with Kylie Jenner setting up a GoFundMe page to pay for surgery for her friend. The surgery costs 60,000 dollars. Kylie Jenner is worth a billion dollars. Yet she sets up a GoFundMe page. Anyway, here’s the idea. It’s titled “GO FUND ME” and it follows a guy who attempts to set up a GoFundMe page for his life, so he doesn’t have to do anything. Have at it!
