Writing Killer Comedy Sketches

I use the word "sketch" to describe the pieces I write, although people always ask me "did you come up with that skit?" Whatever you call it, it's easy to describe; a three to five minute dramatic piece involving two or more characters. I call them sketches because to me you're sketching in the characters and circumstances, as opposed to a full blown scene, in which you have time to fill in details.

WHAT'S COMEDY? Philosophers can argue for their entire lives over what makes us laugh, but you already know what's funny. We laugh at things that are unexpected, like a good pratfall. We laugh at embarrassing things, although only when they happen to other people. We laugh at insults, although not when they are aimed at us. Repetition is funny (I almost always include a catch phrase that gets repeated three or four times in a sketch, like "a wet cat."). And we laugh at real life situations, those with which we can identify, that have gone terribly awry. What makes you laugh? If it makes you laugh, chances are good it will make the audience laugh.

THE RULE OF THREES: Watch a classic sitcom, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Cheers or Friends or Frazier. Watch the timing. The jokes go boom, Boom, BOOM. Little joke, bigger joke, knee-slapper. Once you start thinking about threes, you'll find that your skit writes itself. In fact, a well written comedy sketch is a three-hit joke. The jokes don't have to follow one another directly. Sometimes the joke is in a situation, like a wet cat shaking itself on a guy's new shirt. He reacts, complains, shoves the cat in the bathroom and closes the door. His girlfriend comes in. They chat, say something funny about going out. She goes to freshen up. We hear the scream when she goes into the bathroom. The cat runs past and out the front door. A friend shows up and says something about the dish they're serving in the restaurant downstairs. "It looked like a wet cat!" Three, see? Si.


RELATE: What makes a comedy sketch funny is that the audience can relate to it. It's hard for us to relate to Zabnar the Cloud King, unless Zabnar keeps getting phone calls that interrupt his plans to take over the planet. We don't have any experience with being the Cloud King, and that won't ring true. But we've all been interrupted by somebody on the phone trying to sell us a newspaper. As long as the gets annoyed by the phone, Zabnar is a guy just like us, and he becomes believable.

PACING: In the movies, in a big drama, the actor says "a wet cat?", and the music goes Ba Ba BAAAAA, and the camera zooms in to catch the tear in his eye. In real life, people seldom take long, slow pauses in their conversations unless there are very deep issues at stake, or unless they aren't paying attention. In writing drama, you use those long deep pauses to help the audience grasp a circumstance and build suspense. In writing comedy, you gotta keep things moving. If the audience gets a chance to think, they'll stop laughing. If you let them think, you've lost them. Once we start laughing, we like to keep laughing. If your piece moves between hilarity and serious drama, the audience will get confused and won't trust it.

WRITE FOR YOUR ACTORS: Unless you're a professional writer composing for professional actors, you are most likely going to be working with amateurs. Amateurs most often don't know how to make a pratfall. Most of them aren't very good at showing emotions. Most of them don't have a clue about timing and pacing. So, you, as the writer, have to take care of that for them. If you write about real emotions, like frustration and disappointment, you give them a solid tool to help them perform with confidence. Everybody's been frustrated, disappointed, even annoyed by a wet cat. Since those emotions are daily occurrences for most of us, it's easy for amateur actors to hit those. Unless you have a skilled actor in the group, do not write spit takes or pratfalls...they will misfire and your piece will fail. Don't write long, drawn out speeches. They can be difficult for an untrained actor to memorize, and you're flirting with disaster.

BE CLEAR: Robert Frost said "people tell me they understand a poem, and then ask 'what were you getting at?'" A sketch is a tiny plot of time, so you have to be clear. Picture your central theme, and then work only from that. Good jokes should only be included if they support what you're trying to say. Characters should only be in the piece if they support the central idea. Quirky characters don't work, unless they are the meaning of the piece itself.

END IT: One of the first things you should think about when writing your piece is how it will end. Monty Python used weird graphics and startling video changes to cut away from their pieces because they most often didn't wrap up well. Don't forget Storytelling 101: Beginning, middle, end. Beginning, middle, end. One, two, three. Don't mess that up, because you're a good writer, and you want your actors to like your work.

See? That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, think about the point you're trying to make. Find what's funny in it. Figure out who's going to play in it. And figure out how you're going to end it. Be aware that it will run about a minute and a half per page, and, boom, you're a comedy writer!

Writer's Note: This pieces was published at eHow.com as How to Write a Killer Comedy Sketch and at AssociatedContent.Com as Writing Comedy Sketches that Kill.