How Comedy Works
Comedy writing is sometimes compared to songwriting: in music, every note is important; in comedy, every word, even every syllable can be critical.
There are lots of classes about writing funny; this one is about what funny is – its mechanics, its principles. And while comedy people certainly vary in their ability to articulate those principles, they all take them seriously and refer to them constantly (“Call-back’s too soon”; “Set-up’s got too many words”).
This webinar has no direct instruction but rather takes a deep dive into the comedy principles which are, in fact, the basic principles of every art form: tension and resolution, pattern disruption, misdirection and surprise. And we’ll see how these principles achieve their effects by looking at examples ranging from Buster Keaton to Richard Pryor to Amy Schumer.
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