How to Write a Comedy Screenplay

Today the comedian is the superstar. Long ago has the muscled- suave action star been surpassed by the likes of a short curly haired schmuck with a couple of jokes up his sleeves. Today your Jonah Hill and Steve Martins' are more popular than Vin Diesel.

Learning how to write a comedy screenplay makes so much sense when you look at the amount of money being produced by comedy movies. Writing a comedy screenplay is a lot more intensive than writing simple gags or jokes. If you notice many of the big name comedy actors today started off writing gags but being in a feature picture propelled them to the next level. Still in order for an aspiring screenplay writer to write a marketable comedy screenplay you will have to master the short form writing. If you look at any sitcom you will see that all dialogue can be divided into three groups

1. To move the plot forward and advance the story

2. To set up a joke

3. The punch line of a joke.

Everything that can't be categorized around these three groups is a hindrance to entertaining your audience and should be tossed.

When learning how to write a comedy screenplay its important to know that the comedy writing doesn't start with a gag or a joke , it starts with the plot. The plot should focus around putting your characters into situations that you know you could write jokes for. The fact is that a character reciting a joke does not make your movie a comedy, having a comedic plot does.

So now its time to start actually writing your comedy screenplay. Lets say you understand the plot and where you will like it to go but you need to fill in the rest of the movie(it also has to be hilarious). Look at the situations you have arranged for your characters to interact in and find the humour in the situation. It may pay a striking resemblance to a situation people fall in to in real life. Use your wit to poke holes into the fabric of these mundane situations.

With this type of though process going through your mind when learning how to write a comedy screenplay you will be able to segment the movie into digest-able chunks when writing. For instance, being able to look at the ,lets say, ten situations your character is going to be in and knowing that you will have to write 30 sketches, gags or jokes for each set makes the whole process less daunting.

Ink to Pixel, http://www.screenwriting.info