Shayne-Michael.COMedy

Editing Jokes: NO.2/2: Consistent Characters - by Shayne Michael

Writing about yourself usually starts with writing about how you look and feel. Editing starts when you have how you look and how you feel down pat. Writing about secondary characters also begins with the same, simple physical observations. Where should you start editing the other characters in your act? Don't start by editing the jokes. Edit the characters themselves. Make them believable. Bring them to life by asking yourself questions. Do the characters make sense? Do the images flow logically from the jokes the characters deliver? For instance, if one character is getting dates left and right, yet your audience is visualizing a poorly dressed slob, something is wrong. Start with the following questions:

• What type of character is this: Real, fictional, or a composite?
• What is the person's name?
• How do they look?
• Are they fat, slim, or athletic?
• How do they feel about their life?
• How does the character earn a living?
• Who are their closest friends?
• Do they have a family?
• How does the character feel about his or her family?
• How does their family interact with yours?
• Why is that character important in your life?

After you answer all those questions, go back and ask them again. Only this time, make sure you ask yourself, how would an audience see them, based on the jokes you're already telling? You will be forced to edit when you have two completely different answers. For instance, if I do a joke where cousin Jeff, who every single joke sets up as a moron, is suddenly tutoring someone in math, I have a problem. The problem is Jeff is a moron. Why would anyone choose him as a tutor?

Stronger Dynamics (More Give & Take)

Sometimes you will write the characters the way you see them. This type of writing comes when you're writing from the heart. Sometimes you describe the characters as the audience sees them. This second type of writing comes when you're writing for the laugh. If you do both, one character can become two very different people. Since every human being has several dimensions to their personality, this isn't a huge problem. It becomes a problem when you see cousin Jeff as an idiot. Yet, the audience somehow get's the idea he isn't. So, you begin to write from both perspectives, making Jeff a brilliant moron that belongs in a college Psychology study.

In one of my jokes cousin Jeff pays a hooker $300 just to hear, "I just wanna be your friend." When that joke is last, set up by a series of jokes where he hangs himself with a cordless phone and invents the computer magnet, it never gets a laugh. When it's first it kills, but the jokes that follow it bomb. Why? Maybe the guy who invented computer magnets should be smarter than that. If he's smart enough to invent anything, maybe the audience has trouble visualizing he'd be so easily taken advantage of. And when I start to tell the audience that he was, I'm forcing the them to visualize Jeff as two different people. By the time they've made up their minds, which Jeff to visualize, I'm already delivering the next joke.

Identifying A Character's Hooks (Or Persona)

The main reason any character is in your act is because they either do funny things or they cause funny things to happen to you. There is usually one common thread that makes each character funny. How can you find that common thread? The best answer is to practice changing points-of-view with existing jokes. Every single joke in your act can be told by every character in your act. All you need to figure out is the unique spin each character would put on those jokes.

• "I remember when I broke my arm and my dad signed my cast, Don't misbehave again or I'll break the other one." - As told by myself, Shayne Michael.
• "I remember when you broke your arm and I signed your cast, I told you nobody likes a smart ass." - As told by my dad (Overreaction).
• "I remember when you broke your arm and I signed your cast, wait until your father gets home." - As told by my mom (Intimidation).

Ineffective editors see three jokes and would come up with three more versions of that same joke. The result would sound juvenile and redundant. The audience would be yawning by the third punchline. The effective editor would test all three versions of the same joke and decide which one version he should keep.

Extracting Character's Motives

Why go to all this trouble? When you start shifting the points-of-view you have to understand a character's underlying persona to do it correctly. This helps you understand each character's hook and point-of-view better with each rewritten joke. It also helps you keep all points-of-view and personas consistent. If you write a joke calling your mom a religious fanatic don't use a joke where she talks down to the Pope. If you do your act follows this format.

• My mom's like this
• No she's not
• Oh wait she is

Contradicting your own persona has devastating effects, see Editing Jokes: Part I. On the other hand, contradicting the personas of minor characters isn't as serious because they play smaller parts in your overall act. However, it still hurts your overall credibility. Consistency is the difference between a good comic and a great comic. If one character is a hippy, she shouldn't show up at the prom wearing a dress.

Writing Dialog And Characters

Dialog in comedy is easier than it looks. There are two simple rules for keeping dialog funny. First, give one character the setups and the other character the punchlines. Second, in stand-up, have two characters maximum in each scene. Why should one character should have the set ups and the other have the punchlines? Good dialog requires a question and an answer. In stand-up the setup is the question; the punchline is the answer.

• "Mom I was climbing a tree and fell..." - The setup.
• "Well if you went to church more often maybe an Angel would have caught you on the way down." - The punchline.

In the next example I try to make both lines funny. The result is a hole between what I say and my mom's response. That hole prevents the exchange from being true dialog, because it makes it look as if my mom isn't listening to me.

• "Mom, I was climbing a tree and fell. Fortunately dad's car is still okay." - The setup and punchline.
• "Well if you went to church more often maybe an Angel would have caught you on the way down." - The failed punchline.

This time there is no give-and-take between the characters. With two punchlines in a row, people are too busy taking in the first punchline, to remember the original setup. Half of the audience might be following me. But, the other will be asking, "Why didn't his mom respond to the comment about his dad's car?" When you edit humorous dialog, the first question you need to ask is, "Is there a missing setup?" If there is, add that missing setup back in.

• "I was climbing a tree and fell." - The setup.
• "Not the one over my new Buick?" - The punchline.
• "No, the one by the old church..." - The second setup (inserted).
• "Well, that was just God reminding you to stop hiding in trees and start coming to Church with us on Sundays." - The 2nd punchline. This is also the third setup.
• "Actually it was God reminding you not to drive dad's car to Church." - 3rd Punchline. This is a tag.

A second setup was created to give a more natural rhythm to the dialog. In this example, the dialog is truly a question and answer session. This example also shows when the missing setup is appropriate. The third punchline is a tag. Tags do not require setups, because they are setup by the previous punchline. Tags are used to speed up the pace of a comic's set.

The final rule in creating dialog is remember that you are only one person. If you have more than two characters in one scene the dialog will become too confusing for the audience to visualize. When you have scenes featuring five or six people, you no longer have a stand-up act. At that point you have a movie or a sitcom. You need the extra elements in a found only in movies and sitcoms (namely actors) to help the audience visualize what you are describing. I'm not saying a scene in a stand-up act with three characters can't work. I'm saying with more than two characters you run the risk of leaving the audience wondering, "Which character said that"?

Putting It All Together

I didn't touch on the more basic rules of editing because they aren't specific to comedy. However they all apply. You always want to create specific images. Not only for clarity, but for motives. Making my mom's car a new Buick gives her more of a reason to be angry after I fall onto the hood. Additionally, use the active, not the passive voice. Don't say he was running. Use phrases like he ran. Finally, give all the characters names, whether major or minor. It makes everything easier to deliver and visualize.

The path to sitcoms and movies are acts that present a strong sense of the comic's persona as well as the other characters within the comic's life. These characters must be strong and consistent throughout that comic's act. When you decide what your character's are really like, make sure you know what forces are influencing your generalizations. One of those forces is your own creativity. The other force is the audience's imagination. Make sure both forces are creating the same character.

You can easily identify your character's points-of-view by imagining how they would deliver jokes that weren't originally written for them. What would be their spin on a joke you wrote for someone else?

Last, knowing how to write dialog will also help you define secondary characters. Dialog fails in comedy when characters do not alternate between setups and punchlines. If both characters are given the jokes, it's almost as if they aren't listening to each other. To fix the problem, give one character the setups and let the other character follow with the punchlines. Remember as a stand-up you are a single person describing the entire world around you. Unless you're a great communicator, make sure any dialog within your act contains, at most, two characters. After you do all that, you'll be left with an act that features strength, consistency and a true understanding of good character development. That's where great sitcoms begin.