Actually, this is one of the best parts. It’s way more complex and more stressful figuring out a storyline. The final rewrite is about punching up jokes, adding gags, and having fun with the script.

The final step in the process is a doozy: feedback with notes, rewrite, group rewrite, actor table read with notes, final rewrite, and shoot it. If you are by yourself, find a way to get a table read done. You could post on social media and quickly organize a read using Zoom. You get a lot of valuable feedback when others read the script aloud.

Punchup writers were consistently the most-paid writers in the industry. Punchup is a big part of rewriting. You can leverage several mechanisms for joke writing:

1. The contrast between the sacred (religion, babies, funerals, and old people) and the profane (sex, violence, and bathroom stuff)
2. Defiance of expectation
3. Escalation
4. Turn
5. Irony
6. Wordplay like puns (careful puns might not make people laugh), alliteration, rhyming, etc.
7. Visual comedy often works better – the reversal of scale
8. Mismatch of the attitude to the situation
9. Freezeframe jokes (things in the background)
10. The rule of three (two good ones and a bad one)
11. Strong sounds in words (plosives, K sounds)
12. Callback (a mechanical and contrived reference to a previous joke)

The cold open must be funny. Just set up a comedic character in a situation. Find the easy path.

The principle of comedy that Brent shared comes from Wayne Federman: C.B.S. (clear, brief, and specific). If you were going to use the word animal in a joke, punch it up with a specific animal. Aardvark.

Whew. We made it through six weeks of classes from Brent Forrester. Each class was dense and compelling. I really appreciate Brent’s enthusiasm and encouragement along the way.

“The act of completing something is miraculous and could be life-changing!”

Brent Forrester

Set a deadline and get something done.

I have always been fascinated by using cards for TV show and movie scripts. I follow Thomas Schnauz, writer/producer for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, on Twitter and he occasionally posts the cards for his episodes. This process seems to scale to any level of complexity.

Pitching is about telling the story, out loud to others as many times as you can. The act of saying the story out loud as a pitch will help you understand what is working, what doesn’t work, and what gets a reaction. The story does not have to include comedy at this phase. There are plenty of opportunities to punch up the story. A “Goldilocks” is a written down form of the story. If you are writing a new comedy pilot, first pitch the show’s story by setting up the world and the main characters, then pitch the pilot episode’s story. A new comedy pilot pitch to a network should also include a deck of photos, characters, and visual elements to help establish this world that you are creating and inspire how you are going to make this a series. Spec writers can focus on the episode’s story since it is set in a known world. Be animated during your pitch. You are telling a story, act it out a bit.

Elements of a Story

Story is generally about two people: one with a goal and the other with opposition to the other. There are five keywords to help develop a story.

• Goals – Something that a character wants to do. Need goals to create a story. Clear goals work the best.
• Stakes – To build empathy with the characters, you need to have stakes. Think about how high the stakes can go. Raise the stakes.
• Conflict – Establish conflict between your characters. A story is a conflict between the two main characters and the B story is just another conflict between two secondary characters.
• Escalation – Layer onto the premise multiple times.
• Ending – Twist the audience’s expectations and resolve the conflict.

A half-hour comedy episode has multiple escalations played out as act breaks whereas a comedy sketch is compressed starting with a premise, at least two escalations, and a twist.

Pitching Notes

• Name your main character and use that name in your pitch. Have a few things to say about the character.
• Tell us about the world they are in.
• Find something you like about someone else’s pitch and reflect it back. This makes you a great pitch partner.
• You are writing for performers. Write what they love to perform. Make the contractions “performable”.

Brent taught the first class over Zoom from the Bahamas while being threatened by a hurricane. A lot of people in my circles are hating meetings and webinars on Zoom, but for me, “Zoom” meetings have given me access to folks and training that I couldn’t have pulled off in person. I appreciate what Brent is doing with the class and what a remote meeting can provide.

Here are some notes, tips, and takeaways from the brainstorming class.

Brent wanted us to feel the power of what we were doing. A whole bunch of us decided to meet on Zoom on a Saturday afternoon to learn about comedy writing. He set the context by talking about his origin story. Brent didn’t watch much or any TV growing up. He had a loose connection with Susan Harris who become Brent’s mentor. He got started by creating a writing sample which is a spec script of an existing show.

Three lessons from Susan Harris:

• Silly isn’t funny!
• Write the way people talk.
• Write about what’s difficult for you even if it’s painful and trust that it will come out funny.

Brent’s real education came from joining the writer’s room of The Simpsons. This is where he watched 100 episodes of the show and analyzed why jokes worked. He called this “autodidactic” learning and he just had to get in there and break everything down that others did by himself.

First Writing Hack: Writing is a solo act and this makes the process difficult. Brent recommended that we solve this problem by involving another writer. Having someone else involved in your work will help with motivation, quality, and growth as a writer. Related: involving any other person, writer or not, will help you. Tell that other person the story that you want to write. When you tell the story out loud something magical happens. What is confusing or moving or if there is an ending? The story is important. Also, learn how to be a good partner to others. Really listen to other writers when they are pitching. Reflect back to them something good about someone else’s pitch. Listen closely to the feedback. Be open to critical feedback.

First Writing Choice (for the class): Are you writing a spec script for an existing show or an original pilot script for a half-hour comedy show? The choice is important because you want to be writing about what you want to write about. Writing is hard enough so you should pick something that interests you and that want to explore. This will increase your odds of finishing a script.

Deadline Hack: Set a deadline. Always be writing towards a deadline. You will either be on time, early, or late. Your brain will start to have to wonder how you are going to hit that deadline. You will start breaking down the project into parts and making some progress. Brent asked the class to share a sacred vow. We all agreed to write a script in six weeks. We didn’t agree on quality, funniness, or completeness.

Deadlines are magical.

Brent Forrester

Where to start? A great comedy must have at least one great character. So, what is a great character? David Brent from The Office was inspired by a real-world boss who thinks he was great, but he was not. The character was created to mock this guy. Observation is a great way to find a great character. A great character In one word is a contradiction. A single, interesting contradiction. Tony Soprano, for example, is a mobster but in therapy.

Brent’s trademark formula is to find a character’s core comic contradiction. The three C’s. A comic character that is trying to come across one way but comes across another way. Then, you can layer onto the character by adding to the core contradiction. These are layers that make the character interesting. Write some background details about your character to provide a large pool of inspiration for the script and interactions. And, by the way, big funny moments by comedy actors are when they go from extremes in a split second.

Secondary characters exist to trigger your primary characters. They provoke the core comedy contradiction of your main character. Brent talked about King of the Hill. Hank Hill is the main character. Every other character like Bobby Hill, Hank’s son, is there to provoke Hank and challenge Hank’s viewpoint. All of the comedy comes from Hank believing one thing and then being pulled out of it by the other characters.

Structures of half-hour comedies:

• Central comic character model
• Center and eccentrics model – observation from the inside

A Promise from Brent: Writing gets fun the further along you are in the process. Brent promises.

Homework: Write a document about your primary and one secondary chracter. Watch two episodes of a half-hour comedy show that you like. Write down one of the scenes verbatim and tease it apart. Be analytical. Try to figure it out. Why is it funny? Why do you like it? Why is it funny?

Also, I learned that I need to watch Veep.

Here’s an outline of Brent Forrester’s TV Comedy Course:

• Class One: Brainstorming
• Class Two: Pitching
• Class Three: Cards
• Class Four: Outline
• Class Five: Draft
• Class Six: Rewrite

What sold me?

I happened to upon Brent Forrester’s talk from the WGFestival 2021: Fundamentals of the Comedy Pilot. It was a motivating session and compelled me to look closer at Brent Forrester’s method for TV comedy.

About Brent Forrester

Brent Forrester won his first Comedy Writing Emmy at age 25 for his work on “The Ben Stiller Show.”  He went on to write for “The Simpsons,” helped launch “King of The Hill,” and was a writer, producer, and director at NBC’s “The Office” for seven seasons.  He’s written for “Late Night with Conan,”  HBO’s “Mr. Show,” and “The Larry Sanders Show,” and continues to work as a Head Writer on Netflix shows like Judd Apatow’s “Love” and Steve Carrell’s “Space Force,” along with Amazon shows like Greg Daniel’s “Upload” and “People of Earth.” 

When Brent was running the Writers Room at “The Office,” he began developing a system to get a script from “concept” to “shooting draft” in three weeks.

Part of my journey

I will share my journey as I take the comedy writing class. I am not sure if I will write a TV comedy pilot, but I am furthering my commitment to write every day. I identified as a writer for about 10 years and realized that I wasn’t writing very much. About three years ago, I changed that. I started writing every day no matter what. Sometimes I wrote jokes or philosophical musings, but I wrote something. I also committed to blogging here every week. I am not writing for an audience, I am just making writing a habit.

Writing is hard.