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It is well said that there are no rules in funny. A traditional story needs a specific story shape in order to work because the payoff is in the climax and denouement. But comedy, though it can con...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:53Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27327 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T06:16:57Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27327 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T06:16:57Z (about 5 years ago)
It is well said that there are no rules in funny. A traditional story needs a specific story shape in order to work because the payoff is in the climax and denouement. But comedy, though it can conform to this structure, does not need to. The payoff is funny. It does not need to end logically. It just needs to end funny. Stop when you run out of jokes. Now, the final joke of many skits is a kind of counterpoint. In the Fork Handles sketch, after the first shop assistant had been driven mad by the ambiguous requests of the customer, he calls for another assistant and the confusion starts over again. The counterpoint is the new victim, but the sketch ends because it has repeated the gag as many times as it is funny. It is a back door out of the sketch that you take when the gag stops being funny. The basic formula seems to be no more than this: come up with gag, repeat while still funny, interrupt, and exit.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2017-03-23T12:53:38Z (almost 8 years ago)
Original score: 2