Finally!

Through all my research so far I have finally found talk about sketch writing. Gene Perret who wrote "The New Comedy Writing" also wrote for the Carol Burnett show and has a chapter in his book all about sketch writing. The information is also pretty detailed and gave me a lot of insight to sketch writing.

Perret says that sketches need to consist of 1. A Premise 2. Some complications 3. As resolution (or ending). By the look of the sketches I wrote, I feel I have all 3 of these. However, my sketches are not very long so the 3 of these elements seen to blend together.

Perret does a lot of detailing of how he wrote sketches and the problems he had in trying to work out the resoultions. Some of them worked and some didn't, so rewrites had to be done and that type of thing. What he does a good job at is explaining what a premise actually is. It is not simply, "A man works in a power plant" as that is just a setting. The premise would be "A man works in a power plant and spills coffee on the board knocking out power to the power plant" (that is a bad example but shows exactly what a premise is). You have to have something happen. I think, for the most part, the sketches I have do that.

After reading Perret I think that I work somewhat backwards in the realm of sketch writing. Instead of coming up with a premise and working to a resolution (which Perret says is the most difficult part) I always seem to have the end of the sketches in mind, and have to work my way to that. I prefer this method since to me, the endings are the most important, it gives the audience the jolt, or the punchline. I don't think there is a right or wrong way, that is just the way I write my comedy.

As well, Perret made a great point in that not all jokes have to be great jokes. Some need to be less funny than others as the laughter is a type of snowball effect. Little laughs grow to bigger ones, and than after the big laugh the little jokes carry on the laughter. That made me feel differently about my main sketch in the script I wrote. Someone said that the jokes that ended the segments may need a sharper punch. I agreed but after reading that I thought that the main sketch has the greatest surprise ending, so I shouldn't have enormous laughs before it. Leave those to the littler sketches and end on a crazy note.

We will see how it goes.