Create Funnier Comedy By Focusing on the Characters

Comedy can be one of the hardest genres to write because you must consistently keep an audience laughing. That’s why most comedies are only 90 minutes long because keeping the laughs going for two hours is extremely difficult.

When creating a comedy, the first rule is that characters are funniest when they’re being the most serious. We, as the audience, laugh at the characters but from the characters’ perspective, they’re just trying to achieve their goals in a completely serious manner. So not only are characters dead serious in everything they say and do, but they’re also taking expectations and shattering them to generate laughs.

In 2023’s “Haunted Mansion”, which promoted itself as a horror comedy, there’s very little horror or suspense and very little comedy. That’s a recipe for failure. Watch this clip from “Haunted Mansion” and you’ll see that none of the characters shatter expectations in a humorous way. The scene is fairly straightforward with little to no laughs at all.

Now watch this scene from “Miss Congeniality” where the humor stems from the movie poking fun at the entire beauty pageant stereotype where all the women talk about wishing for world peace and the beauty pageant host asks a contestant to describe her perfect date and she says “April 25 because it’s not too hot and not too cold.”

Most of the humor from “Miss Congeniality” stems from poking fun at beauty pageants, which requires the audience to know about these beauty pageant stereotypes in advance. A far better way to generate comedy is through the outrageous antics of the characters themselves. In this scene from “School of Rock”, the hero is a frustrated guitarist who got kicked out of his band so he’s mad about losing his dream of being a rock star.

To make money, he impersonated his roommate to get a job in a private school. Because he doesn’t care about teaching, he shatters expectations by sleeping and doing nothing in class. When prodded into teaching the kids something, he goes on a rant about how life is unfair and you’re going to fail anyway, which exactly mirrors his own thoughts about life.

The humor stems from the hero acting completely unlike what we normally expect from a teacher. Instead of encouraging the kids, the hero tells them to give up. When the principal unexpectedly shows up, the hero immediately pretends he was just giving the kids an educational lecture.

In that “School of Rock” scene, the humor comes from the hero’s motivation and situation as a teacher in a private school. The humor is grounded in reality but another way to create humor is to be totally outrageous. Not only does the humor come from the characters’ motivation but it greatly exaggerates everything for comedic effect.

In this scene from “Talladega Nights”, the humor comes from both the hero’s motivation and the world of Southern hicks. The scene shatters our expectations because we expect kids to speak to their grandfather with respect (these kids don’t) and we expect people to say grace without focusing on irrelevant details like the age of Jesus.

Unlike the “School of Rock” scene that stays grounded in reality, this “Talladega Nights” scene is so outrageous that it’s funny because it’s such a wild exaggeration loaded with specific details. Notice that all the characters are deadly serious and don’t even realize they’re saying anything funny because only the audience should be aware of the humor.

Humor can range from completely outrageous (think “The Naked Gun” or “Airplane!”) to the almost serious (“School of Rock”). Whatever tone of humor you choose for your story, make sure you carry it consistently throughout the story.

“Talladega Nights” wouldn’t work if the humor shifted to a semi-serious tone like in “School of Rock”, and “School of Rock” would no longer work if the humor jumped to the outrageous like “Talladega Nights”.

Rewatch that 2023 “Haunted Mansion” scene and notice that the characters (actors) are trying to be funny instead of trying to be serious and not realizing they’re funny. The lack of organic humor derived from the character’s motivation and actions is the reason why comedies like “Haunted Mansion” flop so badly.

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