Fred Rubin – Comedy Writing

Posted by admin on March 25th, 2009 filed in Personal

Currently, Fred Rubin teaches classes at UCLA in comedy writing and screen writing. Fred Rubin is also an on-going instructor for the Warner Brothers Writer’s Workshop, the Disney Writer’s Fellowship, the Nickelodeon Writer’s Fellowship, Columbia College at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood and the ABC Talent Development Program. Here are the main points I took away from Fred Rubin’s Comedy Writing Workshop:

(1) Anybody with a sense of humor can be taught how to be funny

(2) Humor requires rhythm – a joke can be funny if you remove a syllable

(3) Rule of 3: the unfunny thing, the unfunny thing, the funny thing

(4) Negative emotions and dark-side are what comedy needs to exist

(5) “We laugh because we know”

(6) Best jokes come from character (obsessions, quirks, hobbies)

(7) Scatological, Vulgar, Profane, & Sex jokes are NOT CLEVER and anybody can write that

(8) Short and Sweet – brevity is key for comedy

(9) Incongruous, absurd, surprising are all funny

(10) Words that sound funny, are funny

(11) Things that look funny, are funny

(12) Animals given human attributes are funny

(13) Be mindful of common knowledge jokes – Be Current

(14) Parody – playing on the original of something e.g. “Houston we have a problem”

(15) Make characters with specific details, more specific, more funny

(16) Big things made small and vice versa is funny

(17) Anything exaggerated is funny – e.g. too short, too loud, too cheap, too mean

(18) Backpedaling is funny

(19) Things said in unison are funny

(20) Repetition is funny

(21) Words with a hard “c” and hard “k” sound are funny

(22) Let the joke come out of the dialogue, don’t write what is being said around the joke

(23) Don’t let any character exist in your script who isn’t funny

(24) Don’t try to save a great joke if it doesn’t fit in the scene