Your mum laughs at your jokes. Your friends tell you you’re funny. That thing you do with a box of paper clips is HILARIOUS to your cat (at least you assume that’s why he took a shit in your shoe) and you’re really good at your day job.
The trouble is, Twitter rarely retweets your jokes, the BBC won’t touch your sketches and your customers aren’t interested in your comedy videos. Also, it burns when you pee, but sadly I’m not going to cover that here.
The reason you’re struggling comes down to one simple fact – writing comedy is hard. REALLY hard. But here’s the rub… knowing this could make you a stronger comedy creative.
The thing is, when it comes to comedy, the barriers to entry are low – anyone can pick up a pen and write (even my one year old, but to be honest he’s just showing off). And with so many people having a go, occasionally some of the mud will stick to the wall.
BUT imagine if you had an advantage over other comedy creatives. Imagine you actually knew what you were doing (at least vaguely).
At Why did the Chicken? we can’t teach you to be naturally funny (sorry), but we can teach you how to come up with good ideas and which techniques you need to turn them into real, actual proper, comedy. Yes, I know – cool or wot? And if you’re still struggling, we can just do all the writing and editing for you. Hot dang.
Over the last few months, our team has helped 25 students get to grips with the art of writing jokes, sketch and sitcoms, wrote the Christmas special of the award-winning Damn the Torpedoes starring Lewis McLeod, ran the 2017 Funny Women Writing Award and wrote for BBC shows Breaking the News and Newsjack.
Here are nine ways we’re going to be supporting publishers and comedy creatives over the coming year – my question is, could any of them help YOU?
Sharing the Pro’s Comedy Secrets
We interview some of the best and brightest writing and performing talent around to get their comedy secrets and then share them with you. Past articles include the APA 2017 Comedy Producer of the year Matt Stronge and rising star Max Davis and we’ll soon be speaking to the winners of the Funny Women 2017 Writing Award.
Our rave reviewed courses takes complete beginners on a journey from discovering why we laugh through to the writing their first jokes and learning the secrets of sketch. Our 10-hour course uses videos, exercises, discussion and laughter to transform the way you think about comedy writing. We can deliver this course over five weekday evenings, a two day weekend or tailor shorter versions around your needs.
Working in partnership with The Comedy Crowd, we deliver an innovative and interactive seven-week course in the art of sitcom, creating a virtual online workspace for students to share ideas, work through exercises and learn the key building blocks of through video clips, example scripts and discussion. This unique course comes in two flavours – the First Draft Writersroom, which takes complete beginners all the way through to writing their first 10 pages and the Second Draft Writersroom, which helps more advanced writers transform an existing script into something up to twice as good. The same principles can also be applied to give you and your team a virtual workspace of comedy goodness.
Why did the Chicken? offer some of the most comprehensive, insightful and good value script reports on the market. We will review your script line by line, identifying strengths, questions and opportunities across Premise & Tone, Characters, Plotting & Structure and Dialogue & Humour, before giving you a marketability assessment and specific points to consider on each page.
The difference between an okay sketch or sitcom can often come down to three things – the director, the performers and the script. It may be sexier to invest your time in the first two, but without a solid script you’ll often come unstuck. Our team of experienced Script Editors are great at helping you find the funny and maximise your ideas through effective notes and suggestions, often improving sketch and sitcom scripts by a factor of two.
Perhaps you need a script but don’t have the writing talent on staff? Why did the Chicken? has access to a team of award-winning writers who can develop a script to meet your needs, be it for an advert, a social media campaign or a new sketch show.
As a regular comedy columnist for Salisbury Life, I’m used to writing to a brief and deadline and can add a splash of colour and humour to your publication.
Creating original content
We’re in the early stages of developing a small slate of original comedy content aimed at bringing new audiences to comedy and new subjects to established audiences. If your brand would benefit from some quality comedy content supporting it then get in touch and we’ll be glad to help!
Conferences
I’ll be talking comedy at a number of high profile events throughout 2018, including Craft of Comedy in June and the Swanwick Writers school in August. Want me to speak at your event? Please get in touch by e-mailing dan@whydidthechicken.com
