Tag: Comedy Books

I recently finished reading “On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director” by Alexander Mackendrick. Here’s the quotes I found interesting:

“Since the money we are gambling is mostly the business men’s, the least we can do is to act as if we were reliable and responsible characters: not artists but craftsmen, highly paid craftsmen who can be guaranteed to turn out goods of standard quality.” (xix)

“‘Creativity’ will always look after itself if you are prolific in production, which means starting off by turning out masses of work that is relatively unoriginal, derivative and imitative. When productivity has become second nature, you will find you have acquired a freedom in which your particular and personal individuality emerges of its own accord.” (xxiii)

“His response to our work was so incredibly un-lazy and passionate, and there was always a kind of warning bell that I heard whenever I was with him. To me it rang: ‘I am the writer and director of films you are still watching thirty years after I made them. The determination and commitment I have shown is something you will need if you are to in the world I have left behind.’” (xxiv)

“Film is not just something up there on the screen – it’s a happening in your head.” (xxxv)

“The value of any ‘rule’ is not apparent until you have studied the exception to it.” (xxxvii)

“Cinema is not so much non-verbal as pre-verbal.” (3)

“Hitchcock is suggesting that a good film should be ninety per cent understandable even if dubbed into a language no one sitting in the auditorium understands.” (4)

“Exposition in film is much more interesting after the dramatic event as a comment (or perhaps explanation) on it.” (6)

“If the only purpose of dialogue is to provide expository information to the characters in the scene but to the audience, it is boring.” (22)

“The comic figure is a caricature who cannot feel too much pain and whose emotions are simplified to the point of absurdity.” (34)

“Screenplays are not written, they are REWRITTEN and REWRITTEN and REWRITTEN.” (40)

“Use coincidence to get characters into trouble, not out of trouble.” (41)

“If you’ve got a Beginning, but you don’t yet have an end, then you’re mistaken. You don’t have the right Beginning.” (42)

“Character progression: When you’ve thought out what kind of character your protagonist will be at the end, start him or her as the opposite kind of person at the beginning.” (42)

“Anything that can be cut should be, because when everything non-essential is eliminated, what remains is greatly strengthened.” (46)

“Imagine yourself in the role of this antagonist. Begin to write an interior monologue in the first person, an account of the story as seen through the eyes of this antagonist.” (52)

“Choice of a story’s point of view very often determines the theme.”

“Every screenplay that finally became a film was rewritten a minimum of five and a maximum of seven times.” (58)

“Don’t wait to get it right, just get it written.” (58)

“A character is a personification of a point of view.” (58)

“A weakness in the third act is not just a weakness of the end of the screenplay, it is a fundamental weakness of the whole work.” (60)

“One of the writer’s jobs is to be the connection between two other personalities: the director speaking the film ‘language’ and the performer discovering the role.” (66)

“I urge you to avoid introducing technical jargon that is meant to demonstrate your acquaintance with problems of production for these things are not your business. While the impulse of a good director will be to scratch it all out, it also clearly indicates to the producer that you are a bumbling amateur.” (72)

“Professional screenplay shave a quality in common with good journalism: they use the minimum number of words to communicate the maximum information. A good screenplay must be not only easy to read, it should be easy to read fast.” (73)

“I find it useful to think of the audience as the enemy, to try to tell the story while always remembering that the audience has somewhere better to go and something better to do.” (77)

“A story can quickly become monotonous if tension is constant.” (80)

“They say that the most thoroughly deranged people are those who act in an utterly logical way, except that this logic is based on one insane premise.” (115)

“A line that reads quite implausibly on the printed page can be quite convincing and effective when spoken in a throwaway or incidental fashion by the actor.” (121)

“Dramatic economy, which includes the ability of the writer to cut what at one point he might have considered to be his best work ever, is one of the most important skills a writer can have, learned only through much experience, combined with a ruthless attitude and an utter lack of sentimentality. It takes effort, lots of effort. It means rewriting and rewriting and rewriting – a constant process of distillation.” (125)

“When a writing dilemma appears insoluble, it is not a bad tactic to push it deliberately out of your consciousness while you go off on other business, or indeed play.” (162)

“The first step in all dramatic writing is visual.” (165)

“It is the task of the writer and director to find some way of making character-action believable.” (166)

“The actor must decide what the character is saying to himself at all times, as if he were writing a continuous inner soliloquy that expresses his character’s thoughts, responses and attitudes. An actor who has mastered a role is able to speak this soliloquy out loud. He is, at all times, able to answer the question ‘What is this character really trying to say with his line?’ (even if his character is not). In this way, subtext can develop during rehearsal, quite unconsciously, as a way of controlling the inflections of words, the timing of gestures, and the length of silences.” (182)

“If you avoid eye contact by looking only during those brief instants when you have a real need to see seomthing, then your mind is constantly at work. Thus to scrutinize an object with extreme concentration, you must keep the focus of your attention in constant motion.” (184)

“Try the fixed look at your partner again but now keep the look moving from the mouth to the yes, the left eye to the right, the eyebrows to the chin. This will, on film at least, appear as a fixed concentration of your attention.” (184)

“A screen actor’s performance is likely to be much more useful to the director and the editor if his looks are no sustained but are rather a series of sharply defined flicks of the eye to check for information.” (185)

“The character who is ‘almost angry but a bit pitying’ will achieve this effect with more vitality if he shows an impulse to anger, quickly checked by a contradictory moment of pity, then by another flash of annoyance. If the girl who is resentful but intrigued alternates between moments of resentment and moments of interest, it is much clearer for the audience.” (187)

“This is perhaps the primary function of the director: to provide his actors with the same kind of support and stimulus the stage actor gets during a live performance.” (189)

“This is the reason why, in the vast majority of cases, the director who demonstrates to the actor by acting the role himself, by reading the line of dialogue for the actor to mimic or by performing the gesture so that the actor can copy it, has already failed.” (190)

“One of the most helpful things the director can do is invite the actor to improvise scenes that do not appear in the script but that in narrative terms have taken place just before the scene that is being presently explored.” (191)

“Questions are often more helpful to the actor than any answers the director might be able to offer (a good example being something like, ‘What happened to your character after the last scene and before this one?’). (191)

“A director contributes not by instructing the actor but by inspiring him.” (191)

“Every entrance is an exit from a previous situation and every exit is an entrance to somewhere else. Indeed, if this is not the case you should ask yourself whether or not the scene is necessary.” (193)

“You should know your story so completely that there is no question any actor can ask you about a character (including aspects of off-screen life and back-story) for which you cannot instantly improvise a convincing answer.” (193)

“The way to make a cut seem smooth is to make the jump of the mind’s eye one that the audience wants to make.” (199)

“The motivation for every cut should always be built into the preceding angle.” (199)

“It might not be too much to say that what a film director really directs is his audience’s attention.” (200)

“Making something eye-catching is not always a matter of making it bigger. Rather, it is about being that little bit different form everything else.” (201)

“We see the start of every action, then cut away and almost immediately reintroduce the action at a more advanced stage. It will appear to the audience as though it is all one uninterrupted process.” (211)

“A scene that involves very complicated and expensive logistics, crowds, special effects and elaborate production design can very profitably be planned in very precise detail beforehand. But if you are working on a scene with a lot of dialogue and the possibility of complex movements of actors during a sustained scene, it can be a mistake to plan the camera set-ups in advance in any rigid way.” (218)

“If one character is seen in close-up and the other in medium shot, our feelings of sympathy and/or identification are with the figure seen at the closer distance.” (225)

“IF one character is on screen for longer than another, and especially if edits are timed to capture the thoughts of that character, then the scene will often appear to be from his or her point of view.” (225)

“When cutting from a long-shot to a closer angle, it is generally a good idea to change the angle.” (249)

“When the edit is equivalent of a visual enlargement of the preceding picture, the problem is likely to be that we do not really see anything we haven’t already seen.” (249)

“If suspense is aimed for, the spectator must first be shown what to wait for. If a shock is intended, the pre-warning must be, so to speak, negative: the spectator must be deliberately led away from the significant event before it can come to him as a surprise.” (254)

“When editing, don’t try to preserve every aspect of both performances.” (256)

“Once the audience understands what is about to happen, when the impulse to act is clear, it’s time to make your cut, so the audience is able to see the consequences of that action.” (256)

“It makes good sense to begin by shooting the master-shot of a scene, even if it is not the first shot in continuity.” (260)

“When shooting a scene, always ask yourself, ‘If I was allowed only one close-up, where would it be and which character would it feature?’” (260)

“The experienced director will line up the closer angle with the actors in position and then instruct them to step out of the frame and move into position only after the camera is rolling.” (260)

“Theory will not usually help you to do work that is good, though it may be of some help to identify your mistakes, and thus can sometimes be useful for corrective purposes.” (289)

If you found these quotes helpful, please buy and read the book here.

I recently finished reading “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor” by David Mamet. Here’s the quotes I found useful/interesting.

“It is not childish to live with uncertainty, to devote oneself to a craft rather than a career, to an idea rather than an institution. It’s courageous and requires a courage of the order that the institutionally co-opted are ill equipped to perceive. They are so unequipped to perceive it that they can only call it childish, and so excuse their exploitation of you.” (18)

“Part of the requirement of a life in the theatre is to stay out of school.” (18)

“The audience will teach you how to act and the audience will teach you how to write and to direct. The classroom will teach you how to obey, and obedience in the theatre will get you nowhere. It’s a soothing falsity.” (19)

“If you want to be in the theatre, go into the theatre. If you want to have made a valiant effort to go into the theatre before you go into real estate or law school or marry wealth, then perhaps you should stay in school.” (19)

“The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.” (20)

“The actor has his own trials to undergo, and they are right in front of him. They don’t have to be super added; they exist. His challenge is not to recapitulate, to pretend to the difficulties of the written character; it is to open the mouth, stand straight, and say the words bravely – adding nothing, denying nothing, and without the intent to manipulate anyone: himself, his fellows, the audience.” (22)

“Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth.” –James Cagney (25)

“It is the audience that goes to the theatre to exercise its emotion – not the actor, the audience. And when they go, having paid to be moved, they exercise their right to their money’s worth.” (25)

“The actor creates excuses not to act and attributes her reluctance to everything in the world except the actual cause.” (29)

“Nobody cares how hard you worked. Nor should they.” (32)

“Any worthwhile goal is difficult to accomplish. To say of it “I’ll try” is to excuse oneself in advance.” (34)

“Those with “something to fall back on” invariably fall back on it. They intended to all along. That is why they provided themselves with it.” (34)

“Where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?” (35)

“One could also say, “I see nothing else worth my time,” which is, I think, a rather strengthening attitude.” (35)

“It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.” (41)

“To serve in the real theatre, one needs to be able to please the audience and the audience only.” (42)

“The opinion of teachers and peers is skewed, and too much time spent earning their good opinion unfits one for a life upon the stage.” (42)

“You will not please either yourself or others in every aspect of every outing.” (48)

“They come to the show to be pleased, and they will be pleased by the honest, the straightforward, the unusual, the intuitive – all those things, in short, which dismay both the teacher and the casting agent.” (50)

“You have an enormously greater chance of eventually presenting yourself to, and eventually appealing to, an audience by striking out on your own, by making your own plays and films, than by submitting to the industrial model of the school and the studio.” (51)

“The audience perceives only what the actor wants to do to the other actor.” (56)

“Here, again, is your job: learn the lines, find a simple objective like that indicated by the author, speak the lines clearly in an attempt to achieve that objective.” (57)

“It is not necessary to believe anything in order to act.” (57)

“You have to learn the lines, look at the script simply to find a simple action for each scene, and then go out there and do your best to accomplish that action, and while you do, simply open your mouth and let the words come out however they will.” (62)

“For to you, to the actor, it is not the words which carry the meaning – it is the actions.” (62)

“What matters is what you mean. What comes from the heart goes to the heart. The rest is Funny Voices.” (63)

“Two things should happen in the rehearsal process: 1. The play should be blocked 2. The actors should become acquainted with the actions they are going to perform.” (72)

“An action is the attempt to accomplish something.” (72)

“Each character in the play wants something. It is the actor’s job to reduce that something to its lowest common denominator and then act upon it.” (74)

“The correct unit of study is not the play; it is the scene.” (75)

“The boxer has to fight one round at a time; the fight will unfold as it is going to. The boxer takes a simple plan into the ring, and then has to deal with the moment. So do you. The correct unit of application is the scene.” (76)

“The greatest performances are seldom noticed. Why? Because they do not draw attention to themselves, and do not seek to – like any real heroism, they are simple and unassuming, and seem to be a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the actor.” (79)

“If we devote ourselves to the punchline, all else becomes clear. The punchline is the action.” (83)

“You don’t have to become more interesting, more sensitive, more talented, more observant – to act better. You do have to become more active.” (84)

“Nobody with a happy childhood ever went into show business.” (87)

“Your concentration is always like water. It will always seek its own level – it will always flow to the most interesting thing around.” (94)

“The more you are concerned with yourself, the less you are worthy of note.” (95)

“The more a persons’ concentration is outward, the more naturally interesting that person becomes.” (95)

“It’s not your responsibility to do things in an interesting manner – to become interesting. You are interesting. It’s your responsibility to become outward-directed.” (95)

“Why not direct yourself toward the actions of the play? If they are concrete, provocative, and fun, it will be no task at all to do them; and to do them is more interesting than to concentrate on them.” (95)

“No one wants to pay god money and irreplaceable time to watch you be responsible. They want to watch you be exciting.” (97)

“Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.” (99)

“Leave the concerns of the street on the street. And when you leave the theatre, leave that performance behind you. It’s over – if there is something you want to do differently next time, do it.” (102)

“If you decide to be an actor, stick to your decision. The folks you meet in supposed positions of authority – critics, teachers, casting directors – will, in the main, be your intellectual and moral inferiors. They will lack your imagination, which is why they became bureaucrats rather than artists; and they will lack your fortitude, have elected institutional support over a life of self-reliance. They spend their lives learning lessons very different from the ones you learn, and many or most of them will envy you and this envy will express itself as contempt. It’s a cheap trick of unhappy people, and if you understand it for what it is, you need not adopt or be overly saddened by their view of you. It is the view of the folks on the veranda talking about the lazy slaves.” (110)

“You don’t have to portray the hero or the villain. That’s been done for you by the script.” (114)

“Most of us have learned something from a teacher. But I doubt if anyone ever learned anything from an Educator.” (122)

If you liked these quotes, please buy and read the book here.

I recently finished reading “Directing Improv: Show The Way By Getting Out Of The Way” by Asaf Ronen. Here’s the quotes I found interesting/useful.

“Once you hit your goal, you’re going to want to go somewhere else.” –Bob Dassie (6)

“It is harder to mark progress without a leader.” (6)

“In an improv scene, you can have the game of one-upsmanship between the two characters which employs the skill set of listening, character and environment.” (12)

“Look at what characters commit to most emotionally. That is where the drive is for the characters and thus is the drive for the scene.” (12)

“Just as players can sabotage themselves by going for the joke, directors can sabotage themselves by striving for the unique.” (13)

“When we forcefully strive to be unique, we are no longer fulfilling our purpose, which his to guide the group. Just as going for the joke at the expense of the scene is selfish, so is trying to make yourself look like a brilliant guru at the expense of real guidance. Your focus should always be on the group you are leading, rather than the specifics of what you are leading them through.” (13)

“Improvisation, for all its technique and complexities, can still be broken down into these two acts: making a choice and committing to that choice.” (16)

“Those who try to create their own definition of what the work truly is will find that they are still derivative of what came before, except now they have made it more complicated.” (17)

“Instead of spotlighting a player’s weakness, give them a challenge to focus on that will force them into other choices.” (22)

“Sometimes I will simply ask the troupe I am directing, “Which scene did you have the most fun doing? Which scene do you think I had the most fun watching?” (35)

“Allow yourself to be wrong and adapt every once in a while. It is a stronger place to build from than from a place of vagueness so as to appeal to everyone with whom you are working.” (42)

“All things, regardless of how subtle or bland, are choices, and that when we commit to them they become strong choices.” (63)

“What makes a choice strong and realistic is commitment.” (69)

“There is no killjoy as big as obligation when it comes to performing.  (75)

“Keeping the concept to a single arc that can be defined in one sentence is a good way to guarantee simplicity and fun.” (85)

“You most definitely start your process by being selfish. In fact, you should embrace it. It is nice to say that the performance is for the audience, but it is not true, unless you are on a gig at a pediatric cancer ward or doing a show for the elderly or the homeless. You are first and foremost performing for yourself. It drives you. It speaks to you. It feeds you. Show appreciate for the audience at all times – they are paying you the honor of coming to see your show above everything else they could be doing – but do not create the show for them. Don’t blame them when the show doesn’t work and don’t create the show for them.” (86)

“Whatever the case may be, it will be easier to make a show more palatable to others once you have your own stakes in it figured out.” (86)

“There is a tendency to add new rules to safeguard against failure, but it is more effective to scale back the parameters that are already in place.” (88)

“While you do not have control over what the audience will like, you do have control over how strong your product is and that is a much more productive focus for you to have.” (89)

“If we focus too much on the other person’s actions, rather than developing our reactions, we stifle the flow.” (111)

“Sometimes people just need to be heard and know that they are heard so that they can feel valued.” (119)

“Not casting an extremely talented person because they are going to be high maintenance to deal with, is THE BEST reason to not cast someone.” –Joe Bill (120)

If you liked the quotes, buy and read the full book here.

I recently finished reading “Art By Committee: A Guide To Advanced Improvisation” by Charna Halpern. Here’s the quotes I found useful/interesting.

“What we learn to do in the beginning is what we need to do in the end.” (5)

“All the characters that we play are really subsets of ourselves. It’s ourselves in slightly different moods – ourselves carrying a little more emotional freight.” (9)

“Your job is to take that suggestion and discover a theme for the piece.” (17)

“You will find your relationship in the first three lines of your scene. Pay close attention ot those lines – it’s always there.” (19)

“When the players forget the focus of the scene and begin new relationship in every beat, the Harold tends to peter out at the end.” (19)

Del’s General Principles for the Harold
1. You are all supporting actors
2. Always check your impulses
3. Never enter a scene unless you are needed!
4. Save your fellow actor, don’t worry about the piece.
5. Your prime responsibility is to support.
6. Work at the top of your brains at all times.
7. Never underestimate or condescend to your audience.
8. No jokes (unless it is tipped in front that it is a joke).
9. Trust… trust your fellow actors to support you:
a) Trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them.
b) Trust yourself.
10. Avoid judging what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help (either by entering or cutting), what can best follow, or how you can support imaginatively if your support is called for.
11. Listen!

“The only real mistake is to ignore the mistakes in their work.” (31)

“Watch the news, familiarize yourself with the classics, find your voice, and form an opinion. If you don’t have anything to say, what is there to be funny about?” (40)

“Confidence brings about calmness. With that comes the ability to think and take the time to come up with the best response possible, rather than quick silly joke.” (41)

“The worst thing that might happen if you look stupid is that people might laugh, and, since we are doing comedy, that’s not a bad thing.” (46)

“Being nervous is great! How often do we get nervous on a daily basis? Being slightly nervous means you care, and you’re alive, and you’re taking some kind of risk. Hooray for being nervous! A friend told me to substitute the word ‘excitement’ for ‘nervous.’ That was you acknowledge the physical feelings without putting a negative spin on things. So to answer your question, sometimes I still get so excited about ‘Weekend Update’ that I want to throw up.” –Amy Poehler (46)

“The audience comes to enjoy a show and escape their own lives for a couple of hours. They don’t want to see you argue and be reminded of how miserable they sometimes are in their everyday existence.” (50)

“People don’t pay good money to watch us judge ourselves.” (65)

“When you indicate that something is funny, it really isn’t.” (67)

“The more you wait to add to the group, the more the jump rope turns into a large steel cable.” (69)

“The people who loved the work were the ones who were noticed.” (81)

“Del used to say that the people who come here with tunnel vision to be stars usually end up in community theater somewhere.” (81)

“Just be devoted to the work, take the time to get good, and the rest will take care of itself.” (81)

“All of you must remember that you will never have done it all. Do not stop creating. The excitement is in the work.” (82)

If you liked the quotes, please buy and read the whole book.

I just finished reading “The Comic Toolbox” by John Vorhaus. Here’s the quotes I found interesting.

“In blind obeisance to the rules, I forgot to have fun. And jeez, if you can’t have fun in… any creative endeavor, why bother?” (xiv)

“Comedy is truth and pain.” (2)

“People who don’t “get” a joke, or take offense at it, often feel that way because they don’t accept the “truth” that the joke presents.” (5)

“What makes a thing funny is how it impacts the generally held beliefs of the audience hearing the joke.” (5)

“You often don’t have to tell a joke to get a laugh; sometimes you just have to tell the truth.” (6)

“The class clown tells jokes everyone gets while the class nerd tells jokes that only he gets.” (7)

“Most of us have more humor than we know. What we don’t always have is the will to risk, and the will to risk is really the will to fail… a willingness to fail is one of the most valuable tools in your comic toolbox.” (9)

“As it says in the Koran, if you knew how little people thought about you, you wouldn’t worry what they thought.” (11)

“For every ten jokes you tell, nine will be trash. For every ten ideas you have, nine won’t work. For every ten times you risk, nine times you fail.” (12)

“When you expect success, you fear failure. You have something to lose. However, with the rule of nine, your expectations start so low that you have very nearly nothing to lose.” (12)

“The process of failure is vital to the product of success.” (13)

“As long as I dwell on what it’s like to be a made guy, a winner, on can’t concentrate on writing this book – the very thing I’m hoping will make me a made guy in the end.” (14)

“Hope of success can kill comedy just as surely as fear of failure.” (14)

“Require of yourself only that you do what you can do now.” (15)

“Applaud every small victory, because every time you do, you create an environment in which a larger victory can grow.” (15)

“The better you imagine yourself to be, the better you become. And how did you get better? By abandoning all interest in getting better in the first place.” (16)

“You’re concentrating on the process, not the product.” (17)

“Push everything into pigeonholes and in the end all you get are squished pigeons.” (25)

“Make every effort tot move from the general to the specific. Life is better there.” (26)

“Every comic character begins and ends with his strong comic perspective… The comic perspective is a character’s unique way of looking at his world, which differs in a clear and substantial way from the “normal” world view.” (31)

“Comedy flows from a character’s unique, quirky, offbeat way of looking at the world.” (32)

“Take your comic character’s comic perspective to the end of the line.” (34)

“Most failed comic characters fail as a function of their limited exaggeration.” (34)

“Flaws in a comic character work to open emotional distance between a comic character and viewers or readers so that those viewers or readers can comfortably laugh at, say, someone slipping on a banana peel. Without this emotional distance, the truth and the pain of a situation hit too close to home for an audience to find funny. A thing is only funny if it happens to the other guy, and flaws in a character work to make him “the other guy” in a reader’s or viewer’s mind.” (36)

“A comic character, in at least one sense, is the sum of his flaws… A flaw can also be a positive aspect that’s taken too far.” (37)

“Find a flaw and you’ve found a comic character.” (37)

“What you really want is a synergy between flaws and perspective so that some flaws conflict with the perspective while others reinforce it… in the best comic characters, flaws and perspective go to war… flaws reflect his true nature; comic perspective is his fantasy self-image.” (38-39)

“Flaws create conflict within characters, and they create emotional distance between character and audience.” (39)

“We used flaws to drive a wedge between the character and the audience so that the audience could laugh. Now we use humanity to build a bridge between the character and the audience so that the audience can care.” (39)

“All comic characters have humanity. If they don’t, we don’t care. It’s as simple as that.” (40)

“That’s a classic definition of humanity: He’ll do the right thing in a pinch.” (40)

“For every flaw, there is an equal and opposite humanity. The worse you make some aspects of a comic character, the better you must make others.” (41)

“One of the surest ways to create humanity is to give your comic character an indomitable will. No character is more compelling, more engaging, than the one who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal.” (41)

“Be careful in assigning humanity. It’s not enough to say of a character, “ (Sure, he’s a hit man, but he loves his mother so he’s okay.” A character’s humanity must be a real part of his character. If it’s pasted on, you get a cartoon and not a character.” (41)

“Humanity, then, is the sum of a character’s positive human qualities that inspire either sympathy or empathy or both.” (41)

“Find your comic perspective and you have found your comic voice, the platform on which your humor can reliably and consistently stand from now until the day you die. Maybe even beyond.  (46)

“Instead of thrashing randomly for inspiration, we can simply generate a list of titles, ask what promise each title makes, and then develop the most promising premises among them.” (48)

“Clash of context is the forced union of incompatibles.” (48)

“Pick a situation and ask yourself what the logical response to that situation would be. Then find the opposite of that response.” (50)

“A comic story is not about a setting or a situation or a predicament, but about strong and enduring lines of conflict between and among the characters.” (60)

“You have to drive them apart with their differences, and yet link them to an overriding common goal or struggle.” (68)

“A well structured story gives joke a place to happen. It tells the audience whose story to follow. If they don’t know how to follow, they don’t know who to care about. If they don’t care, they don’t laugh.” (76)

“Until you decide who your story is about, you have no hope of discovering what your story is about.” (77)

“An interesting and well-constructed comic hero has not one strong need but two: his outer need and his inner need. Put simply, the outer need is what the hero thinks he wants and his inner need is what he really wants.” (79)

“The most interesting heroes have many levels of comic need.” (81)

“If your story is tracking right, you’ll come naturally to the moment when your hero is poised between two things he really wants, two things which are clearly mutually exclusive.” (95)

“There’s no tension in the scene. No tension equals no release. No release equals no laugh.” (118)

“Here’s a guy with everything riding on that bet. There’s so much tension in the scene that the audience is practically begging to laugh, just to ease the tension. This is what you want.” (119)

“Logic and comedy are not always close friends, nor often even nodding acquaintances.” (120)

“It’s hard to find the humor of a scene just by asking, “What’s the humor of this scene?” But it’s easy to ask, “What’s at stake?” And when you know what’s at stake, you’ll know what’s funny, too.” (122)

“People laugh because they care, because they feel your character’s urgency and desire.” (122)

“Your audience has already suspended its disbelief. They don’t want logic, they just want laughs.” (123)

“When you’re confronted with a choice between story logic and story dynamic, always make the boldest, noisiest, most dynamic choice, even if it beggars credibility.” (123)

“Too much is never enough; you can always make a bad situation worse.” (123)

“We make logical choices because we assume that the audience wants them, but this is a false assumption. The best stories have so much boldness in their story choices and pot twists that the audience ignores or forgives lapses in logic. Comedy is not technical writing. If you build something genuinely funny, no one will care if there are a few pieces left over.” (124)

“To sum up comedy and jeopardy, then, take the unfocused, unproductive questions, “How can I make this scene funny?” and replace it with a simpler, smaller, detail-driven questions, “How can I raise the stakes?” Next, divide that question in two: “How can I raise the price of failure?” and “How can I raise the prize for success?” Break those questions down into specifics: “What several outcomes might my hero fear?” “What several outcomes might he crave?” End by asking and dismissing the question, “Is it logical?”” (124)

“The small conflicts reflect the big conflict. What’s being played out thematically is also being played out in the moment.” (126)

“But be aware that too much alliteration soon palls. What’s worse, it calls attention to itself so that your cleverly turned phrase may actually detract from the emotional impact.” (127)

“The best lines in comic writing do three truly marvelous things: They tell the story, tell the truth, and tell a joke, all at the same time. I call this kind of line a three-dimensional joke.” (133)

“You don’t need to pander to your audience, but you don’t want to alienate them either. Unless, of course, alienation is your act.” (137)

“Meeting an audience’s expectation is about the single most useful thing a comic creator can do to win an audience’s allegiance. Violating that expectation, on the other hand, is the kiss o’ death.” (137)

“Not everybody likes Howard Stern’s material, and not everybody’s going to like yours, no matter how carefully you shape and tailor it.” (138)

“Watch the new sitcoms. Try to be the first on your block to write a spec script for a smart new show.” (140)

“There’s no point in writing a spec script for a show you just don’t like, no matter how poplar or smart it may be, for the simple reason that you won’t write the script very well.” (140)

“Comedy is less about laughs than about willful, perverse destruction of a character’s serenity and peace.” (143)

“A sitcom is just a mirror on the world; it tends to tell people exactly what they want to hear. If not, it tends to get canceled.” (143)

“Another quick-and-dirty way to get a line on your sitcom story. Think in the following terms: introduction, complication, consequence, and relevance.” (146)

“If you shortchange your time in outline, it will only come back to haunt you in script.” (150)

“Once you’ve completed a first draft of your story outline, you want to examine it at length for two things: problems and opportunities.” (150)

“When dealing with story problems, you need to think in terms of two kinds of logic: plot logic and story logic. Plot logic is outer logic, the sequence of events that you, the writer, impose on your story. Story logic is the inner logic of your characters, the reasons they have for behaving the way they do. All of your story moves must satisfy both plot logic and story logic. In other words, your characters must do what they do to move the story forward, but their actions have to make sense to the characters themselves.” (151)

“As you rewrite your story outline, make sure that every move every character makes is justified by who that character is, what he wants, and how we understand him to behave.” (151)

“The more time you spend in outline, the better your eventual script will be.” (152)

“Always ask yourself, “What’s the worst possible thing that could happen to this person next?” and then find a way to make that worst thing happen.” (156)

“If you’re not willing ot commit to rewriting and editing, you might as well go drive a track.” (163)

“For every desire you have to improve the work, there will be an equal and opposite desire to protect your ego instead. This creates a dynamic conflict within, and it can make you very unhappy. Eventually you have to decide whom to serve. Will you serve your ego, or will you serve your work?” (163)

“It’s far, far easier to turn bad material into good material, or good material into great material, than it is to get everything (or even anything) right on the first try. Break it down. Mine it, then refine it.” (164)

“At every opportunity, present yourself with the challenge to cut. Why is this a good idea? Because if you force yourself to cut, say, 50% of your existing work, the 50% that remains will have withstood a fairly rigorous test. By natural selection, the strongest material is always left standing. Write long and cut relentlessly, to the benefit of your work.” (165)

“To move forward from this point, I’m going to have to give up some gains.” (165)

“Avoid falling in love with your jokes. Even though it’s funny, who says it can’t be funnier still? Avoid closure; the longer you put off saying you’re done, the better your finish will be.” (168)

“Peers make your best beta testers. Find people working at about your level and within your area of interest. Be willing to return the favor and beta test for them. This not only puts them in your debt, but also gives you a chance to learn from someone else’s mistakes besides your own.” (170)

“Once you tell people what you’re afraid of, you no longer have to worry about their finding that thing out.” (176)

“It’s okay to offend part of your audience if you connect with another part. If you offend too many and amuse too few, though, you’ll have no audience at all. And humor requires an audience.” (179)

“It’s okay if some people really hate your stuff. That means they feel strongly about it, and this admits the possibility that others will love it just as strongly. The place you want to avoid si the vast, bland middle ground where your humor is safe, innocuous, offensive to no one – and thus compelling to no one. You want your humor to move people, and that won’t happen unless your choices are bold.” (179)

“If you’re not as funny as you want to be, perhaps you’re not working hard enough. But rest assured that someone else out there is working hard enough, working twice as hard as you. If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to take a lot more batting practice than you ever imagined. And you’re never going to stop, not even when you become successful. Because as soon as you stop practicing, your skills begin to fade.” (182)

“Talent + Drive + Time = Success” (186)

“With every step I take, I’m moving farther from the beginning. I may never reach the end of the road, but I can always get farther from the start. Just as I focus on process, not product, I also bend my attention to journey, not destination.” (187)

If you like these quotes, I suggest buying the full book here.