How do you make a codependent relationship funny?

Or someone needing medical marijuana?

Or an impoverished country starving?

These are the types of questions we ask ourselves when we’re trying to create comedy from real life. Whether we’re an improv team trying to string together a show or a writer creating satire, we are faced again and again with the issue of trying to pull comedy from something that isn’t funny at all.

(In an improv show we’re often given a list of details, through a story, interview, article, or sometimes even interpretive dance, and we are supposed to use those details to create funny scenes)

We’ll call this pull specific task, pulling premises, since it’s starting with a real scenario as a premise and turning it into laughs. But we could just as easy call it alchemy, much like Rumplestiltskin, trying to spin the straw of real life drama into comedy gold.

The truth is, though, it’s not all that difficult to do. It just requires a special shift in thinking, but this shift will help you find funnies in pretty much anything.

Finding the funny

When pulling premises from a detail, there’s one question that’s going to be your best friend: where does the comedy reside in this?

Sometimes this answer is obvious. If we hear a story about a 50 Cent CD being sold on the bargain rack for 49 cents, we know exactly what the funny is.

But sometimes we have to dig a little deeper.

What is funny about a codependent couple?

Key and Peele asked this question and came up with the comedy residing in the lengths one person will go to get the other person to chase in their sketch, “Meegan, Come Back.”

What is funny about someone needing medical marijuana?

Matt Walsh faced this in an improv Asssscat and came up with the comedy residing in the more ridiculous reasons someone might feel they need it.

What is funny about people getting desperate in an uneven class system?

Jonathan Swift decided it was how uncaring the rich were, and wrote a satire, A Modest Proposal, on how poor people should sell their children to them as food (a satire people many took seriously).

If the pressure of finding funny feels difficult to judge, you can instead ask yourself, what is the most unusual thing about this particular situation. That will most often yield the same answer.

If someone tells you that they broke up with their significant other through text, you might deduce that the most unusual thing is the use of text for such a major, emotional act. You might then parody it by doing something like a doctor giving a patient six months to live over text.

Your gut will lead you to the right place, but trusting your instincts is the only way to get there.

Putting on the twist

Once you have identified the most unusual thing, it’s time to put the twist on it.

There’s a lot of different ways you could go about it. Jonathan Swift could have just as easily written an essay about how we should eat our elderly. But to him, going with babies was funnier.

I write about this in detail in my article, The LOL Formula, but the formula for creating comedy is (Normal + Absurd)Specificity = Funny. The “normal,” we already have established. It’s the codependence within the couple, the use of medical marijuana, the breakup through text. It’s the absurd we’re amplifying and nailing with specificity.

There is a specific balance you want to hit to really make this specificity land.

Go far enough

When we amp up the ridiculousness, we have to push it to the point where it’s actually funny.

If the Key and Peele sketch would have ended in the middle of the street, it would have been slightly funny, but it would be too close to normal for it to really be funny.

This scene of Scary Movie parodies the original Scream

It finds the funny in horror movie zoom shots, the ability of the villain to hide in the house, make-shift weapons, and how easy it is for these white characters get to get help (while staying in complete step with the original film) If the scene didn’t have these over the top jokes, instead of comedy, it would instead be regarded as an homage or, worse, a ripoff. Either way, it would no longer be considered comedy.

Make it recognizable

You can go too far this way, though, and push the ridiculous element so far that the audience no longer recognizes it.

Imagine if the Key and Peele sketch started with the crawl through the desert. The audience would be wondering WTF because nothing in it resonates with something that they recognize.

A way you can get there is by heightening. I talk about this a lot in my article Visiting Crazy Town, but the way to do it is to start minor and then keep making more and more ridiculous, going from the street to the boat and then eventually to the desert.

Another way to do this is to hit details or tropes from what you’re parodying so that it’s instantly recognizable to the audience.

Besser and Amy Poehler use a realistic doctor/patient setup.

Scary Movie uses specific lines and shot replications from Scream to make it as easily recognizable.

Living the balanced life

This balance is something you want to keep in mind at all times. The struggle is to always make these moments recognizable to the audience while also remaining far enough to land as comedy.

This is easy to remedy in writing. You just rewrite it.

However, this is more of a challenge in improv since you can’t take back what you just did.

Fortunately you can compensate if you go too far one way or the other. If you land too close to what you’re parodying, just heighten the unusual thing, making it more and more ridiculous. If you land too far away, and the audience clearly doesn’t know what you’re doing, see what details you can include to tell them what you’re having fun with.

That said, it’s always best if you can land in the perfect place and get laughs immediately. Practice will get you there.

Some things are tough to make funny, without a doubt.

I’ve been in improv shows, where we’ve had to pull premises from mundane details, sad events, and once even a borderline murder.

Someone, though, was always able to turn it around and make it funny.

This is all about mindset. Coming in, looking for what’s funny, and then exaggerating that funny in the right way.

Elvis Costello asked, “What’s So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding?”

And with the right mindset, we can answer him.