For a sitcom, what is more important, having a great story or great laughs. OK you probably need both but is it 50-50 or should one be more important than the other?
Story v Laughs
It depends on what kind of audiance you are going for and who you are sending it to.
Good point, maybe a better way to word this is to say what do people prefer in a sitcom - just laughs or a strong story?
I'd say character. But to answer your question, properly, laughs.
Theres no real good anwser to what people prefer in general, just write it the way you want to write it then figure out who likes that style.
But as leevil says generally character is best because it is both potentially very funny and can advance a plot.
Personally I think if it's supposed to be 'comedy' then getting the laughs must be the most important aspect. Making people laugh, especially to the level Sitcom requires, is pretty difficult. With Sitcom laughs are achieved by putting particular character types into particular situations that they are rarely good at dealing with 'effectively'. The character's world is closed and they don't learn anything (about how best to handle things) from one episode to the next. I said all this, plus added a load of other factors that I think contribute to Sitcom in:
https://www.comedy.co.uk/writers/why_audiences_laugh.shtml
Sorry to bore those of you who have already ploughed through it! But you really do need those laughs, and a heck of a lot of them, as my article's opening paragraphs suggest. How you get the laughs is another matter. Unfortunately I don't find more recent Sitcoms (to those I mention) nearly as funny as the earlier 'classics' like Fawlty Towers, OFAH, Red Dwarf, later Blackadder, and so on. But maybe that's just me!!
I've always rated laughs as higher importance than storyline. Look at Father Ted. Some (Maybe all!?!) of the storylines are stupid and don't realy have any point to them, but the laughs are always huge. So when I write, I think about laughs first. After saying that, I would love to write a great story.
hey, thanks for that.
Hmm, it's a tough one. But with sitcom you can't have one without the other really, definitely the laughs are the main focus as that is the aim of a comedy. But a strong plot will give something for viewers to be enthralled within, and a strong plot should be able to derive laughs from it. I'm a person who thinks up funny plots before I start writing, rather than thinking of funny dialouge or one off gags.
Quote: earman2009 @ August 23, 2007, 7:45 PMI've always rated laughs as higher importance than storyline. Look at Father Ted. Some (Maybe all!?!) of the storylines are stupid and don't realy have any point to them, but the laughs are always huge. So when I write, I think about laughs first. After saying that, I would love to write a great story.
They may have been stupid, but they all had storylines. It's a matter of order rather than priority. E.g. it goes Setting, Characters, Story, Laughs - i.e. once you've finished the story, you can add as many laughs as you like in later.
Seinfeld an episode could have the plot of waiting for a table in a chinese, it was garanteed to be funny though.
I think we're looking at it wrongly. It isn't one versus another but that the plot is the structure onto which we hang the scenes and the dialogue (and hopefully the laughs).
Having a crap plot or a great plot doesn't ensure that the laughs will automatically follow because they operate at two different levels in the writing process.
A brilliantly funny (and therefore ideal) plot will sound funny when you tag line it. A bad plot can still make a very 'laugh-dense' show BUT the payoff of plot conclusion will leave the viewer unsatisfied. Classic examples of this are shows like Comic Strip where several episode plots were amateurishly concluded and made for a disappointing experience.
Still one of the best Futurama shows (for me) is the one that makes me cry. Fry and his dog is so well paid off (for me).
IMO the conundrum doesn't exist. They are independent of each other.
I agree with slaggA in that you need both but i think the story is more important than people think.
Somebody mentioned father ted in regards to them being thinly plotted but this isn't true. If you read the scripts you see that they know alot about plots etc.
Plus almost all of the episodes followed a tradidional format. They just used the comedy techniques of absurdity and incongruity alot.
That said being funny does help!
There are also plenty of sitcoms which are clearly very focused on story, some might rather call them light hearted dramas but just look at (or rather listen to) comedies like "no commitments" or "three of the tee" very very plot focused some entire scenes with no laughs at all yet brilliant in it's own way, not all comedy has to be of 1 type.
They do say it's easier to come up with jokes than a plot. The thing with character though is if you've built it right that person doesn't even need to say anything and you know what they're thinking/what's coming. Witness Newman opening the door to Jerry in Seinfeld. Nothing needs to be said but you know the contempt they feel for each other. And it's funny.