Chantoozie
Thursday 3rd March 2011 5:40pm
33 posts
Quote: StephenM @ March 3 2011, 5:08 PM GMT
I had a thought so let me share it with you.
How many people got a credit last series of Newsjack but haven't got one this series? And vice versa how many got one this series but not for series 3? (I fall in the former category)
They've changed the production team and the script editor for series 4 so you might expect that there would be a change in tastes at Newsjack towers.
I say this more to suggest that comedy is very subjective and what one person finds funny another may not. Both could be funny, just to different people. And that elusive credit relies on the person reading your stuff having the same sense of humour as you as well as it actually being good.
Or maybe I'm just not funny anymore.
I'm a total newbie to this. Never written comedy until a few months ago, when I started submitting jokes and songs to Newsrevue and Treason Show, and on the back of that, jokes and sketches to Newsjack.
I think you're right that it's subjective. A friend of mine who's written for HIGNFY, Jimmy Carr, etc has been mentoring me (I asked for his advice as soon as I started to do this) and one piece of advice he had, for example, was: force yourself to write half a dozen jokes about a certain news topic. It's a good discipline, as you never know what a producer will find funny. You may love one particular joke, but they'll prefer another, for example. It makes you work at it.
Each week for Newsjack I've 1) built up a raft of jokes as they occur to me, 2) sat down every weekend and forced myself to come up with more by going through the news and then 3) every Mon/Tues tried to hone all of the above to be the best they can be. I firmly believe that with comedy - as with so many creative endeavours! - it's part talent and inspiration, part graft.
And that's my tuppence worth