Howdie comedy carvers,
I'm, relatively new to the comedy writing world but have posted here before. (I flaked out when I realised how much hard work was involved in comedy writing, but I've come back prepared.)
Here's a really useful link to an article/workshop about how to create comedy characters. It's great for making the character real in your head and helps you to work out how they would react in certain situations.
Here's the best bit:
If you've done your work properly, writing the character will come easily. You'll know things like whether they say "hello" or "hiya", what they drink, what TV shows they like to watch, and so on. So a good way to start inventing a new person is to work on something like the following example checklist. This is by no means a complete list, and writers should feel at liberty to add other questions as they see fit, but it is a good place to start. For arguments sake, we're looking at developing a character for a sitcom.
Describe your character's physical appearance. How does he or she dress?
Describe your character's childhood in terms of family relationships, relationships with the key people in his or her youth, lifestyle whilst growing up and education.
Describe the character's current relationship with family, friends and other key people.
4. Describe the character's romantic life and his or her moral beliefs.
What is the character's occupation, and summarise the relationship he or she has with the boss and work colleagues and the character's attitude towards the job.
Describe the character's non-work activities in terms of hobbies, eating and drinking habits, favourite television shows or films, and favourite locations.
Describe the character's philosophy on life.
Sum up the main aspects of the character's personality. How is s/he larger than life (or "comically heightened") yet still rooted in reality, thus remaining believable?
What is this character's main comic flaw? How is it related to the stories you will give the character and how does it get him/her into hot water in individual episodes and in the long term?
Summarise the character's relationship to the other major characters in the script/series. Outline the potential for comic clashes between personalities and what will make these relationships funny.
What is the character's lifetime goal or ambition and why does s/he want to achieve it?
What would your character do if he or she won the lottery?
You can read the whole article here http://www.robinkelly.btinternet.co.uk/ccc.htm
I just posted in the critique section and I wanted to give something back to the forum, so I hope you enjoy inventing little people to live in your brain for a while!