“Character-driven comedy.” I see writers put this down in their bios as a specialty all the time. I admit that I have too.
But what the hell does “character-driven comedy” even supposed to mean? I mean, if you’re telling a story then it should be by it’s very nature character-driven, right?
For me, CDC is your ability to find the moments and laughs that come out of your character’s point-of-view. It’s their emotional response. Their reacations. The way only they can think and speak. If the character is well-drawn and/or we are familiar with said character, we laugh because we know this person.
I think writers identify “character-driven” specialists to delineate themselves from the joke writers. TV writers often get asked in staffing meetings if they’re the joke person or the story person. It’s a dumb question because any comedy writer worth their salt is both, dagnabit.
A good test to see if your character is working (let alone funny) is to pull them out of the piece you’ve written and see if they stand on their own.
I practiced this technique at the Groundlings. The goal wasn’t simply to write sketches with a funny premise. It was to write characters who were real with a unique (and hopefully) funny POV.
