Comedy Writing

Having a good sense of humor is a very important character trait in comedy. If you don't have a good and certain sense of humor, you just won't really be funny. What I mean by certain is you should have a certain theme to each skit you make. For example, you wouldn't want to have a dry, dull sense of humor then start jumping around, yelling, and acting very expressive at the end of your act. Your sense of humor is part of your act, so if people see you going from dry to expressive humor it won't be as fun to watch. I actually prefer dry humor than any other kind. Although if you are going to present with that type of humor, the jokes need to be really good, so if you are a new comedian, it would be good to be at least a bit expressive. In my GT class at school, I have been working on a comedy routine, and I have been sticking with the dry humor theme, and it's been lots of fun. I do dry humor partially because I prefer watching comedians do it to expressive and crazy humor, but also because when I am doing expressive humor, it is no fun for me. Believe me, I tried. But the jokes just aren't funny for me when I'm doing expressive humor. I'm not sure why, but it just feels unnatural and not funny. Anyway, I'll stop ranting about not being able to do expressive humor, and I'll give you some tips on writing a funny narrative!

One very important thing in comedy writing is picking your audience. For example, you would not want to tell jokes saying bikers are annoying at a biker group. You also would not want to tell sexist jokes against women at an all women group. Another tip is that you should review your work and modify the scripts for each performance. That means you should go over your script sentence by sentence multiple times. Explore every aspect of each joke, and think about what would make it funnier. An extremely important part of comedy is presentation. You should practice your routine multiple times before actually performing. That way you have something called delivery. Delivery is the way you present your jokes, like what words you put the emphases on, and your body language. However insignificant it may seem, delivery is a very important part of comedy. Another thing to keep in mind is the amount of jokes, and the build up. Smaller, less funny jokes should have less build up than the bigger, harder hitting jokes. The harder hitting jokes should be fewer than the little ones and well spaced. The biggest laugh, though, should be at the end. That helps end the whole performance with a bang. The last tip I'm going to give you is to return often to one subject throughout the whole routine, especially in the last, biggest joke. It is good to pick a common subject that everyone will know about, such as Pop Tarts, bowling, or going to the dentist. If you pick an uncommon subject, it is more likely that people won't get the jokes. I hope those tips help you with creating a comedy skit! If you want to, that is. Maybe you don't like comedy. That would be lame. But it's possible. You probably wouldn't have read this far if you didn't, but it's still possible.

I believe my comedic monologue is funny for multiple reasons. For starters, a school cafeteria is a very common thing, and it is easy to work with, so I did not have a very hard time making my monologue. A stereotypical school cafeteria has very bad food, so I made that part of my monologue. Overall, I think it is funny mostly because it is relatable, especially for kids. Also, it talks about stuff that isn't made up, which I think makes it better. Although some parts are not necessarily true, it is still about realistic things. Those are the main reasons I think it is funny. It is simple, dry, realistic, and relatable. Thanks for reading, and goodbye! ( Until my next blog).

Motivational Poster

In my GT (gifted and talented) class at school, we have made a motivational poster.For my motivational poster, I had to do many things. First I had to put my

personal quotes in a Photoshop document. They also needed to be in two different text layers. Behind them, I needed my three personal representation images from Google+, as well as a portrait of my face. The text needed to be kerned to be more visually pleasing and fit the entire page. It also needed to stand out against the pictures, so I added effects such as drop shadow, bevel and emboss, and outer glow. The whole thing needed to have a triadic color scheme, so I got help, and learned how to make one and put it on my images. They still needed to have visual balance, though, so I adjusted things like curves.

When I was actually doing it, there were many steps. First, I opened Photoshop and made a document. Then, I copy-pasted my personal quotes and manifesto into it, and kerned the text with a certain tool so it was more visually pleasing and fit the whole page. Next, I put my images behind the text as a background by saving them into my file, and dragging them into Photoshop. Keep in mind that throughout this whole process I got help from the person next to me, who was super helpful. Anyway, after that I added affects to the text so that I could see it better against the background images, and to make it more interesting. Finally, I created a triadic color scheme for the whole thing, with the help of the person sitting next to me. I had to tweak that a lot so that I could still see the pictures clear enough, but also make have a visible effect on it. For that, I mostly used my "curves" layer.

I think the biggest challenge overall was making my triadic color scheme work. That was where I got the most help from the person next to me. At first, I didn't even know how to make a triadic color scheme in Photoshop, but they had done it last year, so they knew how. It was tough for me to get the right colors, the right intensity, and other factors correct, so that it looked good. I think that I could have improved the poster, though. The way our grading worked was that my teacher looked at my poster for various things, and I was missing one. As I told you earlier, I needed two different text layers for my manifesto and my personal quotes. I only had one text layer, though, so I got 7 out of 8 possible points. That means I got an "A", which is good, but I would rather have figured out how to make it two layers and get 8 than 7 points. Even the very helpful person next to me didn't know how to do it, because of the way that my text was shaped. Part of my quotes shared a line with the start of my manifesto, so we didn't know how to make them two different layers. I think that was the only way I could've improved, and I am proud of myself and very happy with the way it turned out. Here are pictures of my text layer and image layers with no effects on them, and the final product! I hope reading it inspires you as much as making it inspired me!( Which is a lot, by the way). Thanks for reading!