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Comedic writing inspiration

January 1, 2012 By C Hart

If you aspire to be a writer, or you already are one, you’ll probably know just how important it is to “carpe diem”. You need to write when you’re hot to write – and not let the opportunity that nature is giving you to slip through your hands.

 

It’s a weird feeling; one day, you can write like crazy, you’re full of inspiration and can barely get the words on the page down quickly enough as the thoughts and dialogue in your mind races ahead.

 

Then the next day, when perhaps you really need to produce the words, every single word can seem like an absolute grind.

 

Over the years authors have tried many methods to inspire themselves from healthy living and mediation to far less salubrious methods like drugs and alcohol.

 

For comedy writers, the need to be really lateral is possibly greater than in any other sphere. When you’re feeling good and really ‘up’ and then maybe you use a glass of champagne or two, or three, to lift the sprits even higher and you may find yourself at your most creative. So if you are – seize the moment if you possibly can; it may not come again.

 

And if you really want to be inspired into a little fresh and offbeat comedic thinking, then I’d recommend you watch the Fast Show over at Fosters.co.uk.

 

The brand new series is online-only and it truly is inspirational if your tastes run in this kind of zany direction. Watching a few of the funny video clips will really put you in the right kind of mood to draft a few sketches yourself.

 

And the beauty of sketch show writing is that it’s always original and relatively easy to be so. So watch it – and let yourself be inspired!

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The Fast Show’s writing pioneers

December 19, 2011 By C Hart

We often celebrate great literature, we celebrate comedy and we celebrate serious acting – usually in different “compartments”. But we shouldn’t – for there are times when all three can be brought together in a fantastic seamless creativity – and who can really draw the line accurately between the three different skills?

I know I can’t – which is why I appreciate the Fast Show so much. For me, the Fast Show brings comedy, incredibly creative writing and seriously excellent acting together in its unforgettable series of sketches – many of which are truly brilliant and will most certainly stand the artistic test of time.

The Fast Show is the creation of Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson. The duo first met at university and worked together for years with Harry Enfield.

The pair then felt inspired to take a new approach to comedy sketch shows, bringing characters on long enough to establish a situation, very briefly – and to then usually to say a catchphrase before cutting it to a quick conclusion and moving onto the next sketch.

The results were superb and the show was one of the BBC’s most popular comedies of the 90s, gradually building popularity as more and more people made their way to the BBC2 broadcast.

The show ran from 94-97, with a one-off show in 2000 and a few spin-offs of the various well-known characters. Ted and Ralph took a final walk into the sunset together, Swiss Toni sold his last car and the show was finished.

But now it’s back and it’s online only. The Fast show 2011 is being shown on the Foster’s lager website and its brilliance is unblemished. It’s truly great news for those of us who think so highly of it.

And those that don’t – or prefer something zanier still – can enjoy Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s “afternoon delights” sketches on the same website; simply nuts!

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A.A. Milne

August 5, 2011 By

Scots by birth, Alan Milne spent his adolescence in London, where his pa was a preparatory schoolmaster. His early education owed much to the abilities of a young teacher and coach — H.G. Wells — years on, Milne described Wells as “a great writer and a great friend.” An A Milnes first literary efforts were printed in the humourous mag Punch, where a month after his twenty-fourth birthday he started work as helper Editor, remaining there till the outbreak of the first World War. A. A. Milne failed to write the stories and poems for youngsters.

He intended them for the kid inside us all. He seldom read the stories and poems to his child Christopher, preferring to entertain him with the works of P.G.Wodehouse, one of Milne’s fave writers.

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JK Rowling

August 1, 2011 By

Joanne Rowling, better known and indeed, Amazingly well known around the planet as JK Rowling was born in the city of Yate, South Gloucestershire in 1965. She’s the most outstanding literary writer in history and her internationally famous Harry Potter series has so far sold an amazing 400,000,000 copies worldwide and has been interpreted into over 60 5 different languages. JK Rowling went to the Varsity of Exeter where she studied French and the Classics. After leaving school she worked for Amnesty World in London as an analyst and multilingual secretary. JK Rowling has written fiction since a kid, and always wished to be a writer.

Her mum and dad loved reading, and their place in Chepstow was full of books.

In reality JK Rowling wrote her first ‘book ‘ at the age of 6 – a tale about a rabbit called Rabbit. The concept for Harry Potter occured to JK Rowling on the train from Manchester to London, where she is saying Harry Potter “just wandered into my head absolutely formed”, and by the point she had appeared at King’s Cross, plenty of the characters had taken shape. In the next 5 years she released the plots for each book and started writing number one in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which was first released by Bloomsbury in 1997.

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Dean Kootz – The Taking

July 10, 2011 By

Dean Koontz’s The Taking is a tale of the end of civilization. not as you may imagine, the end of everything in fire and glory and asteroid collisions, or aliens, or anything superb or systematic. Rather, Koontz’s novel is all about the end of the conservative Christian world. In The Taking, an ideal, perceptive, and loving couple is encircled by an “alien” infestation, a long silver rain that blankets the world in beastly seed that breeds fungus, plants that are half animal, and demon-creatures who purloin souls and replace them with shells.

For Molly and Neil Sloan, the couple, their goal is to survive, have belief in their own capability, and help those around them who have a need to be saved from the menacenamely the youngsters, a clumsy simile for the future generation. Therefore if you can stand a tense thriller that eventually is simply too strange, too moralistic, and too easy, it is a fast decently exciting read, but significantly below the level we might call “masterwork.”.

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