Film Courage: What makes a great comic premise?
Steve Kaplan, Author/Instructor/Script Consultant: A great comic premise in a way I don’t want to say it has to be this because in reality if you have an idea and you write it out and it works that premise was great for you. It’s not something that’s objective, it’s something that’s subjective. It’s something that creates a desire in you to tell the entire story. Haven’t you ever seen a blurb for a movie and you said I wish I had thought of that. That’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking for something to stir your own imagination so that the story is kind of exploding in your own imagination before you even can get to the typewriter or the computer. For me it’s very subjective. I think some things that are common to great comic objectives is the big lie that there’s some impossible or improbable thing that could never happen or could probably never happen but since it does happen it affects this main character and these other supporting characters. You wonder what will happen then? When you create a comic premise the better the premise is the better it is a tool to excite your own imagination to to make you go Oh my God! I have got to write this down because it’s already occurring to you in your own imagination in your own head. There are a couple of things that you want to think about as you develop it. You want to tell one lie and one lie only. In other words, let’s say your comic premise is there’s this anthropomorphic chicken. This little chicken and the chicken thinks that the sky is falling and he made a big deal about it and it turned out the sky wasn’t falling and so he’s embarrassed his father and he’s embarrassed himself and he’s humiliated himself at a time of life in which chickens don’t want to humiliate themselves (middle school). Now that’s the premise of Chicken Little (the Disney movie). In the middle of Chicken Little there’s an alien invasion…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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BIO:
Steve Kaplan is the author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero’s Journey, best-sellers in their field. He’s working on a third book about writing comedy for television. In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other universities, Steve created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre. In addition to development projects for HBO, he has taught workshops online and around the globe and at companies such as DreamWorks, Disney Animation, Aardman Animation, and NBC’s Writers on the Verge. Steve has worked as a script consultant and script editor for productions companies, studios, directors and individual writers.
UPCOMING COMEDY INTENSIVE ONLINE CLASS WITH STEVE KAPLAN
Kaplancomedy.com/product/the-comedy-intensive-online-2023-spring
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