Characters in Comedy

I find characters in comedies are perhaps easier to write that for in other genres. The reason being, that in order to make the comedy more effective, the character can be given a distinctive quality that could also be his major flaw in different situations.

These situation need not even be complex. They can be everyday life situations that just require a character to be inserted and see how he performs with his distinctive flaw.

For example, Brian Griffin in Family Guy. He was a character, built to voice his liberal opinions and dedicated to his writing. Using this, it was easy to write a situation where Brian is working on a brand new novel and already believing he was writing a masterpiece.

So okay, every writer thinks their novel is going to be easily featured in the bestseller's list. Even me….

But to see Brian typing away and saying that he would name his character Norman Hall and only the scholars a 100 years from now would get that the character was a "normal person" was hilarious.  

Another way to write characters comically is to turn their biggest attribute into a weakness. For example, in The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson is shown to be a tree-hugger and in an episode, she literally does do that- live up a tree so that it won't be cut down. Granted that she did this because she was crushing on the leader of an environmentalist group, but the second it got colder, she crept down to see her family. After all she is just a child, but the situation had a comic effect with interesting repercussions because the tree was destroyed by lightning and everyone assumes Lisa is dead.

In the same way, I find that many comedies resort to the same device: Give characters one quality which can be manipulated to deliver comedy relief.

Like Monica in Friends who was a stickler for cleanliness and order. This was turned in one episode that this person who was always tidy has a dirty secret- A dirty closet.

There are many other examples to show that character development in comedies are rarely necessary unless it's one of those shows that is plot-driven rather than character driven. Until then, creating characters in comedy will be easier than creating one for drama where a character has to be given a back story and then it's evolvement to progress the story.

Of course writing comedy is challenging, because not everyone finds the same subject funny, but characters written for comedy, certainly seem like a less formidable task.