An abuse of 'Hey everybody'

Hey everybody,

I am a total novice and newcomer to this forum, I have reached that middle aged stage of my life where I want to use my enormous whit and obvious literacy skills to get into comedy writing.

I have no experience (minus being the funniest person in my friend group of 3), no relevant qualifications to walk into it unfortunately and I am wondering if anyone on here has advice on courses, hints and tips to put my self confidence onto paper.

Any ideas on what I can be doing to improve and gain experience would be greatly appreciated and I will remember the suggestions when I am collecting awards or running the country as some of the best comedy people seem to be doing at the moment!

Thanks for reading and hopefully posting...

Welcome to the forum. We have a comedy writing group, where we all write to the same topic. Here's the last one: https://www.comedy.co.uk/forums/thread/35576/ the thread title is different each time.
There is also a go pro section of this forum, with lot of reference material, you need to pay for that.

Welcome!

In terms of courses/workshops that are free, if you look up the 'Angel Comedy Writing Gym' on Facebook they do lots of group writing sessions on zoom that anyone can join -I haven't joined in with one yet, so this may be terrible advice (especially as it involves the words 'facebook' and 'zoom') but it's a thing I see recommended a lot, so have a look and see what you think!

There are some good resources on comedy writing on the BBC Writersroom website (are we allowed to post external links in this forum, admin? If yes, I will do another post with links to these things!) -I found it really useful when I started to write sketches in particular. They also have a big bank of scripts of various BBC shows available to read (which is a really good way to learn scriptwriting in general).

For sitcom writing, there is the Sitcom Geek blog(/podcast) and also the Sitcom Mission (who also run a script competition which I think is open now -so probably a good time to check them out!)

There are probably lots of course/website/things I've missed, but yeah -read lots of scripts, watch/listen to a load of shows and just have a go at writing the kind of things you personally find funny!

Quote: Firkin @ 19th June 2020, 5:48 PM

Welcome to the forum. We have a comedy writing group, where we all write to the same topic. Here's the last one: https://www.comedy.co.uk/forums/thread/35576/ the thread title is different each time.
There is also a go pro section of this forum, with lot of reference material, you need to pay for that.

Thanks for the welcome and the thread! Looks really good I had a few laughs reading through it and will definitely keep an eye on that!

Quote: kate to the party @ 19th June 2020, 8:38 PM

Welcome!

In terms of courses/workshops that are free, if you look up the 'Angel Comedy Writing Gym' on Facebook they do lots of group writing sessions on zoom that anyone can join -I haven't joined in with one yet, so this may be terrible advice (especially as it involves the words 'facebook' and 'zoom') but it's a thing I see recommended a lot, so have a look and see what you think!

There are some good resources on comedy writing on the BBC Writersroom website (are we allowed to post external links in this forum, admin? If yes, I will do another post with links to these things!) -I found it really useful when I started to write sketches in particular. They also have a big bank of scripts of various BBC shows available to read (which is a really good way to learn scriptwriting in general).

For sitcom writing, there is the Sitcom Geek blog(/podcast) and also the Sitcom Mission (who also run a script competition which I think is open now -so probably a good time to check them out!)

There are probably lots of course/website/things I've missed, but yeah -read lots of scripts, watch/listen to a load of shows and just have a go at writing the kind of things you personally find funny!

Thank you for the welcome and advice!

I agree about Facebook which I don't actually have but luckily their website has a lot of info on and I will have a closer look at as it seems helpful!

Thanks so much for all the suggestions, I am going to have a good look at them all now and I will let you know!