Quote: Rebecca Davies @ April 20 2008, 10:38 PM BSTI've been planning a sitcom for the last year (if you count "planning" as occasionally pondering about broad ideas while bored) and have been writing it for the past month. In the beginning it all felt fresh, and modesty aside, rather funny. However the more I do the more predictable the jokes feel, the more obvious the set up. I'm not sure whether it's stopped being funny, or the jokes are too similar, or whether I'm just to close to it to see it anymore, but whatever the explanation, its driving me a little insane!
Do writers ever know whether what they are doing is funny?!
I think what you have said there is also a good thing. Yes I think sitcoms are very much like this by having THE SETUP followed by THE PAYOFF and a few throw away lines inbetween. I don't think it will be a case of not being funny but as a writer you have started to dissect what is funny and why.
Harold Lloyd did this before he made his best movie. He basically came up with the science of what made people laugh and how.
My advice - Dont berate yourself too much alot of comedy is written and tightened up sometimes it takes hours and sometimes it can be years.(Look at the stuff the Boosh are doing the first series was stuff that had been through the mill over years and re-written)
Keep going and have faith in yourself....most of all, have fun while you are doing it.
