Comedy Self-Awareness

I have a comedy writer friend who I call the Unabomber of Comedy, or The Unawriter -- because when he writes jokes he pulls a hoodie over his head, puts on music via earphones, and won’t interact with anyone until he’s done with his writing assignment. It’s his “process,” and, if he isn’t allowed to work in that way, he’s not nearly as productive.

I’ll write in the future about finding your own process, but for now I want to use my friend as an example of something else that’s incredibly important to becoming productive (ie, turning out pro level, useable, money-able comedy day after day after day).  And that’s Comedy/Artistic Self-Awareness.

Self-awareness -- the ability to accurately see who you are, what are your strengths, your weaknesses -- is a tough thing to achieve in all areas of life, but it’s absolutely essential if you want to consistently set yourself up for success as a comedy creator.  

Look at it this way:  every creative project can be broken into hundreds of sub-projects, all which need to be done well because they are essential parts of the final product.  So, if you’re writing dialogue in a script, every single character needs their own voice, and each of those voices need to be interesting, emotional, evocative, and distinct from the others.  Any of those characters can be done well, neutrally, or badly.  Each of them needs to be given distinct attention so that they’re constructed with real creativity, they’re evaluated for quality, and they’re fixed if they underperform.

A self-aware writer would realize what kinds of character dialogue they write well, and what kind they don’t.  It’s easy to think you’re writing dialogue well, but you’re often just writing a stereotypical voice of that character instead of writing something unique or interesting.  

For example, I can mimic dramatic writing. I’ve written a full screenplay that’s a drama, and I have even managed to get people to have emotional responses when they read it.  But I’m not good at it.  It’s not natural, it feels like I’m just guessing.  With comedy I know when something is funny.  I know other people will find it funny.  I know it as soon as I read it, think it, hear it.  I’m self-aware about my comedy instincts, I know when to trust them.  And I’m self-aware about my lack of drama instincts -- at least as a writer -- and I know not to trust them.

As I’ve moved up into professional writer/creator ranks, I've found that most pro writers have a strong, developed self-awareness.  I think that comes from working with others and being able to measure what you do against what they do. If there’s an amazing joke writer on staff, they make you laugh with their stuff, they find angles and ideas you don’t.  Their jokes get huge audience response.  You see right there in front of you the difference in what you are doing and what they are doing. The good news is that self-awareness lets you see that you need to improve. So you can figure out what that writer is doing, understand the underlying techniques they are using, practice those techniques, absorb them, and, sometimes, begin to do them even better than the original writer can do them. Which is that wonderful moment when you turn a weakness into a strength. It's that super-power of being able to constantly add more weapons to your comedy arsenal. It's the awesome gift of being self-aware -- you know you need to improve, and so you put energy into making that evolution happen.

And it only happens if you are self-aware enough to see that you need to improve on one of the hundreds of sub-areas of creating/writing.  Or, even at the base base of that statement, that you can see all of the sub-areas, and start your process of growth on each of them, so that you are truly developing, instead of jumping to the end and saying things like “I’m a comedian,” or “I’m a comedy writer,” even though you are missing prime pieces of the foundation that will make you great -- and thus, employable.