In the best farce today we start with some absurd premise as to character or situation, but if the premises be once granted we move logically enough to the ending.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I always try to keep in mind that while the characters in a farce may find themselves in outrageous dilemmas, and may behave in a way that the audience finds amusing, the characters themselves don't have the consolation of knowing they're in a comedy.
Even the most complicated stories start with a very simple premise.
No, you don't have to start your play with a premise. You can start with a character or an incident, or even a simple thought. This thought or incident grows, and the story slowly unfolds itself. You have time to find your premise in the mass of your material later. The important thing is to find it.
There's almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot.
I've always been taught to just play the truth of the situation. If comedy comes out of that, or drama, whatever comes out of it, at least I'm playing the truth of the moment-to-moment reality.
What comes to me always is a character, a scene, a moment. That's going to be the beginning. Then, as I write, I begin to perceive an ending. I begin to see a destination, although sometimes that changes. And then, of course, there's the whole middle section looming.
The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.
In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment.
Drama starts where logic ends.
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.