I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.
I don't have to worry about writing jokes. I just tell stories about things that have happened to me. As long as I'm alive and I'm living and I'm experiencing different things every day, the show will always change.
I don't do jokes. The characters are my jokes.
I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.
If you do something that is not gags and punchlines and is character-based, where there are no jokes as such, then it all has to come from a place of truth, and I love that - I love nothing more than getting very serious about my comedy.
The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work.
You have to be careful what you say in front of comedy writers because they will absolutely make fun of it in the next episode.
One of my biggest pet peeves is that I just don't like it when characters do things that are funny to the writer, but you don't know why they're doing it and it doesn't make any sense.
I think sometimes in comedy the characters are often sacrificed for the joke, and it's more important for it to be funny than for there to be love.
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
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