Putting the punch into punchlines

There’s a very good article that appears today on comedy writing.

The Herald Sun‘s Anna Brain has spoken with three writers, The Project‘s Justin Kennedy plus Josh Thomas and Robyn Butler, who have both penned ABC comedies.

Kennedy is a former stand-up comedian and has worked previously on Rove and even Letters and Numbers for SBS. Not many viewers would be aware the TEN show uses comedy writers, let alone how they work.

For The Project Kennedy scripts script one-liners and segues to prompt the panellists, including Carrie Bickmore and Pete Helliar.

“It’s giving them options, pre-loaded,” Kennedy says. “It’s basically just a fallback.

“We kind of juggle different elements in the show. The first one is we choose the news chats, the headlines that will turn into a funny chat. Something lighthearted generally. We’ll have a couple of serious bits, then the news item that breaks off into a 30-second conversation.

“We’ll write jokes and angles for them if they want to use them.”

You can read more here.

Photo: Lehmo23