A comedy writing masterclass from a writer of The Simpsons and The Office

Brent Forrester, a TV writer and showrunner who has written on classic comedies like The Simpsons and The Office, joined Arc Studio's Head of Writing Micah Cratty live during Let's Write Scripts and gave a masterclass on writing comedy. Check out the edited highlights of their conversation!

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Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:27 Meet Brent Forrester
01:00 Writing great character intros
02:45 How do you develop comedy writing skills?
05:24 Adding comedy to your script
08:06 Learning story structure in comedy writing
11:50 Comedy that isn't funny on the page?
13:19 Making characters funny without losing emotional depth
14:01 How do you know when a joke is going on too long?
14:52 Creating a strong ensemble without the characters overpowering each other
19:12 Chasing after industry genre trends
21:13 Balancing humor with furthering the plot
23:04 Jokes versus situational humor
25:53 Tackling the "Why now?" question from execs
28:29 Has what is considered funny changed over Brent's career?
29:56 Brent's parting words of wisdom