Comedy Storytelling Quotes

But I was always comedic and would tell stories and use a lot of expressions.

Television, particularly as it becomes more and more serialised, comedies no longer have to tie the stories up neatly within 20-plus minutes. 'Arrested Development' had evolving storylines, as did both versions of 'The Office.' We're seeing that more and more. That allows it to be really, whatever the tone, almost literary.

The more a character wants and the less a character has the ability to get what they want, the more you have an endless fuel for storytelling in comedy.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about, and that's really it. I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change, but I am far lazier than that.

The reason most comedies don't win awards is that the filmmakers put the comedy first. This means you have to create a story around the jokes.

As 'Psych' went on, deeper in the run, I started to feel more of a challenge just because, how many jokes are there? How many times can you reinvent the wheel?

I started doing comedy just as myself, because I thought, "This is what's expected, you're meant to tell stories and do observations." And then I started to realize that I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I started to doing songs, and I had a little keyboard onstage and would bring in little props. Then I thought about the idea of talking about a character and becoming the character onstage. So, it sort of morphed into being stand-up that was more character based, and I found that's the stuff I got the better reaction from and was more exciting for me.

I got into comedy because I wanted to get into writing.

In the U.K. I'm probably better known as a comedy writer - or certainly that's my background is in writing comedy.

I think there's a difference between making comedy and reporting comedy. When you're a joke teller you can easily fall into the second, you can show up and just say the jokes.