Comic Writing Masterclass

Nottingham Writers' Studio in all its glory

This weekend you can pick the brians of not one, but two experienced and award winning comedy writers at the Nottingham Writer's Studio. Alfie Crow, author of Rant, and Kate Fox, stand-up poet and author of Fox Populi, unravel their secrets this Saturday. Get yourself down there. We got to them first.

First things first: when and where is the masterclass taking place?
Kate: Saturday January 10, 10am - 4pm for the masterclass itself, and then a short performance between seven and nine that evening. And it’s at the Nottingham Writer’s Studio in Hockley.

What’s the basic aim of the day?
Kate: To get people feeling more confident about using comedy in their work, so either making their existing work (prose or poetry) funnier or starting from scratch. I’m primarily a comic poet and Alfie’s primarily a comic prose writer, though we both write the other form as well. We’ll be sharing a variety of practical exercises and something will have to go very wrong if it isn’t a fun session. A good way to know if you’re creating comedy is to make yourself and other people laugh, so using each other as sounding boards should make things fun.
Alfie: It’s about learning to use comedy within a larger framework as well. Using the counterpoint of comedy, as Shakespeare did. Right after the King is murdered in MacBeth there’s a comedy scene where a drunken porter has to answer someone banging on the gate. It’s a useful thing to insert to allow an audience to catch their breath, or to bring out the pathos of a scene. So it’s not just about writing a comic scene, it’s about using comedy in a larger context.

So people will hopefully come out with something they’ve created during the day that’s been worked over and critiqued?
Kate: Absolutely, and I think if people have created something they want to test in front of an audience we’ll have a slot that night during the performance so people can get the most instant and honest feedback for comedy writing: laughter.

I guess performing comedy in front of an audience is something you’re familiar with as a stand-up poet.
Kate: Yes, definitely, and when I’m doing stand-up I’m always relying on the feedback of the audience and it’s only during the performance that I can develop the work. Lots of stand-ups say this, but although you may have the beginnings of an idea but until you’ve performed it a few times in front of an audience you can’t tell where the rhythm is and where the funny bits are. It’s almost like the audience is co-writing with you when you’re doing comedy, in a strange sort of way.

It can take people a long time to find their own comedy voice. So you can step up on a stage, and you might have something you want to say, but it might take you a while to hone it so that you’re yourself in front of an audience while also being your funniest self. But that’s more about stand-up comedy, and if you’re just telling a funny story or doing a funny poem it’ll take you far less time to work out if it’s funny or not. Four minutes, probably.
Alfie: It’s very telling performing work in front of children. They aren’t as polite as adult audiences, who often feel they have to reward you for doing the work, but kids, if they’re bored and if the material isn’t working, will let you know very quickly.

Alfie Crow and Kate Fox

Edmund Kean is supposed to have said on his deathbed: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard”. Do you find that writing comedy is hard work?
Kate: It depends on the person and their experience. We’re always honing our comedy whenever we talk to our friends, making a group of people laugh in everyday conversation. If you’ve used to doing that you’ll have a head-start, whereas some others will need to push a bit harder. For myself I went on the opposite journey: I found it relatively easy to write comedy and harder to write things that are more serious and honest.
Alfie: I find it harder. Unlike Kate I usually don’t have an audience who’ll let me know instantly what’s funny. Working on thrillers that are comic I found that it was easier for me to write a straight thriller and then go back and insert comedy of change things to be comic. I’ll go back a couple of weeks later and if it’s still funny I’ll leave it in. It’s a much more painstaking process. I can plot a thriller quite quickly, but to make it funny is much harder.

Do you find that you look for comedy in everything, and try to insert a vein of comedy in everything you write, or do you separate stuff out into the funny stuff and other stuff?
Kate: I think there are too many artificial divisions between things that are funny and things that are serious, so I’ll always look for things that reflect that mixture. I’ll look for stuff on TV and read stuff that mixes the two, because it’s very rare for people to go through a day without laughing or live through a tragedy without finding some humour in it, or escape from it via humour, so I’m a little suspicious of stuff without humour in it.

Do you have any particular favourite comic writers?
Kate: John Hegley. Bridget Christie, who won the Foster comedy award last year. I saw some small shows a while ago of hers that were surrealist comedy, and then she did a slightly more straight comedy show about feminism and suddenly her work took off.
Alfie: Christopher Brookmyre. He’s a very funny guy. An Irish writer called Colin Bateman, whose work is set around the sectarian divide but who manages to make it incredibly funny. If you can find the humour in that without cheapening the seriousness of the situation that’s really something.

Do you have a favourite comic line in literature?
Kate: Hmmm. Removed from context I think my favourite line won’t be funny at all, but that’s the thing about lots of comedy writing. It depends on context. It’s a line from Saki, the short story writer: “A new strawberry has happened in the night”. That really tickles me, but I’m sure taken out of context it’s the least funny thing ever.
Alfie: That’s really difficult. The thing that springs to mind is a short poem by Edward Lear. It’s some lines carved on Susie Pears headstone in St Paul’s Cathedral:

“Beneath these high Cathedral stairs,
Lie the remains of Susan Pares.
Her name was Wiggs, it was not Pares,
But Pares was put to rhyme with stairs.”

Comic Writing Masterclass, Saturday 10 January, 10am - 4pm, Nottingham Writers' Studio, with a performance later in the evening. 

Book a ticket

Alfie Crow's website
Kate Fox's website