8 Tips For Writing A Humorous Commercial.

I love humour in advertising.

If anything, it is what I have built my career on.

To me, a commercial that makes people smile is a huge achievement. Because every commercial is an interruption, humour makes the interruption polite. Making someone smile or laugh in 30 seconds is no mean feat. Thirty seconds doesn't give you much time to do any setup, and while 60 seconds gives you more time, it's still very difficult to establish a scenario, introduce characters, introduce the product, explain the product benefits, resolve the story, and end with a call-to-action. And oh - make someone laugh.

That's a lot of balls to juggle, and some writers have more balls than skill.

Here are some tips that have worked for me in radio when it comes to humour:

HUMOUR LIKES SPEED. Brisk dialogue is funny. Listen to the way people talk in real life. People have great timing. There are no gaps between sentences, each can feel when the other is coming to a period, and jumps in seamlessly. There are no big awkward pauses. That's what a radio dialogue should sound like. When I direct a dialogue, I want tight, fast performances. No air between lines. I almost want overlap - not really - but almost. I'm forever chipping frames out from between lines. Fast is funny.

SILENCE IS FUNNY. Since I like humorous dialogue to be brisk, I use pauses sparingly. To me, a pause is the audio equivalent of a "double take." If two characters are having a quick, funny dialogue, and suddenly a character pauses, it's funny. And intentional. Like this example:

WIFE: Honey, did you see the wallpaper paste anywhere?

HUBBY: Nope.

WIFE: I left it on the counter.

HUBBY: Uh huh.

WIFE: In a glass jar.

HUBBY: Glass jar?

WIFE: Yup. Beside the toaster

HUBBY: Beside the toaster?

WIFE: Yes.

HUBBY: (PAUSE) I don't feel well.

The pause is the moment the husband realizes he's eaten the paste. It's the moment he does a double-take with his eyes (even though this is radio). The funniest moment in this dialogue will be that pause. That moment of nothing will make people laugh. Not the words, the silence. Use pauses sparingly. They are like the white space in print.

FUNNY DIALOGUE IS NOT A TENNIS GAME. Great dialogue, as opposed to good dialogue, is not a straight back-and-forth conversation. Ever observed a crowd watching a tennis game, and you see their heads looking left, then right, then left? A great dialogue shouldn't be so linear. Again, listen to a real conversation. While one person is talking, the other person is inserting a lot of tiny uh-huh's, hmmm's and oh's while listening. I am always looking for opportunities to insert small monosyllabic moments into dialogues, usually at the commas. It just sounds real. Not stilted or artificially clean. A good actor can slip those reactions in while the other actor breathes, without disturbing the sentence at all. In other words, great dialogue isn't a tennis game because it has activity at the net.

PUNCTUATION IS AN ACTOR'S BEST FRIEND. In monologues, an actor is all alone, and therefore has to hide her breathing. That's tricky in a monologue, especially 60-second monologue. So, as a writer, pay close attention to sentence length and punctuation. Short sentences are best on radio; easy to listen to, easy to perform for comedic effect. Commas give an actor a moment to breathe, so choose where you insert them. I can always tell a great writer when I see commas put in at specific places, not just there for humour, but to aid the actor. Great actors know how to make use of punctuation to hide their breathing. Listen to a Sinatra record sometime. Even when he's singing flat out, you never, ever, hear him breathe or gulp for air. He was the master at this.

THREE IS FUNNY. For some reason, groups of three are always funny. I call this my "bingo bango bongo" rule. A knock on a door that has 3 raps is funny. Four not so much. Three line comedic bits are funny:

BOB: Who do you think you are?

GUY: A cop.

BOB: Works for me.

As opposed to:

BOB: Who do you think you are?

GUY: I'm a cop

BOB: I didn't realize that.

GUY: Now you know.

BOB: Works for me.

Sound Effects are funny in threes. If something falls down the stairs, it's funny if it's a three-step crash. If someone walks into a wall by mistake, first there's the impact, then a two-step fall down - like their bum hitting the ground first, then their head. It's just funny. A four-stepper isn't.

ELEVEN IS THE FUNNNIEST NUMBER IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Groucho Marx said that decades ago, and Spinal Tap confirmed it. It's one too many. Maybe it's because 10 is our most prime number, the base of the decimal system and the first two-digit number. Whatever the reason, eleven is the odd man out. How did Groucho figure this out? During the days of live television. The crowd would always laugh when the number Eleven was used.

WORDS STARTING WITH A 'K' OR HARD 'C' ARE FUNNY. Again, this was discovered during the days of live television. Cucumber is funnier than tomato. Kangeroo is funnier than bear. Cleveland is funnier than New York. Kapuskasing is funnier than Toronto. It just hits our ears in a humorous way. So, whenever I have to pick a name, or a city, or a noun in a script, I'll default to a K or hard C word.

ADLIBS ARE GOLD. Build time for adlibs into your scripts. I never use a stopwatch, I prefer using the "word count" function under "Tools" on my computer. I know that 85 words in a thirty is a well-paced spot that leaves a few seconds for a great adlib. In a sixty, I know 185 words does the same. Actors will adlib if they feel it's okay to, so create a loose and fun atmosphere in the studio. As I always say; the best moments in spots I've written are the moments I have not written.

Someone once said "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."

It is, but if you know a few tricks of the trade, you don't have to die trying.