Comedy Audio Class

by John Truby

4 cassettes on writing movie comedy; Comedy Writing by John Truby is a high-level seminar on four audio cassettes, just under four hours, that will teach you:


•How Comedy Works
•The Comedy Premise
•The 11 Key Story Beats
•The 9 Best Character Types
•Boor, Trickster and Traveling Angel
•How to Create the Comic Nightmare
•Setting Up the 4-Point Opposition
•Scams, Disguises and Mistaken Identity
•The 4 Big Comic Themes
•Action Comedy Beats
•Buddy Picture Beats
•Traveling Angel Beats
•Romantic Comedy Beats
•Farce Beats
•Black Comedy Beats
•Satire Beats
•Comic Lines and Openings
•Predicament and Nightmare Sequence
•Comic Battle and Communion

Within the last three topics, John analyzes Ghostbusters and Tootsie with (audio) clips.

What I like about Truby is the deep knowledge that's communicated in a very down-to-earth way. And he pauses to let ideas sink in; he doesn't race through too much information at once. He's like a laid-back professor and I've learned a lot from him.

Genres: Writing

Audiobook

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

John Truby (born 1952) is an American screenwriter, director, screenwriting teacher and author. He has served as a consultant on over 1,000 film scripts over the past three decades, and is also known for the screenwriting software program Blockbuster (originally "Storyline Pro"). He is the author of Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, a book about screenwriting skills.

Reviews

[Nicky Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb over view of the genre and sub genres of writing comedy. John Truby goes into detail on plots and character giving you a very effective comic blue print to approach your writing. If you are writing a funny skit that isn't working you could do a lot worse than listening to this. It will very likely give you the reason why!