by Simon Wright

Created on: February 04, 2007   Last Updated: May 29, 2009

When a writer is creating a comedy sketch, there are many aspects that go towards determining whether the sketch will be appreciated or not. One of these is whether the characters you have created for the sketch are sufficiently differentiated. This will be particularly important if your sketch is to be performed on radio, given that your audience will not have the benefit of seeing the physical actions (and differences) that are portrayed by your actors.

Let's look at an example to further understand the challenges that exist and potential solutions to them. We'll say that you've written a sketch that contains four main characters who are all soldiers and who are portrayed in a war situation. They are all men, they are all in their early twenties, are of similar rank and social status and are facing the same predicament. The real challenge for the writer is ensuring, therefore, that they don't all come across as sounding the same! To achieve this goal, we'll consider some ways that we might differentiate these characters.

Ways of differentiating your comedy sketch characters:

1. Use of different accents and dialect:

I suppose a good starting point might be to have them come from different parts of the country, thereby giving them different accents. Thinking about where your characters are from will also influence the dialogue that you use. We all know that there are words and phrases that are associated with a particular nationality or culture. A Scottish soldier might well say "Gi' me a wee dram a' that". A soldier from England would not!

Where your sketch has been written for a radio format, the use of different accents and dialect can be an effective means of ensuring that there is no audience confusion over which character is speaking. However, this approach to differentiation is often considered to be the lazy way out and, as we'll see, there are other options that may prove more effective.

2. Differentiation by personality traits:

Whether we are from the same background as other people or not, we all have vastly different personalities. Thinking of our war time comedy sketch, the chances are that each of the protagonists will react differently to the stressful predicament that they are in. Maybe one of them will crack jokes to relieve the tension? Another might withdraw into himself and become a nervous wreck? Another may take charge and control of the situation. If you have fleshed out your characters' personalities sufficiently, then there should be plenty of scope to create characters that can easily be told apart from each other and dialogue that rings true to their personalities. Some of the things to consider are whether they are grouchy, happy-go-lucky, paranoid? Are there views conservative or radical? How do they fit in within the group dynamic? Are they the leader, the joker, or the outcast?

Summary:

When writing comedy, you want characters whose personality really fizzes off the page so that your audience has no difficulty in distinguishing between the various protagonists in the sketch. When writing for stage, there are some physical differences that you can employ (such as outfits, etc) and you can also use different accents and dialect which will work for radio as well as stage. However, these forms of differentiation are often a bit superficial and the most effective approach, by far, is to use personality traits to separate your characters. Indeed, once you have worked these personality traits out in your own head, you should also find that the dialogue that you write for each character will come much more easily. This should ensure that your sketch is more distinctive and that you avoid the dreaded pitfall of your characters sounding too "samey".

Learn more about this author, Simon Wright.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.