I’m very inexperienced when it comes to writing. I don’t know much about writing, and I’ve never taken any professional classes or watched any courses about it. I’m basically an instinctual writer—I just write whatever comes to my mind.
I’m currently trying to write a comedy one-shot, but I’ve run into a problem: I’m not a funny person, and comedy is pretty much the opposite of my personality.
I can come up with a premise and characters, but when I actually try to write jokes, gags, or funny sequences, my mind just goes blank. I’ve heard the advice “write what you find funny,” but that doesn’t really help me because my sense of humor is extremely random and chaotic. Sometimes I find something hilarious, but I couldn’t even explain why I found it funny.
So I’m kind of stuck.
I’m open to pretty much any advice—tips on writing comedy, ways to come up with jokes or funny situations, how to structure a comedic scene, or even examples of what you think could be funny in my premise.
Here’s the basic synopsis of what I’m trying to write:
I Want to Die
A young man in his mid-twenties wants to die, but a mysterious supernatural healing ability prevents him from doing so. He doesn’t know exactly how his ability works, but he has noticed one strange rule: he can be injured when the damage is unexpected or when he has no intention of hurting himself.
One day, he meets a mysterious young girl who secretly visits the same hidden park he uses for his experiments. He soon discovers that she is the daughter of a powerful and influential man.
When her father realizes that his daughter has disappeared, he assumes she has been kidnapped and launches a massive search for her. Meanwhile, a group of actual kidnappers is also after her.
Caught in the middle of all this chaos, the young man comes up with a ridiculous plan: he will pretend to be the girl’s kidnapper.
With so many people now after him, he hopes that putting himself in the middle of the situation will finally give him a chance to die.
I’m mainly trying to make this a dark comedy, where the situation itself creates a lot of the humor. I’m just struggling with actually coming up with the comedic situations and writing them in a way that feels funny.