Rebel Daydreams

If you’ve ever been interested in writing your own comedy sketches, the straight-absurd scene is a great way to get started. All you need to know is right there in the name. One character is doing something absurd and the “straight man” is pointing out how odd or unusual the behavior is.

For your first scene, it is perhaps easiest to stick to two characters. That way, you only have two perspectives to juggle while you are thinking about the dialogue.

The main challenge when writing a straight-absurd scene is in thinking about what the central absurdity might be. What is an unusual behavior or point of view you’ve noticed that you might be able to exaggerate? It doesn’t have to be unusual to everyone – you can just personally find it odd.

Here’s a concrete example. I drink tap water sometimes. Other people like to drink more filtered or purified water. There’s nothing initially funny about this contrast until I exaggerate one or both of our perspectives.

To explore this idea, I wrote a simple straight-absurd scene where one person is thirsty and the other person keeps insisting that the water they want to drink is insufficiently pure. For the absurd character, no matter how the water is obtained, it will never be good enough.

In this situation, the “straight man” also has a clear motivation – they’re thirsty. So the straight and the absurd are in a bit of opposition, as they usually are. By definition, they have different points of view.

To finish straight-absurd scenes out with a punchline, you might have one character briefly relent. The straight character might try the absurd thing out, just to see. Then you have a choice – either they stick to their point of view, or they might change their mind! Maybe the absurd character had a good idea all along.

Writing sketch comedy can be scary when you begin and you are looking at a blank page. Still, it does not have to be complicated. One way to write a sketch is to think of a point of view and exaggerate it.