The flipside to the hope principle relates to antagonists and is comprised of the following elements: a villain is impeded by a minor obstacle. He overreacts and is doubly punished as a result. The no-hoper principle complies with the law of inverse significance: comic characters attribute vast importance to trivial things, and treat important…
Tag: television
How to Make Your Comedy Believable – Part 1
No matter how outlandish comic stories become, they must nonetheless be ‘believable’. Given that a comic story could include, for example, an elephant juggler marrying his uncle to save the planet from a Tic-Tac invasion, the issue of believability may seem irrelevant. But the believability of any sitcom is based upon two criteria: Once a…