Listing Themes/ Topics & Items For Writing Comedy

Many of our writing exercises start with you jotting down a quick list of themes or a bunch of items within a theme. Think of this as building a basket of raw materials you can play with later.

The aim here isn’t to be funny yet. It’s to give yourself lots of starting points you can use to find the funny later.

General Advice

Quantity over quality. Don’t wait for a “good” idea—every idea is good at this stage. See Following Writing Exercises and Specific Amount of Ideas
Keep moving. Use a timer and don’t stop writing until it’s up. See Writing Comedy to Timers
Write without censoring. If something feels off-topic, odd, or “wrong”, put it down anyway.
Mix obvious and unexpected. Start with the clichés, then stretch toward the weird, broad, or abstract.
Work at two levels:
- Obvious: Cat, dog, parrot.
- Abstract: Fur, beak, chasing, migration, extinction.

Useful Prompts for Generating Themes/Topics from Scratch

What’s in the room with you right now?
What’s something you love?
What’s something you dislike or avoid?
What’s a world you know well? (e.g. school, camping, customer service)
What’s a world you don’t know at all? (e.g. submarine life, medieval royalty, mole people)
What’s something you’ve done this week?
What’s something you’ve never done?

Examples

Prompt: Write down at least 10 themes/topics

Animals
Opticians
Fruit
Homeware
Circus
Music
Video Games
Sea
Exercise
Nature

Prompt: Write down at least 10 items within “Animals”

Hairless cat
Beak
Fur
Pig tail
Feathered dinosaur
Footprints
Allergies
Taxidermy
Animal puppets
Licking frogs

Extra Tips if You Get Stuck

Change perspective: What would a child, alien, or Victorian inventor list?
Use senses: What can you see, smell, hear, touch, or taste in this theme?
Push extremes: What’s the tiniest or largest thing in this theme? The most expensive? The most disgusting?
Break it: If the theme was broken, corrupted, or wrong, what would be in it?