I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.
Interpretation
Writing comedy requires a high level of skill and can be applied to various forms of writing.
In this quote, Steven Moffat emphasizes the challenging nature of writing comedy, asserting that if one can successfully craft humor, they possess the skills necessary to excel in any writing discipline. The precision required for comedy, where the immediate feedback of laughter determines success or failure, makes it a uniquely demanding craft that informs and enhances broader writing abilities.
In practice
Use this quote during a workshop on writing to emphasize the skills required for humor.
Demons run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun when a good man goes to war. Friendship dies and true love lies. Night will fall and the dark will rise when a good man goes to war. Demons run but count the cost; the battle's won but the child is lost.
It's a funny thing about stories. It doesn't feel like you make them up, more like you find them. You type and type and you know you haven't got it yet, because somewhere out there, there's that perfect thing -- the unexpected ending that was always going to happen. That place you've always been heading for, but never expected to go.
An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand - it's about making people care.
I don't want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.
I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK. We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know; it was the best.
The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.
Music satisfies and nourishes the hunger within ourselves for connection and harmony.
The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.
I'm not such a fan of imagination. If you're alive to details, they oftentimes suggest a richer or deeper imaginative line than you would have imagined.
All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.
We used to make patterns in the dirt, hanging our feet off the horse-drawn farm equipment. We made endless hourglass figures that I now see as the forms within forms in my crocheted wire sculptures.
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