How to Make Unfunny Sitcom Characters Funny

And Type #9 The Peacenik

What keeps you up at night? What makes you worry? That’s a good question to ask about your sitcom character. You, as the writer, need a good answer.

But remember, what keeps you up at night may not be what keeps your characters up at night. You may be worried about the future and that it’s unknown. Your thrillseeking-adrenalin-junky sitcom character we looked at before is lying awake worrying the opposite thing: that their future seems boringly predictable.

In short, you need to get out of your head full of your priorities and fears and into the heads of your characters. Get into bed with them, and lie awake at night with them. Find out what they are worrying about.

Clearly, AI thinks that women wear make-up in bed. But they probably get that idea off the TV.

Type 9: The Peacenik

This type is the last in our series of nine characters loosely based on the Enneagram.

The Peacenik goes to bed worrying that they’ve offended someone. They are averse to conflict. They must have harmony. According to Monica Moser over on Medium:

Type Nines are accepting, trusting, and stable. They are usually creative, optimistic, and supportive, but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness. They want to create harmony in their environment, to avoid conflicts and tension, to preserve things as they are, to resist whatever would upset or disturb them.

Good summary! And she gives Pam from The Office as an example. (In the UK version, that would be Dawn.)

But here’s the problem. There are some red flags in that character description that make this character tricky to make funny in a sitcom. Those would be “stable” and “typically have problems with inertia.” We don’t want characters who don’t want things and do things. We need them to be pursuing quests.

And conflict is funny. If they are trying to avoid conflict, doesn’t that undermine the funny?

It’s not just this character type that is prone to be sitcom kryptonite. Any character can seem hard to motivate. Perhaps they’re just too gosh-darn reasonable. But this gives us a chance to think about a trick to make any vanilla character funnier.

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How to Make Unfunny Sitcom Characters Funny

Your character might be hard to make funny because this character is basically you. You agree with what they say, what they want and how they react. And you’re not actually that funny in real life. You are not ‘larger than life’ which is what sitcom characters are. Or should be.

I’ve said this many times before but it makes the point: I’ve read a lot of pilot scripts where it’s the protagonist’s first day at work, and they spend most of the episode being introduced to people. Everyone is funnier than this protagonist who has nothing to do and reacts to all the crazy people. This character is essentially the voice of the writer in this world.

So here’s the first thing: don’t start on the first day in a new job if you can possibly avoid it. And you can! You’re the writer.

For more on this, see my YouTube video I made a couple of years ago, now with a new title and thumbnail that should actually make you want to watch it. Because it’s all about grabbing the viewers’ attention – and holding it. I wasn’t grabbing it – so I changed it. That’s what writers do!

Secondly, change the character – or delete them entirely. See how the plot goes without them? It’s quite surprising how often something that seems vital at point turns out to be expendable.

And here’s the third bit of advice:

Turn your character up to eleven.

This means amplifying their virtue so that it becomes a vice.

Is your character nice, kind and considerate?

Make them too nice. So nice it drives other people crazy, or makes them feel bad. Lesley Nope is nice. And no one can keep up with her. That’s funny.

Is your character cracking jokes but inactive?

Make them too funny. Funny at the wrong times. Funny when it’s not appropriate. Chandler is funny – and that’s a problem, since he uses it to deflect people and avert intimacy. Why is this character trying to be funny? Dig into it. Then turn it up.

Is your character trusting?

Make them too trusting. They are naïve. They could be a type nine, trying to keep the peace. But they will go to any lengths to do so, including keep secrets, cover up the sins of others, and do bad things themselves. And when people find out, everyone’s furious. It’s their worst nightmare. Everyone’s asking them “How can you sleep at night?!”

And that’s where we came in. The YouTube video is below. Have a look – and maybe share it? Or this blog? That’d be kind of you.