For me, it's when I get bored. Bad things happen when I get bored. And sometimes when I see people do dumb things, which is an endless source of material. (Most of that, though is me doing stupid stuff--I'm an amazing klutz.)

So, where do you get your ideas for goofs, gaffes and epic screwups? And how many come from stuff you've actually done?

I read the New York Times Opinion pages. You'd be surprised how much humour you can get outa that.

Seriously.

This year's plot was suggested by a screenwriter friend of mine (He specializes in documentaries, so a fiction film was of no interest to him), but he'd only taken the idea so far. I ran wild with it and before long had this whole convoluted thing that mixes more things than a Feydeau farce.

Mostly on the trolley (you seriously have to love public transportation) and at work. Working in a touristy town is hilarious sometimes. The rest of the time it's stuff I do, like falling down or confusing myself somehow.

If I'm allowed to rant, particularly when I'm bored, I become really witty. I don't know how I do it, but I just stop thinking and puns and punchlines spill out of my mouth like no tomorrow... I wish I could just be funny automatically, that would be fantastic... alas... :D

The running joke in my family is that you have to take Improv to be a member. My brothers and I just say whatever comes off the top of our head, and the game is to keep it going until we crack and laugh or somebody questions our train of thought. We don't even state the rules of the game, we don't announce there's going to be a game, it's just all of a sudden, "Why haven't we robbed a bank yet?" "Maybe because your bank has an airlock and my bank is for poor people." or something, and the conversation grows. I get some of my ideas from past conversations. My cousin decided to write a book based on one of our past conversations.

I naturally have a very dry, witty humor. Most people don't realize that about me until I've made fun of them for about 5-10 minutes.

I'm taking a lot of my inspiration for Script Frenzy from my various jobs I've had. If you can't laugh at what you do for a living, well you need help.

My Frenzy characters are exaggerations of people that I've met over the years. The situations I have in mind are fictional, but do have some basis in my experiences (I've been a waiter, a disgruntled hotel worker, a salesman, a student, an intern in a hospital, and a merchandiser).

LIFE! Some of the people I know were just begging to be a sitcom, so my boyfriend and I decided to write it. Most of our friends are practically caricatures anyway, so they're pretty easy to write. As such, though, a lot of my humor is very verbal and cerebral, not slapsticky at all (because how often to people trip over an ottoman in real life?).

Um...*embarrassed expression*

Um. They usually come to me through conversation about arbitrary topics. The more random the topic, the funnier the thing. I've been writing an absurdist play for a while though, so that might be it.

Just generally the way things go in life. For instance, a few weeks ago, I went in for a job interview, which they were hosting in a university classroom. It took me a while to find it, and I eventually wandered in.

I was there for about three minutes before I realised it was an anatomy class. I left, and went to my job interview, next door?

And then I thought: what if it went further? and it just kind of builds up from there. Now I've got some NEAT ideas.

I live in a rural area and our local newspaper has this thing where you can call in anonymously and leave a minute worth of comments and they print it in my paper. Its always a laugh. Recently there's been a debate

"I don't see why all these rednecks around here pull for *insert nascar driver's name here*..... *insert different name here* is better

its pretty lol worthy

Things I see or things I say/hear.
The most recent that comes to mind of what I've seen is a pregnant lady on a motorcycle. I'm fitting that in somewhere for my script.

In terms of what I've said, my boyfriend was making an excuse for something or another and I told him: any more crap and you're going to need a bigger bull.

... Well, I think I'm funny.

I got the idea for my script from my best friend's family. Too many kids crammed into a suburban on an across-the-state camping trip leads to funny things. (I know, because they took me along and "adopted" me that week.)From sneaking into a historical graveyard to spiders the size of dessert plates, there were comedy ideas popping up by the thousands.

hannah M: I would love to read it when you are done.

Since my life basically consists of sitting and watching TV, I take any opportunity to get out of the house. Never deny an invitation to go somewhere, because I always get strange inspiration from it, even if it's just a funny line or something. Most of the stuff I write is from actual experience, or just a distorted form of what I actually experienced. You'd be surprised at the inspiration my insane family give me. He he.

The small things in life, my hilarious girlfriend and my crazy imagination.

I wing it and keep going. The beauty of it is that the original inspiration, a comic strip parody of some D&D games I played way back in 1991, was done so loosely and intentionally sloppy that I don't even have to edit. My frantic script in a month can be my final draft!

With a bit of an exception; it's formatted like a movie, and I'm now thinking about retro-fitting it back into a comic strip series, since the original comics have long been lost to time and moves. It wouldn't be too hard, even if it's not officially formated like a comic.