What Are Some Random Skit Ideas?

What are Random Skits?

"Analyzing comedy is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs and the frog dies," writes journalist Richard Herring as he quotes comedian Barry Cryer. Still, learning how to write a comedy skit and finding skit-worthy topics is possible. Good skits, short scenes, character sketches or short plays that are usually humorous in nature and are familiar to most people through comedy sketch shows like Saturday Night Live (SNL), Mad TV, or movies from Monty Python.

Writing great skits for performance on stage can be fun and challenging, and using some tried-and-true comedy techniques and sure-fire topics, random skit ideas can turn into comedy gold. Skits can stem from short skit ideas or longer skit ideas that are broken down into different parts over time. Some can be in first person, second person, and even third person narration depending on the theme. Skits can be used for a variety of events like comedy shows, reels or TikTok videos, birthday parties, tv shows and talent shows to incorporate funny things into the entertainment aspect. Makeup can even be used with costumes to enhance a skits popularity with the audience.

How to Create Funny Skit Ideas:

Using the Familiar

Many sketch comedy shows focus on current social and political trends -- just think of the famous television comics who do their impressions of presidents and rock stars. If you're not great at impressions, you can still write a skit that incorporates things that are familiar to most people, everything from shopping at the grocery to the poor quality of airline food to a random news event or social observation. Locations for skits can vary so consider a doctor’s office, camp skit, an invisible bench, a bus stop, etc.

Some ideas: two sisters who try to outdo each other in caring for their pets, two teenagers complaining about how people are addicted to electronic devices, a pair of crazy campers at summer camp, or a man trying to explain the concept of God to an inquisitive 6 year old. Many skits include cussing or common saying like “shut up,” “what’s up,” and “what’s up there” to come up with comedic lines.

Using Juxtaposition

One surefire comic technique for writing funny skits is putting unlike things together for effect. For example, transport a conservative soccer mom to a hippie yoga class. Place a vegan smack in the middle of a cattlemen's convention. Put a tone-deaf singer in the finals of a vocal competition. Put a cheerleader at a funeral. Putting unlike things together, or juxtaposition, is one of the most often-used techniques in skit writing.

Imitating Media

One popular and easy-to-do skit idea is to use an existing format (a television news program, a cooking infomercial, a soap opera) and tweak it to fit the circumstance of the skit. For example, if you work for a hospital, parody a gourmet cooking show featuring things like jello and unidentifiable beef dishes. Or, if you're a teacher, host an episode of "Cribs" where you give people a tour of your no-doubt humble abode.

Using Wordplay

Some skits use wordplay as a way to convey humor. Choosing one word that is confused for another in the context of the skit can be milked for laughs, although it can get old pretty quickly. Often, these wordplay skits are off-color, so if the audience is fairly conservative, this type of skit can be tougher to pull off. One example of this type of skit is the Betty White Delicious Dish sketch on Saturday Night Live. Ideas for this type of sketch: the seven dwarves in group therapy discussing their new names, which are contemporary problems (Wimpy, Sleazy, Jumpy) or a twist on the old Red Riding Hood fairy tale, Little Red in the Hood, set in a gang-infested neighborhood.