The work of defining sitcom characters is very much influenced by the fact that their character journeys are so limited. Whereas the hero of a novel must undergo major changes in the course of the story — rags to riches, youth to age, ignorance to wisdom, etc — the sitcom character cannot, being eternally confined to a specific time and set of circumstances.

Change is the sine qua non of sitcom plots as of all plots (without which there is nothing to hold the audience) but the changes affecting sitcom characters must be limited in order to preserve the essential status quo. Instead of making journeys, sitcom characters merely take tentative steps: even one step back for every step forward.

Familiarity Is Fun

In the absence of major changes, then, it must be something else that holds the audience. There is the comedy, of course, but there is also something about the characters themselves. In a sense, they are like old friends. We know how they live, how they think and act and how they are likely to react in a given situation. Even if we would not like to count them among our actual friends, they have at least some features that draw us to them.

Leaving aside the question of comic potential for the moment, the key to sitcom charactisation is recognition by the audience. Whereas the novelist may trick readers into empathising with a character who ultimately proves utterly unworthy of empathy, the sitcom writer shows his/her characters in clear, true light in every episode. New listeners/viewers quickly discover that A is an unscrupulous double dealer and that B flirts outrageously with all brunettes under the age of sixty, while C invariably gets things wrong and tries to pin the blame on everyone else. Established audience members take delight in their renewed acquaintance with such characteristics and look forward to hearing or seeing them played out in the particular circumstances of each new episode.

Identifying Key Traits

The character recognition factor provides a useful focal point for character development insofar as the writer can describe each character in terms of a list of traits that are calculated to spark recognition and, indeed, laughter.

Questions such as the following may be useful for prompting suitable traits:

• How is the character's self-image reflected in his/her behaviour generally?
• What does the character think of others, and how do these perceptions affect his/her behaviour?
• What are the character's greatest fears and how does s/he react when threatened by them?

The writer may assess the comic potential of any character by judging the quality and range of the traits listed and renew the work of character development accordingly.

Lists of character traits may also prove particularly useful when generating plots. A single trait may provide the seminal inspiration for a whole plot, while sub-plots may be constructed by bringing into play other, conflicting traits of the same character and others. This process assists character recognition, insofar as viewer/listeners already familiar with the characters take delight in trying to anticipate the plot by calculating when and how favourite traits will be brought into play.

Exaggeration

Character recognition is further increased by encapsulating key traits in repeated behaviours (consider the paranoid character who always checks for booby-traps on top of the door before entering a room) or catch phrases that reinforce character traits in the minds of the audience ("Paranoid? Moi?")

There is a risk that characters may become two-dimensional if they are reduced to a simple list of traits, and this will certainly happen if they lack depth in biographical terms. However, because character recognition is such a crucial feature in situation comedy, reduction is virtually essential.

Sitcom writers often turn this to their advantage by deliberately exaggerating key traits: inflating a character fault that might normally be considered insignificant so that it stands firmly in the foreground of the action. By making characters "larger than life" in this way, the writer distances the characters from reality, thereby making it easier for the audience to laugh: whilst many people feel uncomfortable about laughing at another person's misfortune, they feel much safer if that misfortune is the result of a fault that is evidently larger than life.