In the days of silent movies, the era's finest comedians — Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd — used the restrictions of the technology to their advantage by creating some of the finest visual comedy ever made.

Chaplin even continued to successfully make silent comedies well into the sound era.

Why? It worked. Even though silent movie-era comedians didn't speak, their actions spoke volumes, and their films are still considered to be some of the most expressive and human movies ever made. And because they had no dialogue, they could be appreciated all over the world.

Would silent films work today? Yes and no. A long film without words might be a difficult sell to a mainstream audience, but to a targeted audience it might be a success. Short films, especially animated ones can work very well. 2008 was a great year for visual comedy. Pixar released the popular family film Wall-E, about a robot that falls in love. It used very little dialogue and relied on visual images, music, and sound effects to create a funny and touching film. Screenings of Wall-E were also preceded by a short called Presto, which shows an amazing battle of wills between a pompous magician and his hungry rabbit. It also had audiences in hysterics without a single word of dialogue. But the lack of dialogue doesn't mean there's no need for writers. All those visuals are scripted.

In the 1950s, the eccentric and inventive comedian Ernie Kovacs used television to beam his weird, funny, and sometimes surreal comedic vision into the homes of audiences who were used to “safer” comedies like Father Knows Best. Kovacs was television's master of visual comedy. He presented powerful images. Imagine the effect these images had at the time:

• An old rotary dial phone sits on a table. Suddenly, a finger pops through the center dial and starts dialing the phone.

• You see a bathtub and hear the water draining. The camera pans into the tub to reveal a hand coming up through the drain, desperately trying to cling onto the tub to avoid going down the hole.

• A group of gorillas perform the ballet Swan Lake — very well.

Kovacs was the first to understand that people weren't watching television. They were watching a lit-up box in the middle of their living rooms. Kovacs knew that audience could only see what they saw through the window in the box. He controlled when the images were revealed, and what images the audience could and couldn't see. He could pan up or down to show the comedy at his own pace — and he had impeccable timing. He played tricks with people's assumptions of what was in that box. He would show an orchestra playing a serious classical piece, and he would keep cutting to a kettle drum playing. On the third cut to the kettle drum, plop! The mallets sank into what was really a kettle drum filled with thick white paint. Because you control what the audience sees and when they see it, you have complete power to surprise them.

Visual comedy can add depth and humor even to projects with dialogue. For example: Consider a scene with a businessman who has to give a big speech desperately trying to find a men's room. He finally finds one that's available, uses it, then has to rush back to the auditorium with little time to spare. He has a moment to calmly collect himself, straighten his tie, and walk on stage for his big presentations before the bigwigs. After he delivers his speech, the camera slowly pans down to show that his fly is open and his shirt is sticking through it. The scene is funny because his fly was open the whole time he was talking. His audience could see it, but we couldn't. And that's why it's funny — we couldn't see it until just the right moment. Without a word being spoken, we learn that his career is over.

Remember the “I'll have what she's having” scene from 1989's When Harry Met Sally? In this hilarious scene, Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in the middle of a crowded delicatessen. Would that scene have been nearly as funny if all you saw were Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal sitting in a booth up against the wall? Absolutely not. It works because you see that they are sitting in the middle of Katz's Delicatessen. Watch it again and look at the background characters. At first, they are completely unimportant and the audience barely notices them. Now watch as the scene develops. Every character becomes important, and finally one previously incidental background character delivers one of the funniest lines in movie history.

Don't forget that you can use visual elements to really mess with an audience. In 2000, the pest control company Orkin produced a very clever ad. What started out as a commercial for a fabric softener became much more when the shadow of a very realistic-looking cockroach crawled across the television screen. Viewers' initially thought it was a real bug until they saw the Orkin Man calmly come into the scene and spray the bug. It shocked some viewers so much that they actually broke their television sets by throwing objects at the bug. Most viewers found the ad to be funny and appreciated the practical joke that had been played on them. And you can be sure that the commercial generated a lot of water cooler talk.

Imagine you're writing a script that has a long scene with two characters deep in conversation. You have a choice: you can have a static scene of the two characters talking, or you can add some simple visual elements to make the scene more interesting — without sacrificing the importance of the dialogue. You can do this by having something interesting in the background or set the scene in an interesting place. What are the characters doing while they are talking? Is one eating a sloppy burger? Are they at a Japanese hibachi restaurant with a chef cooking at their table, doing all his fancy knife tricks? Are they in the park feeding pigeons? Are the two characters playing a video game while they talk? Do you see the power that visuals can have on an audience? Many writers write their scripts and only concentrate on clever dialogue. Make sure to always keep in mind what the audience is seeing and come up with ways to make your comedy even stronger.