Take one of your favorite comedies and reverse engineer it. Break the story down and dissect it into its most basic elements. Work backward and break every scene into an outline. Look at how the characters are introduced and how the action is moved along. Look at the movie scene by scene and see which ones work by themselves as a comedy sketch and which ones don't. Look at how locations are used to help tell the story. Also look at how serious scenes and moments are integrated with the comedy.

Study all the choices that were made in the movie and try to imagine what it might be like if different choices had been made.