So, one of my favorite forms of comedy in otherwise serious moments. Is when a character or group of characters go 'off script' I'm not sure how to word it, but I mean that they'll say something or do something that seems like they weren't intended to say or do at that time. for example casually referencing something that will eventually happen, even if it doesn't happen the way they describe it. Often times this will be the characters breaking the fourth wall some way, or (typically) perhaps saying something in jest that implies they're more 'aware' than they should be. I suppose the frequency of these moments would largely depend on the overall tone of the story I intend to tell. For this particular story the tone will overall be somewhat silly but it will have high stakes/serious moments.
You want to be careful that the comedy doesn't destroy any seriousness or drama. Think about how James Gunn directed Guardians of the Galaxy as a good example (both of them are well done if I remember right). But then look at Thor: Ragnarok for when it's starting to slide off the rails, and Love and Thunder for when it becomes totally self-indulgent and the jokes destroy everything else. Taika Waititi is like George Lucas in that as long as they keep him on a short leash he does a pretty good job, occasionally excellent, but give him too much freedom to do what he wants and he'll let the humor expand until it consumes everything else (with Lucas it isn't humor). Because Ragnarok was so successful they let him write Love and Thunder as well as direct it, and it just went entirely off the rails. The Deadpool movies are another example. There's an insane amount of humor, some might say it goes way too far, but it seems to me it works because that's the character, and most of the humor was character-specific rather than situational (sit-com as they call it). Situational comedy is when ridiculous things happen—character-based comedy (not sure that's the right term for it) is when the things that happen are solid, but the POV character (or maybe another one) says or does ridiculous things. I'd have to go back and check, but I think the Deadpool movies are pretty character-based humor. Although, since they're told 1st person through Deadpoool's POV (he even does a voiceover), it almost feels like sitcom. Because everything you see is his own intrerpretation of what happened, shown the way he would distort it when he tells somebody about it. As long as it's well done and remains true to the actual POV, then this can work, but it's complicated stuff. You'd need to be well-versed in POV to pull it off. There's a subtle but important difference between what actuallly happened and how the character interpreted things.
Some followup thoughts, I don't know if this is helpful to you or not. There's a certain kind of comedy where all the characters are essentially children in adult bodies, and that's what makes it funny as well as poignant. This is exactly how the Guardians movies work, or for instance Napoleon Dynamite. In fact I'd say Jon Heder (the actor who played Napoleon) must have known a child or several and spent a good deal of time with them prior to making the movie, because he absolutely channels about an 8 year old boy, and based on his performance the rest of them did a pretty good job as well. But he was so familiar with the reactions, facial expressions, and thought processes of a child that he was able to transform himself into one flawlessly. If you break down all the characters in the Guardians movies, you'll realize they all think and act like children on a playground. This has long been true for many of the great comedic actors. The Three Stooges, most of the comedy teams and duos. They look like adults, but they respond to life exactly the way children would. And this actually captures one of life's big truths. Many people are children in adult bodies. If you're a good observer of life, and pay attention, you'll see that children come in all manner of different personality types, and it's the way those different types interact that makes their world go around. Some are pushy and mean, some are gentle and kind, some are far too ambitious and unable to accomplish what they set out to do. And in most adults you can see the inner child still doing its thing. There's a huge amount of human truth in the comedy teams, with a straight man (the mean one) constantly blaming all his problems on the magical child (the funny one, the fall guy). Watch Laurel and Hardy with this in mind, or Abbott and Costello. Riggs and Murtaugh. Martin and Lewis. And on and on. It seems the best comedy is aware that human behavior is conditioned on the playground, and that it doesn't change much in important ways for the rest of our lives. But an important aspect of that is that children get serious when its time to get serious. They get sad when they should be sad. Bad comedy happens when writers violate these boundaries. I mean, there are ways of still showing somebody is a child without letting it destroy the inherent drama in a scene. Hell, often the way a child reacts to a powerful moment is far more poignant than the way an adult would (one who has lost touch with their inner child). The important thing is to stay in touch with the reality of the drama and the emotional movements of the piece and not let the comedy be in the wrong tone at important moments. A story is like a symphony—a series of movements through various emotional states leading up to a climax.
What I'm talking about isn't some witty one liner. (ok it kind of is, but not like marvel does them) I'm talking about a character literally 'breaking' character, like they were an actor in a play. For example the princess being content with her capture because she knows the knight will come to save her. (or even funnier, driving the evil dragon lord insane with all her demands, but he can't kill her because she knows he needs her to lure the knight into his trap) Or a character breaking fourth wall and being aware of the player. Or maybe addressing a character by the name or nickname of their actor/voice actor playing them. I mean literally going 'off' the script.
I didn't say anything about witty one-liners. Everything I said was global, about how to make sure the humor doesn't destroy the core of the story. You're talking about postmodern comedy where the characters are aware they're in a movie or a story and they break the fourth wall. Some of what I mentioned is also posmodernist, especially Taika Waititi and Deadpool. But it doesn't matter—the things I said about not letting the jokes destroy the emotional core apply to any kind of comedy. But hey, feel free to ignore it if you want. There are other readers in here too, and I'm sure some of them will appreciate it whether you do or not.
Not wanting the jokes to destroy the emotional core was the reason I asked the question in the first place? The question wasn't 'should I do it' it was 'how often could I do it before it got annoying' I hope there wasn't some misunderstanding of the question or my response. Which was me trying to explain exactly what I was talking about. The goal of the characters breaking character (seemingly, though if you examine how they break character, it's actually somewhat in character for them? Like, the exact way they break character actually lines up with their personality, if that makes sense.) is to prevent the tone from getting too serious or dark. The setting is already kind of dark (It's a world where the countries are blocked off from eachother in various and increasingly dangerous ways) and some of the characters backstories are somewhat dark as well, so I want to maintain a somewhat silly tone. Knowing that Characters like Deadpool and such like do it doesn't help me decide how much of those shenanigan's would fit the story I'm trying to tell. I don't plan on letting the jokes ruin the actual important moments, unless it's relevant to the moment. The style of humor I'm trying to evoke does have a place and it hits a different mark than Deadpool's perspective gags or the Witty one liners of Guardians
I feel like you already answered your own question in the first post. The title is 'How often should characters go 'off script'? and in your sixth sentence you say 'I suppose the frequency of these moments would largely depend on the overall tone of the story I intend to tell.' That's it. How often characters should go off script should depend on the tone of the story that surrounds them. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to your question. Like Xoic said, characters shouldn't go off script during intense emotional scenes and you said you weren't going to do that...so congrats. You already answered your own question.
Are you talking about a character becoming aware of the story structure? I've seen it a few times. It's always done for laughs. . . . "The Illuminatus Trilogy" did it, if I remember right. Towards the end the characters realize they're in a book because the passage of time keeps changing for them as the author moves into narration. In the "The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor" by John Barth, the Sinbad character was aware of the structure at times. His ship would always seem to sink (because Sinbad always needs to be marooned) and so whenever he saw a storm coming up he would just go sit in the escape dinghy and wait for the ship to be demolished on the reefs. In Rushdie's Quichotte, the MC realizes he's living a Quixote allegory and prays for a Sancho to join him. One does. Hey, I wrote one once! I almost forgot, haha. The main character, a noir detective knows that he's living out a script. He's concerned because he feels that from how his job is changing, he's due to be cancelled. He's a super-detective, that's how he figures all this out. He's a work of fiction. It's the only explanation for all the murder and trauma that surrounds him, not to mention all the infractions he should be arrested for. He causes a lot of mayhem, just a like a TV private investigator. At the end of the story, he convinces the female secondary character that this is all true. (She assumes he's quite mad up until then.) He has to solve this impossible riddle and then she knows he's for real. He shows her the crew filming them. He knows a way to make them visible. In the last pages, the story switches to script form.
I would be inclined to agree with @Lili.A.Pemberton - you have largely answered the question yourself, it depends on the tone you are trying to achieve. I would go further and suggest that if it is any kind of serious work, the answer is never. If it is comedic, then as often as you like, the more often the less serious. Check out some of Frankie Howerd's TV comedy from the late sixties "Up Pompeii" on you-tube; the narrator, Howerd's character Lurkio, is more dragged into the story than out. At the other end of the scale you have the ending to Monty Python's holy grail where suddenly the viewer finds that a police investigation is being undertaken into the deaths of characters during the film you've just watched. This sort of thing can certainly be used to great effect, but it would just as certainly throw any reader/viewer out of a story that was intending to be taken seriously. ETA - it is a technique with a long history - used by the bard himself in lines such as Fabian's "If this were played upon a stage, I would condemn it as improbable fiction"
Yeah, I know the tone I'm trying to achieve, which is why I'm trying to figure out balance of characters going off script. I've seen monty python and a couple other examples of this in action, and while the tone is light hearted I think going quite that frequent would annoy the reader. I'm also trying to use how the characters going off script to like, shine some light on some facet of their personality, that if you pay attention is actually 'in' character for them. Something like the Hot Blooded swordsman character examining an opponent, and electing to sheath his blade. He deduces/comments that a conflict at that point in time would be mere padding and would dull his blade for the 'real' fight. You know, something character specific like that. It could tell the reader that yes, he's a bloodthirsty moron, but also he knows to save his energy for when he needs it most.
Let's break this down to the simplest answer possible. We cannot answer this question for you. There is no definitive answer to "how much is too much going off script". There is no "yeah, if you put in 20 off script jokes then it's too much, you'd want to aim for 10." It depends on the tone of the story. Final answer. We don't know the tone of your story, as we aren't inside your brain so we can't give you an actual answer. We can throw some examples of where it's done right and where it's done wrong, which some of us have already thrown at you, but that's all we can do without having the story in front of us. My advice: write the actual story as it comes to you naturally and try to fix the 'off script-ness' ratio afterwards and stop asking impossibly open-ended questions like 'how often should characters go off script?'.
Maintaining stakes through 4th wall breaks is quite the challenge. Quite often they come across as lazy because there is so little set-up and payoff. About-faces at the audience are like full-frontal nudity in a fluorescent-lit kitchen, versus the more set-up bare shoulder in a smoky room (or candlelit ass cheek). Those aren't cats that can be put back in bags. One way it might work would be to have the characters initially think they are part of a trope-ridden story. Then the princess learns her shining knight absconded with the stable hand because the whole dragon business was just too much. She's plunged into doubt: maybe it's not a story at all, or worse, it's a subversive story! Now she doesn't know what her fate will be, giving more credence to her tension and along with it audience investment.
