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mbarker Original posting May 10, 2019
Writer's Digest, June 1990, pages 18-22, has an article by J. Kevin Wolfe, about writing humor. The title is "The Six Basics of Writing Humorously." The subtitle goes into more detail. "You can write funny articles, books, scripts, greeting cards – whatever – even if you don't consider yourself a comedian. Here's how to capture on paper the wealth of humor that waits within you."Sounds interesting! So let's see…Kevin starts by telling us that "deep inside each of us lurks a Bozo." He assures us that anybody can write funny. "All that's required to write comedy is a sense of humor." Aha!Then he turns to that burning question, "What's so funny?" Unfortunately, analyzing comedy often kills it. But, Kevin recommends thinking about what's funny in yourself. Your quirks, your habits, your biases, your point of view can be great sources of material. Think about what irritates you about other people, too. You might laugh at their shortcomings, but you can also look at why that irritates you. What about the problems in your own life, the tricks that fate plays on you?"None of us is perfect; our flaws make us laughable. Write a few jokes about yourself. Humor is many times a painfully honest comment about ourselves, individually and as a species."Fairly often, humorists are the butt of their own jokes. "Our lives are filled with events that can be translated into humorous stories and anecdotes. Look for them."Pay attention to your specialties. Whatever you know best, that's also what you are best qualified to joke about."Whether the humor you write grows from within you or comments on the world we live in, we can generalize to say that people laugh at two things: surprise and misfortune."Surprise? Put together two things that don't fit together. The Pope skateboarding. "Surprise humor lead you in one direction and then takes a sharp turn. When a skateboard goes flying past, you don't expect the Pope!Misfortune? The rich and famous, the poor and ethnic, life where we are, being our self. Think about the butt of the joke. Somebody gets slammed. "There is usually an element of cruelty involved here, either verbal or physical, subtle or blatant."Sometime surprise and misfortune get mixed up. Misfortune can be surprising, and vice versa.Next, Kevin takes a look at the building blocks of humorous writing. He assures us that deciding to introduce humor into your writing is more important than exactly which kind of humor you are going to write. A book with occasional humor, a television sitcom or stand-up comedy routine with a lot of humor, the big difference is the amount of humor, the intensity and style of the humor. But they use the same techniques. "To produce laughs, use these elements."The key is the joke. Just like the sentence, "the joke is the element that humor is built from." So, what's a joke? Well, anything that makes you laugh. Pay attention, take it apart, pinpoint what made you laugh, and there's a joke!Now, jokes may seem complex, but they're really made up of two parts. The setup, and the punchline. The setup introduces the elements needed to get the joke. It makes a little bubble, that the punchline bursts. The setup introduces something we relate to. The punchline delivers the surprise, casting an absurd light on that thing. Sometimes setups present a humorous concept, and then the punchline comments on that concept. For example…Setup: Mattel has a new doll – Teenage Mutant Ninja Barbie.Punchline: She's the girl next-door, provided you live next door to a paramilitary gun shop.Sometimes there are implied setups, or punchlines that start right at the beginning and then grow. Learn to spot these concealed jokes, and then you can do it yourself. The examples he gives focus on building humor, with a repeated refrain, that then gets reversed in the final punchline."It is often said that effective humor lies in the timing, the second basic element of humor-writing." Timing? Well, compare it to music. When jokes are told out loud, the setup establishes a rhythm. Stay on topic, keep the momentum going, then… Deliver the punchline. "The timing of a verbal joke also depends on the beat in the rhythm that you skipped before and after a punchline." Pause to give the audience time to absorb the setup and get ready for the punchline. The second pause? Give them a chance to laugh!Now, how do you print or write a pause? Well, sometimes a period does the job. A comma followed by and or or might do it."The sad thing about the 60s was that the three most remembered voices of the decade were those of John F. Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, and Mr. Ed."The punchline should always be the last example."When writing a humorous story, try this method to skip a beat: place some brief action in the dialogue between the set up and the punchline." Not too long. Sometimes a he said or she said is enough. Then, end the paragraph after the punchline.The third building block? Internal logic. Admittedly, your humor is going to push situations to extremes, but the logic of the situation should remain consistent. You might start with an absurd premise, but then keep it constant.The fourth element is somewhat related, internal consistency. Usually you want to stick with one type of humor, don't mix them up. Biting satire with a slapstick food fight? No. So if you start with satire, end with satire.The fifth building block, though, is that your audience expects you to be unpredictable. If you're not unpredictable, the audience may be surprised, but they're not going to laugh. Make sure the audience can't predict where you are going. When your punchlines get stale, change. Old jokes are usually predictable. Use your own fresh material. Now, plenty of humor is based on clichés, commonplace situations, stereotypes. They're predictable, and don't take very much set up. You can make them unpredictable by twisting or parodying.Last building block? "The best humor is concise." Make it short, make it quick."As I said, all humor begins with the joke, and so must you. Search out the humorous stories you have to tell. But tell them carefully; trust your audience and your writing ability. Be confident: if your writing is funny, the audience knows when to laugh."There's a sidebar that takes apart humorous stories. He looks at four different stories and analyzes them in terms of four elements: a funny opening, colorful narration, colorful characters, and a concise plot. Let's see… nope, I'm not going to try to summarize that. He's got examples of each of these, and he points out exaggeration, reverses, quirks, outrageous parodies, humorous flaws, irony, all that stuff! It's a great introduction to humor in a very short space, but you gotta read it yourself.Okay? An exercise to go with this? Well, you could take something you've read that was humorous, and see how they've used the six building blocks, jokes with the set up and punchline, timing, internal logic, internal consistency, unpredictability, and conciseness. Or, you could take something you're working on and try adding some humor. Maybe just someone telling a joke to another person, maybe a sub plot that is humorous itself. Either way, enjoy the laughs.tink
Writer's Digest, June 1990, pages 18-22, has an article by J. Kevin Wolfe, about writing humor. The title is "The Six Basics of Writing Humorously." The subtitle goes into more detail. "You can write funny articles, books, scripts, greeting cards – whatever – even if you don't consider yourself a comedian. Here's how to capture on paper the wealth of humor that waits within you."Sounds interesting! So let's see…Kevin starts by telling us that "deep inside each of us lurks a Bozo." He assures us that anybody can write funny. "All that's required to write comedy is a sense of humor." Aha!Then he turns to that burning question, "What's so funny?" Unfortunately, analyzing comedy often kills it. But, Kevin recommends thinking about what's funny in yourself. Your quirks, your habits, your biases, your point of view can be great sources of material. Think about what irritates you about other people, too. You might laugh at their shortcomings, but you can also look at why that irritates you. What about the problems in your own life, the tricks that fate plays on you?"None of us is perfect; our flaws make us laughable. Write a few jokes about yourself. Humor is many times a painfully honest comment about ourselves, individually and as a species."Fairly often, humorists are the butt of their own jokes. "Our lives are filled with events that can be translated into humorous stories and anecdotes. Look for them."Pay attention to your specialties. Whatever you know best, that's also what you are best qualified to joke about."Whether the humor you write grows from within you or comments on the world we live in, we can generalize to say that people laugh at two things: surprise and misfortune."Surprise? Put together two things that don't fit together. The Pope skateboarding. "Surprise humor lead you in one direction and then takes a sharp turn. When a skateboard goes flying past, you don't expect the Pope!Misfortune? The rich and famous, the poor and ethnic, life where we are, being our self. Think about the butt of the joke. Somebody gets slammed. "There is usually an element of cruelty involved here, either verbal or physical, subtle or blatant."Sometime surprise and misfortune get mixed up. Misfortune can be surprising, and vice versa.Next, Kevin takes a look at the building blocks of humorous writing. He assures us that deciding to introduce humor into your writing is more important than exactly which kind of humor you are going to write. A book with occasional humor, a television sitcom or stand-up comedy routine with a lot of humor, the big difference is the amount of humor, the intensity and style of the humor. But they use the same techniques. "To produce laughs, use these elements."The key is the joke. Just like the sentence, "the joke is the element that humor is built from." So, what's a joke? Well, anything that makes you laugh. Pay attention, take it apart, pinpoint what made you laugh, and there's a joke!Now, jokes may seem complex, but they're really made up of two parts. The setup, and the punchline. The setup introduces the elements needed to get the joke. It makes a little bubble, that the punchline bursts. The setup introduces something we relate to. The punchline delivers the surprise, casting an absurd light on that thing. Sometimes setups present a humorous concept, and then the punchline comments on that concept. For example…Setup: Mattel has a new doll – Teenage Mutant Ninja Barbie.Punchline: She's the girl next-door, provided you live next door to a paramilitary gun shop.Sometimes there are implied setups, or punchlines that start right at the beginning and then grow. Learn to spot these concealed jokes, and then you can do it yourself. The examples he gives focus on building humor, with a repeated refrain, that then gets reversed in the final punchline."It is often said that effective humor lies in the timing, the second basic element of humor-writing." Timing? Well, compare it to music. When jokes are told out loud, the setup establishes a rhythm. Stay on topic, keep the momentum going, then… Deliver the punchline. "The timing of a verbal joke also depends on the beat in the rhythm that you skipped before and after a punchline." Pause to give the audience time to absorb the setup and get ready for the punchline. The second pause? Give them a chance to laugh!Now, how do you print or write a pause? Well, sometimes a period does the job. A comma followed by and or or might do it."The sad thing about the 60s was that the three most remembered voices of the decade were those of John F. Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, and Mr. Ed."The punchline should always be the last example."When writing a humorous story, try this method to skip a beat: place some brief action in the dialogue between the set up and the punchline." Not too long. Sometimes a he said or she said is enough. Then, end the paragraph after the punchline.The third building block? Internal logic. Admittedly, your humor is going to push situations to extremes, but the logic of the situation should remain consistent. You might start with an absurd premise, but then keep it constant.The fourth element is somewhat related, internal consistency. Usually you want to stick with one type of humor, don't mix them up. Biting satire with a slapstick food fight? No. So if you start with satire, end with satire.The fifth building block, though, is that your audience expects you to be unpredictable. If you're not unpredictable, the audience may be surprised, but they're not going to laugh. Make sure the audience can't predict where you are going. When your punchlines get stale, change. Old jokes are usually predictable. Use your own fresh material. Now, plenty of humor is based on clichés, commonplace situations, stereotypes. They're predictable, and don't take very much set up. You can make them unpredictable by twisting or parodying.Last building block? "The best humor is concise." Make it short, make it quick."As I said, all humor begins with the joke, and so must you. Search out the humorous stories you have to tell. But tell them carefully; trust your audience and your writing ability. Be confident: if your writing is funny, the audience knows when to laugh."There's a sidebar that takes apart humorous stories. He looks at four different stories and analyzes them in terms of four elements: a funny opening, colorful narration, colorful characters, and a concise plot. Let's see… nope, I'm not going to try to summarize that. He's got examples of each of these, and he points out exaggeration, reverses, quirks, outrageous parodies, humorous flaws, irony, all that stuff! It's a great introduction to humor in a very short space, but you gotta read it yourself.Okay? An exercise to go with this? Well, you could take something you've read that was humorous, and see how they've used the six building blocks, jokes with the set up and punchline, timing, internal logic, internal consistency, unpredictability, and conciseness. Or, you could take something you're working on and try adding some humor. Maybe just someone telling a joke to another person, maybe a sub plot that is humorous itself. Either way, enjoy the laughs.tink
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