Write Funny: What’s Wrong With This Joke?

May 7, 2014 Posted by L.L. Barkat

Want to Write Funny?

If you want to write funny, you may have to let yourself indulge in wrongs…

1. The apple pie you made without sugar (You didn’t? I did. I assure you it was a terrible wrong on Thanksgiving day.)

2. The alarm clock you set for precisely one hour before you would secure your child’s stunning grade on the SAT.

(But then you stunningly slept through the wake-up call, jeopardizing your child’s very future. You didn’t? I did. And only time will tell just how wrong it was to sleep through the possibility of a sane morning, a sane arrival to the test, and the proper use of a hairbrush before leaving the house.)

3. The Facebook audience you built with hard work, time, and attention (and maybe some hard-earned money), only to see Facebook unethically hold your audience for ransom, just because they thought they could.

(You did. I know you did. If you have any social media history at all, you did. Now comes the waiting—to see who the joke is really on: you (and me) or them.)

How to Be Funny, According to McGraw and Warner

If you aren’t funny, it might be because nothing’s wrong with your joke. Maybe you were raised not to complain. Too bad. Because a good complaint is where you need to begin. You need to see the wrong, make it obvious, then get set to…

Mitigate The Wrong

I know. Mitigate is a big word. And one of the rules of good humor is to keep it simple. But I like the word mitigate, so I am going to break the rules (which is another rule of good humor. I mean, breaking the rules is another rule, so you see how it all works out in the end).

McGraw and Warner don’t use the word mitigate. They are more cooperative with the universe. (Pete even wears a sweater vest.) McGraw and Warner say that we must make the wrong benign. And when we do that, somebody somewhere laughs.

The Final (and Not So Final) Word on Funny

Here is the good news for your bad kitchen (and bad alarm clock) days: If you are a master of complaint, you are poised to be the next Colbert. All you need to learn is the art of mitigation. Not the maternal art of mitigation, “Oh, Honey, everything’s going to be all right.” But the amusing art of mitigation. “Oh, Honey, you need a faster hairbrush and a sexier clock alarm.”

Righting a wrong with a comic eye, McGraw and Warner discovered, is not as simple as it seems. There’s no solid science, after all, to making the pie go down with a late spoon of sugar. Still, you can read more about the art and science of comedic possibility (including the surprising power of Venn diagrams, red velvet curtains, and hiring the right people to laugh at your jokes) in The Humor Code.

Let us know if break it. The code, not the clock, that is.

How to Write Funny: John Cleese

February 17, 2014 Posted by L.L. Barkat

On how to write funny, live seriously, and love life. A great interview with John Cleese at Harvard Business Review:

Life’s Work: John Cleese

In your career you’ve had periods of close collaboration with other creatives and periods of very focused individual expression. Do you work better alone or with partners?

It depends on the subject matter. I’m writing my autobiography now, and I don’t think there’s any point at all in doing that with anyone else. But traditionally, comedy writers have worked in pairs, and I like that. I do believe that when you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that’s why I don’t think there’s any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead…

read all of Life’s Work: John Cleese

Photo by That Guy Who’s Going Places, Creative Commons, via Flickr.

Business Humor: Conference Call in Real Life

February 5, 2014 Posted by Willingham

[on a scale from wit to whimsy: Parody]

How can you write funny? (Or, film funny.)

Sometimes it’s as simple as taking something routine and standing it on its head.

What if your next business conference call took place in physical space, instead of over the airwaves?

Try your own hand at business humor, and let us know how it goes 🙂

HT: Fast Company

5 Great Reasons to Write Funny

January 29, 2014 Posted by L.L. Barkat

Maybe you think you don’t have a funny bone in your body. Or you see others who clearly have a “talent” to write funny. Perhaps you’ve been making your way in lyrical prose, journalism, book reviews. You have no need to write funny, right?

Never mind. Here are 5 great reasons to write funny:

1. Writing funny is hard.

To choose to write funny is to choose a challenge. There’s a reason the Greeks elevated comedy above tragedy: they knew it was easier to write drama than to write comedy.

Granted, it seems that some people are naturally funny. Somehow, they see the world upside down, inside out, or through a glass rippled. But to write funny and funnier is also about acquiring a broad base of skills and a range of techniques (just check out the breadth of our Humor Scale… which is, itself, by no means complete).

2. Writing funny encourages revision.

While all writing can benefit from revision, writers can get to the place where they require little of it to pull off a well-crafted piece. It’s easy to slip into sedentary status.

To revise is to exercise. It requires an increase in knowledge, language facility, and technique. And then it requires focused application of these elements. (I bet you dollars to donuts that Garrison Keillor is still thinking of ways to write funnier).

Writing funny often requires multiple revisions to really work a piece. Lift those juxtapositions! One more twist. Another turn. Flip something on its head. Cut, cut, cut (upper cut!). The harder you revise, the funnier you can make a piece.

3. Writing funny cultivates courage.

There is nothing quite like trying to write funny and knowing that if you don’t nail it, you haven’t… nailed it. (Tight rope walking might be a comparable activity.)

While failed tragedy forgives (for the most part), failed comedy strikes the writer’s heart. If you’ve cultivated a cushy writing life, it might be time to get courageous and up the writing ante. (Sure, bring along a safety net of encouraging friends or chocolate truffles for the adventure.)

4. Writing funny offers partnership.

I can’t remember the last time (or any time, for that matter), that I felt compelled to consult my kids for writing advice.

But when I wrote the punny satire Facebook Executive Psychologist Triage Meeting, I decided to sit down with my sixteen year old, who gave me some expert advice on how to write funny.

(Any continued advice on this point would be welcomed, especially since puns are extremely difficult to pull off in a culture that does not appreciate the fine points of punning. For while “the Roman orators Cicero and Quintilian believed that ‘paronomasia’, the Greek term for punning, was a sign of intellectual suppleness and rhetorical skill, modern English culture is often less… forgiving of a supple punchline.)

5. Writing funny makes you laugh—if not at your jokes, at least at yourself. And that’s good for the heart (& maybe the body).

Watching Carol Burnett recently, I was struck that she’s still with us, still doing her funny business. In fact, I momentarily wished I was a social scientist, positioned to do a comparative longitudinal study on comedian longevity versus rock star longevity.

There might be no longevity correlation whatsoever, between the focus on comedy as opposed to the focus on drama, but at least one man received an honorary doctorate for discovering humor’s power to preserve.

Where to Begin

If you’re not ready to (publicly) write funny yet, why not begin by laughing? Take the 1,000 Laughs challenge. Or pretend you are a penguin in the polar vortex. That will get you thinking on opposite poles.

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Photo by Bert Dickerson, Creative Commons, via Flickr.