Sheep and lamb, and why they're funny

I'm in England, and kind of astounded by the variety and depth of the comedy here, from the adorably cheeky train conductors who always have a jest as they take your ticket, to the quiz shows and comedy shows and political shows where comedians hold forth. We have some of that in the US, but not nearly as much.

Anyway, I was remembering Robert McKee's observation that English is especially good for comedy, as the history of the language means we have about four words for any thought or object, from the generic (sheep) to the precise (lamb) to the nuanced (mutton, which is the more working class term for sheep meat that's older than lamb, as they couldn't afford lamb). So in English, you could make a play on these terms, or use whichever one is parallel to your actual meaning. For example, there's an insult used in England: "She's mutton dressed as lamb." That is, that woman is pretending to be a girl, or dressing much younger than her actual age. Another "sheep" term that plays on the different terms is "Might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb." That is, if I'm committing a crime and getting caught for it (or committing any offense), I might as well go big rather than little.

That is just one set of terms, and see how many jokes can be created just out of playing with the terminology and the difference between the related words. 
 
Anyway, I'd just heard the "mutton dressed as lamb" insult (not about me ), and thought how conducive to humor is our absurdly repetitive vocabulary. What other funny lines come out of juxtaposing synonyms? I notice this very much relies on a native speaker's ability to make nuanced distinctions between similar words. Can we be (deliberately) funny in a language other than our mother tongue? Nabokov was funny in English (apparently much funnier than he was in his native language!), because he studied words and wordplay and enjoyed puns. But can you think of other non-native comedians? I bet some grew up bi-lingual, so they could really juxtapose meaning and word.
Alicia

Comedy and cruelty

Does comedy have to be cruel? See what you think.
A

Guest Post: "The Wise of Being Funny"

The Wise Of Being Funny

Let’s get the expected brilliance out of the way first, shall we? Essentially, humor is an unlikely pairing of contrasts that reverses the reader's anticipated expectations. It requires a certain structure and pace, and these things are dependent on one another. Structure is the building humor resides in, and pace is the speed at which you walk through that building. Done right, the savvy writer can seamlessly put a clever twist on a commonly held notion. That’s all there is to being funny. The engaged reader is surprised in the end. It’s that simple. Huh? What?

I told you it was brilliant. :) But is this helpful to you? No. We all know this stuff, right? But can we apply it? I’m talking to the writers out there that don’t traditionally write ‘funny’ and have a hard time incorporating humor into their stories. Why can’t they make that universal concept -- contrasts vs. expectations -- work for them? It’s simple enough, so it should be easy. Well, it’s not. There, aren’t you glad I said that?

I’m also going to say that even if a writer isn't funny in person, she can write comedy with the proper tools and the desire to do so. Maybe she won't be able to do it as easily or frequently as someone who has the knack for it, but regardless, she still has an advantage. She has time on her side to convince the reader that her character or situation is funny. Unlike the stand-up comic or witty individual in a bar, a writer has the opportunity to edit/cut/paste and be critiqued before introducing her version of funny to the world. Stop and think about that -- it’s pretty powerful. You have the time to make it work, so let’s concentrate on that and have some fun. Brilliant is not, cough, my style -- an easy to understand example is. :D

First things first, you need to decide what you want the funny to be. Let's touch on two very different types of comedy: outrageous situations and physical comedy. For an example of an outrageous situation, let's say: Your hero has sworn off women, having been dumped by the love of his life just weeks before, so he decides to join the United World Order Of Inter-Galactic Space People Organization to sulk in solitary space for a good long while. During his first mission out, he crashes his depressed ass on Amazonia, a planet populated by beautiful warrior women. What will he do? Hmm...I know I feel sorry for him because like every self-respecting male out there, he’s going to stick to his original plan and not screw any of the legions of women wanting a piece of him, right? ;) Well, my version wouldn't be a mantasy, so he would stick to his plan. Talk about outrageous! Really, what could be funnier than a guy pining for the witch he left behind, while the angels before him want to set him up in a castle and give him an unlimited beer supply, a tap into the universe's biggest broadcasting station (so he can watch every sport known to man and alien alike all day and night), daily foot massages, and permission to scratch himself whenever and wherever the mood strikes. All he has to do in return is agree to impregnate their queen who is a genetic mutation of Heidi Klum and Pamela Anderson (the cartoon version of this story would hire Jessica Rabbit for the part). Gee, just imagine the potential for additional humor as the Amazonian women keep upping the temptations.

Now, look at what I did there.

1. I introduced the subject: our recently dumped hero.

2. I set up the situation by giving him a common problem the reader can relate to: being dumped. I mean, if I said the hero was depressed because someone else beat him to the discovery of a new species of fly, it wouldn't work. I doubt many readers would know how important that discovery is to the world, so the level of our hero’s depression over being beaten to the find of the century couldn’t be measured. We need a common bond to connect with -- hence the dumping. Most of us, unfortunately, can relate that situation. :)
I also gave him an unreasonable, and yet plausible, goal: swearing off women. I backed up his reactionary emotional state by having him make a drastic decision, joining the Inter-Galactic Space People Organization. Again, we can understand this, can’t we? When we’ve been hurt, it’s human nature to make changes to prevent it from happening again. And when we’ve been rejected, the last place we want to find ourselves on a daily basis is facing the person who dumped us (so a space mission right about now sounds good). In this situation, it's normal to get an ‘Oh yeah, I’ll show you’ attitude. So here he is, piloting his first flying saucer mission, ready to prove to the love he aches for (but will never admit that he does) that he can do just fine without her. But then the unthinkable happens. He crashes in Amazonia, where thousands of beautiful women -- scantily clad, of course -- desire him.

3. Here comes the irony: He’s sworn off women, remember? Now, if he had made that decision arbitrarily, this could still be funny on some level. But what makes our scenario even funnier is that he’s pining for his one true love, so it doesn’t matter how many beautiful women want him -- not one of them is the one he wants. That's funny.

Just like when you tell a joke, this example used layers to make the situation funny. You need to introduce a universal connection right away, something the listener can comprehend quickly (in my example, it’s the hero getting dumped), or else the explanation for the joke is too long and your audience loses interest. Yet also notice that, while outrageous, we can still relate to the situation because it’s all based on truths. We all get dumped and we all feel bad, and yes, some of us have been known to make drastic changes in our lives when this happens. If we're honest, we all secretly dream of making the person who rejected us regret their decision by doing great without them. And for a certain amount of time, no matter how much we want it to be otherwise and no matter how upset we are with the dumper, we still secretly want them -- that’s human nature. Now, give all those truths a twist, such as presenting the common gripes by women about stereotypical males and you have your humor.

Many writers' attempts to inject humor into their work fall flat because they've forgotten the most basic principle of comedy: Good humor is based on human frailties. The weaknesses we all share give us the best material. The closer we stick to the truth, the funnier things become, because subconsciously, it gives us the opportunity to laugh at ourselves. A writer must seek out the truth to create her humor, or else her prose could come off as mocking, embarrassing, or ridiculing her characters, or god forbid, the reader.

These risks bring me to the concept of written physical comedy (slapstick). A number of self-professed 'un'-funny writers tend to explore this method when they want to bring humor into their stories. Why? We've all seen the bloopers where people fall, so having a character slip in puddle and ruin her dress would seem like a logical scene to attempt. After all, we've laughed at this (I know I’m guilty). But why is it funny? It’s visually appealing. Makes sense. Visually? Hmm. This is trickier than you think and it requires even more layering to be effective. In this instance, the more details the better.

Example: Jonathon rushed to her side while she sat in the puddle. When he took in her miserable state, he wanted to smile. Then when she looked up at him with a scowl, he was tempted to laugh. (This is cute, but underdeveloped.)

How about:

She sat elegantly in the mud puddle, almost as if she waited for a servant to hand her a bath towel. Jonathon shook his head over that, but maintained a casual air as he arrived at her side. He kept his smile in check until she looked up at him. A large blob of wet earth stuck on the side of her head, just over her left ear, slowly slid downward, leaving a grubby smear across her face. Brown speckles dotted her cheeks and her eyelashes spiked together in soggy points from their recent drenching. But it wasn’t until her brows lifted in a belligerent ‘what?', which caused the clump at her temple to splat onto her shoulder, that he stepped back, out of spatter range, and chuckled.

What’s the difference here? Um, besides my overuse of adjectives. ;D It’s finding the absurd. It wasn’t just a puddle she sat in, it was a mud puddle that she elegantly sat in. Your props as a writer for nailing physical comedy are words -- choose them wisely. Look at the words in the second example: blob instead of pile, grubby instead of dirty. Actually, smear is funny to me for some reason too -- it reminds me of a bagel and lox. And the phrase: a belligerent ‘what?’ That has a look to itself, doesn’t it? To me, writing slapstick means drawing more on the senses and introducing rich details. The humor of slapstick is seeing the action, and if you don’t use the best words to describe the action, it will fall flat when you attempt to convey it to the reader.

Okay, words of wisdom to impart...

No matter what type of humor you attempt, use metaphors, similes, action verbs, and colorful adjectives (<-my favorite!), and take the time to think up new ways to say old things. Or use running jokes, or plan something funny for the duration of a story. For instance, I have a heroine who messes up her metaphors, and the hero is a real stickler for all things proper, so he continuously gets exasperated and corrects her. The funny part comes in because she doesn’t give a crap, and it isn’t until the end of the book when her good friend, after witnessing them go through a typical exchange on the subject, says: “What’s up with that? You doing that just to piss him off?” The heroine doesn’t miss a beat. She says, “Yeah. Are you ready to go to the mall?” That’s it. It’s funny because the reader gets the inside joke. It isn’t explained or excused -- it just is. If I had her qualify the 'yes' with an added 'because', it would lose its shine. The reader, if I’ve done my job right, should understand my heroine enough to know that this is her personality. In fact, this behavior should seem so much like a part of her character, the reader is surprised they didn’t see it coming... :D

And now you know the 'wise' and the 'whys' of being funny. Don't you love surprises?

Murphy

Editor's Note: Thank you, Murphy, for answering the call when we asked for someone to blog about humor writing. Everyone, Murphy picked today for her post to go live because she says today is the one-year anniversary of the date she found this blog. So let's all celebrate with her in the comments, shall we? Or commiserate. As you choose. :) Theresa

Fun things

I was reading Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich, and I realized that one reason she's so popular with her readers is that she knows what's fun and spins it out to an enjoyable length. She doesn't just allude to it-- she exploits it.

She has a recurrent "stoner" character who is kind of fun himself, and so when the protagonist hires him to do security on the boyfriend's house, she doesn't expect much real security. She just really wants to keep him occupied so that he doesn't get into trouble. But he takes this security job seriously, which is funny in itself (camo uniforms, etc). And he invents a special cannon to protect the house, a potato gun. PVC pipes that shoot potatoes.

Okay, so that's fun, this stoner and his young sidekick inventing this gun. But Evanovich doesn't stop there. She spins it out-- the protagonist comes home to be almost bombarded with vegetables. And the vegetables are funny too-- not just potatoes. They also hurl a cantalope (she goes for the funny names). And there are little dropped-in lines, like the stoner shooting a "twice-baked".

There's a full scene built around this. BUT that's not all. In the end of the book, when the protagonist is under siege by the bad guys, the stoner arrives like the cavalry and shoots potatoes at them and wins and is interviewed by the local media.

Two thoughts here--

1) Figure out what will be fun for the reader and go with it-- really play it out, exploit it. If you go too far, you can always cut it back later. But have fun with the fun.

2) The climax should be unique to your story. How your protagonist conquers the bad guy or accomplishes the goal should bring in elements you've set up in your story. In this book, Stephanie has been kind of a house mother, gathering these little orphans (the stoner, the boy whose mother was kidnapped, the homeless stalker) around her and feeding and housing them. So her reward for this is that they are there to help her in the climax. What has your story set up for in the end? What is the unique way your protagonist can use what he/she has learned or gained during all that rising conflict? What allies has he gathered? What skills has she acquired? IN THE STORY... use what he/she has gained in the story, not just what he/she came into the story already having.

Oh, another--
3) The climax should echo the type and tone of the book. That is, a comedy should have a comic climax (like the potato gun rescue). A romance should have a climax that has a romantic element (like one of the couple rescuing the other, or their new trust letting them overcome some obstacle). Don't settle just for a generic thrilling climax-- bring in the extra element that is unique to this book.

So let's talk about what is "fun" in stories. It's easy to see in a comedy, but what's fun in other types of books? Look at your own story, and tell us what type it is, and what you think the reader will find to be a lot of fun and you should expand?

Like the book I was talking about in the last post, with the hero who sings her swoony songs. Well, at least I and Murph think that's fun. So I might have him sing a song later too. I have no idea how to pull that into the plot, but what the heck. Also it's a big pain that most songs from the 20th and 21st Century can't be quoted (copyright). Fortunately he's Irish, so I can use Irish folk songs, but not the Pogues, alas. I mean, "Love You to the End" would SO fit their romance.

But anyway, I suspect the "fun" part for the readers might be his songs. As long as I don't have to write them myself, I think I can spin that out. Not sure how his singing can help save the day in the climax. Hmm. Maybe the villain is going to be on American Idol.

Alicia

One Funny Paragraph

I’m re-reading the Iain Pears book, Stone’s Fall, this time with the intent of culling every bit of writerly magic from it which I can find. Pears does many things well, but I’ve been struck by the way he manipulates his paragraphs. This one in particular seemed worth sharing.

To set up this example paragraph, let me tell you that Brock is an aspiring painter down on his luck. He lives in the same boardinghouse as the narrator, a shabby place that smells like overcooked cabbage. We’ve already heard a joke about the fact that it’s situated on Paradise Walk, and we’ve heard one of the poet tenants compose a humorous ode to the unidentifiable gray meat served up by their landlady. This was all in a prior chapter.

The narrator leads into the example paragraph by saying that the painter Brock will make his mark years later during the great war, that the bleakness of those years suited his temperament and vision, but that artistic clarity “eluded him when he lived with us in Chelsea.”

No, he had come up with this project for a gigantic portrait of the crowned heads of Europe, a scheme for which he was so totally unsuited that I did not know whether to wonder at his impudence or at his lack of reality. He wished-he, John Praxiteles Brock-to summon every monarch, from Tsar Nicholas to the Kaiser, from King Edward to the Emperor of Austria, and every last kinglet of Scandinavia and the Balkans, to sit together to be painted by him. Presumably not in the dining room of 17 Paradise Walk, Chelsea.

Every time I read this, I laugh at that final punch line. Three sentences, and the last is a fragment, but it’s structured so well that it could almost be used as a clinic on comedy writing. So let’s do that, shall we?

The first sentence sets up the premise.
“A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar”
=
“he had come up with this project for a gigantic portrait of the crowned heads of Europe”

I particularly like the use of the word gigantic here. It feels just slightly off-tone. (You’ll have to trust me on that -- in the context of the rest of the passage, the word is exaggerated and cheeky enough to stick out a bit.) Likewise, “crowned heads of Europe” feels casual. Consider how the tone would change by substituting “ruling monarchs of Europe.” Ruling monarchs are more dignified than crowned heads, don’t you think?

Then we get an emotional note from the narrator that sets the tone for the rest of the paragraph. You don’t always find this in comedy writing, and in fact, I generally caution against telling emotions, but I think it’s used to good effect here. “I did not know whether to wonder at his impudence or at his lack of reality.” By confessing to this emotional response, the narrator guides our own response. It’s almost a direct wink at the reader.

Next we get the sense of shocked emphasis implied by the phrase, “He wished-he, John Praxiteles Brock-to summon every monarch.” By contrasting this untitled painter with the long list of monarchs to follow, we get a sense of the outlandishness of the situation. Every new name added to the list serves to contrast the original emphasized name, John Praxiteles Brock. And with each new Tsar and Emperor, we get another layer of emotional emphasis to both the impudence and the unreality.

By the time we’re done with the list, we are also filled with a sort of amused wonder, just as the narrator predicted. And then, after layering on magnificent title after regal name, after building up this carefully detailed impression of magnificence far out of the reach of the ordinary painter, only after all this controlled set-up, he hits us with,
“Presumably not in the dining room of 17 Paradise Walk, Chelsea.”

Beautiful. This single fragment pulls the rug out from under all the magnificent detail in the middle of the paragraph. It’s a reversal of sorts, and much comedy depends on the principle that unexpected reversals are amusing. Stark contrasts are amusing. Exaggeration is amusing. We get all of them in this single short paragraph.

Any comedy writers out there want to take a stab at explaining why this structure works so well?

Theresa

Modification for comic effect

I don't want to say that any of these are blanket statements, of course. We can always come up with exceptions where something that is verboten works. What I think we need to realize is
1) exceptions work BECAUSE this usually doesn't work-- that is, the transgression adds meaning for the reader, who gets the alternation from conventional.
2) they work especially when the writer (intuitively or consciously) know what it's going to do for the meaning.

For example, if you are trying to write in the voice of a gushy teenaged girl, you will want to use those meaningless intensifiers:
My friend Jessie is the most awesome texter on the planet.

Modifiers can also be used for comic effect, especially the intensifiers which are really diminishers but really intensifiers. Confused? Well, this is more of an adolescent male thing, and since I just raised a couple of those, I'm familiar with that deadpan sarcastic exaggeration technique. "My mom got just a little bit mad when I crashed her car." That is, "a little" is understood to mean A WHOLE LOT.

Here's one in an article about gender disparity among Wikipedia contributors (and the truth is, as we all know it, the reason women don't contribute more to W is because we're all doing blogs :)--

(Choosing a discussion page at random, one learns that the entry on frogs once drew critical attention for including a picture of toads. It got slightly heated.)


"Slightly heated"-- we're to take that to mean that it got VERY heated, and that contrasts with the subject matter for comic effect. The diminisher meant to be an intensifier is in inverse proportion to the real joke, that people would get so exercised about frogs (though, you know, were I very into frogs, I'd be pretty annoyed if someone posted a photo of a toad).

So anyway, anytime you hear, "Don't do this, don't do that," when it comes to sentences and words, understand that there's an afterword that is only meant to be heard by the cognoscenti, the ones who can make good use of it: "But if you can achieve some cool effect, go ahead!" Know what the rules are NOT just so you can obey them, but so you can violate them in some fun way.

Alicia

Voice and rhetorical situations

I'm getting ready to go to Portland to do a two-day workshop (eek-- they are going to be so bored with me before it's over), and one element I want to address is voice. Well, nothing like choosing an amorphous concept. But I had lunch with a friend who is getting her PhD in Rhet-comp today, and she said the research now suggests that writers don't have a single "authentic" voice, but rather that writers assume a different "persona" for different rhetorical situations. Of course, we all know that we're going to "sound" different when we're writing a technical manual and when we're writing a thriller. But I think even different novels present different rhetorical situations, and a single voice, however authentic, might not be effective.

(BTW, some of the research has to do with something I've come across working in a university writing center-- following a new graduate student whose initial writing "isn't graduate enough". I occasionally tutor grad students who have been told by a prof: "You don't write like a graduate student." That is meant, btw, as a criticism, not a compliment. The voice in graduate papers is more neutral, more analytical, not "This is an amazing book," but "This comprehensive history offers insights into...." There's an expectation of a voice-- one of those "you know it when you read it," but not necessarily anything I can identify point by point.)

So... think about your own writing. Do you think you change voice when you change books? Or do you think you "write to your voice"-- maybe not trying the type of book your existing voice wouldn't fit? (For example, there's nothing so excruciating as a dramatic writer who is forced by an editor to write comedy... either you're funny or you're not, let's face it.)

Well, maybe I should ask: Do you think you can create a comic voice if you aren't (previously) funny? (I just asked my husband, and he said, "Sure," and when I demanded and example, he replied, "You." Not funny, babe.)

Alicia

Paragraphing For Comic Contrasts

Sometimes, we'll want to limit our paragraphs to one key notion and then break before moving on to the next notion. But other times, it's better to keep two contrasting notions in the same paragraph.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.
~Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The trend these days is to break the narrative into smaller, bite-sized paragraphs. More white space on the page means a faster-paced narrative, or so the theory goes. In Twain's paragraph, the first part recounts the Widow's notions of heaven, and the second part reveals Huck's personal response to that. These are two discrete ideas (albeit with one common theme), and a modern paragrapher might want to break them apart.

That would probably be a mistake. One of the hallmarks of comedy writing is setting up unexpected contrasts (between the Widow's happy view of heaven and Huck's scorn of the place she describes) or by leading us into unanticipated twists on common notions (a description of the wonders of heaven leads to Huck's sincere hope that he and his friend will avoid the place). The skilled comedy writer toys with our expectations and assumptions, and one of the ways to accomplish that is by putting unalike things right next to each other. The Widow longs for heaven. Huck does not. And that's the source of the comedy here.

If this were a standard joke with a punch line, the writer might want that punch line offset in its own paragraph as a way of highlighting it. But that's because punch lines are dramatic conclusions, carefully built up word by word over the course of the joke.

Twain's comedy in this paragraph is not of the punchline variety. Because the humor exists in the strength of the contrast between the two characters, running them right up against each other in the same paragraph heightens the comic impact.

Theresa