I am frequently invited to speak to writer’s groups on the topic of humor. Specifically, how to write books that are funny. While I am very grateful to be invited to speak to anyone who might, unlike my children, actually listen to me (yes, you moms out there are nodding), I always find a way to gracefully decline these particular invitations.
Why?
I don’t have a clue how to teach anybody to “write funny.â€
Writing romantic comedy is an amazing exercise in subjectivity, due to the nature of humor itself. Let’s say you pick up a suspense novel and find it thrilling — full of nail-biting twists and turns. Or you happen to buy a horror novel and are so terrified by the story that you are afraid to walk past your bathroom unless the light is on and the shower curtain is pulled back.
Odds are good that you can loan your thriller to a friend, and he or she will find it suspenseful, too. Or that you can recommend your horror novel to another friend, and she will be terrified. Thrills are thrills, and scary is scary. The talented writer in either genre, though, has an easier time of it than the humor writer, because humor is in the eye/mind/funny bone of the reader.
Think I’m wrong? I have two words for you: Three Stooges.
So, once you get past the massive insecurity you feel because your significant other/family member/critique partner/dog read your last book and never, EVER laughed, even at the parts that made you laugh so hard you CRIED while writing it, you have to move on to the hard part and actually sit down and be funny on a blank page.
What does that even mean? And why do I think it can’t be taught? Or, more to the point, why do I think that *I* can’t teach it?
Because if, as I like to say, normal human brains are from Earth, and writers’ brains are from Mars, then the brains of humor writers are from way the hell out in Jupiter somewhere. We don’t just “write funny.†We actually view life in a way that is different. We perceive the humor in events that, to normal (def: non-humor writers) are not a darn bit funny.
Case in point: The vastly unfunny needle biopsy. [Long story/lump/surgery/impending death/all fine now.] Now, most people would sit with their breast squished into a hideously painful (“there’s going to be a little discomfort, Mrs. Holliday†like the one who told you that labor and delivery would be a little discomfort, but no point in going THERE, right?) instrument of torture, and the troll-like doctor is maybe 80 years old and four feet tall and I’m six feel tall so I’m staring down at his pink and glistening bald head while he sticks a needle the size of Arizona into my poor, innocent boob, and I’m looking at him, trying not to laugh, with titles like “THE DAY PAPA SMURF FELT ME UP†flashing through my head and thinking: “Oh, this is TOTALLY going in a book.â€
Many, many of my normal [see def. above] friends have told me that this was an inappropriate response to the situation.
But I can’t help it. I’m a humor writer. And romance? Let me tell you, if you don’t see the enormous potential for comedy in the dance of emotion, intensity, and torture that is romance (and let’s not even BEGIN to discuss how funny the whole sex thing is/can be, especially the first time with a new person, come ON!), then I can’t tell you how to write romantic comedy.
If, on the other hand, you have a story about the guy you thought was the love of your life until the day you came home and caught him trying on your new pushup bra from Victoria’s Secret, and the end of your story is something like “The worst thing is that it looked better on him than it did on me,†then come talk to me.
I’ll buy you a drink or three. Because, guess what? You’re going to be able to write funny.
Hugs,
Alesia
No related posts.
Oh yes! Yes, yes, yes!
Thank you.Thank you. I am not alone out there in space.
And the mammogram machine. When you’ve just had a lump removed. You look at it and murmur, “Ah, the Russian Lover” and the nurses , all careful and considerate and trying to be gentle, look at you in inquiry, and you add “Torbother Titzov.” and they go blank.
A “Jupiter” moment.
OMG! Yes! This is why Steel Magnolias is such a great movie. “My favorite emotion is laughter through tears.”
>>“Torbother Titzov
Bernita, Thank you for that coffee-snorted-through-nose moment!! LOLOL!!
Sela, you bring up a fantastic point. Simply being funny isn’t enough – you have to “go deep” and touch the sadness, too, to write a book that can really touch people. Because nobody’s life is all sad or all funny, is it? This is why ANGELA’S ASHES is so incredible. Laughter through what should have been/could have been utter despair.
Alesia
You’re welcome, darling girl.
The thing is, some writers have double vision – they see both the fear, the pain, at the same time they see the ridiculous contrasts, the “no clothes” (as you demonstrated in your example of your gnomish physician – loved that) and give these views equal time, because both are true.
I love that other writers understand when I say that I need to torture my characters emotionally sometimes to mine the humor. It’s so much fun to find the wacky or funny moment in almost every situation.
Alesia, your response was totally appropriate. There’s so much Sturm und Drang in the world. Better that you wring smiles and laughs out of the needle biopsy than sit and wring your hands.
I find that the best writers, in any genre, even folks like Frank McCourt, write in a manner that suggest that even at the darkest of moments, they recognized that life is ultimately absurd.
I find the same is true with bloggers. Those that take everything, especially themselves too seriously, are, IMO, dull.
Bernita, Double vision is a great way to put it – even if I do now have that annoying song stuck in my head!
Mary Stella, torturing characters is so much fun, too! If we’re too nice to them, there’s no conflict. If there’s no conflict, there’s no story. Just because we find the humor in it doesn’t make us sadistic, really!!
Pat, I agree about blogs. The ones I love the most are the ones that riff on the absurdity of life/writing/what happened to them that day. It doesn’t have to be all of the time, but once in a while helps.
Alesia
Think I’m wrong? I have two words for you: Three Stooges.
Bwah! So very true.
And even more up to date, though I haven’t seen it, I hear Napoleon Dynamite is very polarizing. You love it or hate it. Same for South Park. Humor is a different animal . . .
and I can’t believe I didn’t mention it in the blog, but Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers. Readers are way up high on my list when I’m talking about being thankful!
Alesia, off to buy apple pie ingredients
Oh, Alesia – thanks for the laugh!
THE DAY PAPA SMURF FELT ME UP would have been my warped reaction, too!
Hugs,
Michelle:smile:
I know a girl who, when marginally inebriated, can tell a story about the time she was scalded (seriously scalded, the girl has scars) at a wake, and leave you hysterical with laughter.
It’s a gift. And her story about lecturing to the Townswomen’s Guild…
Great column, Alesia! And soooo true. I mean, if *I* don’t know where most of the off-the-wall stuff in my head comes from, how the heck would I tell someone else how to do it?
What’s ever harder to explain is that somedays, the weird stuff just isn’t there. Or if it is, it ain’t sharing. Don’t know about anyone else who writes funny, but the good stuff rarely appears in the first draft, when I’m all uptight and freaked about just getting words — ANY words — on the page to begin with. Often it’s not until I get past that stage do I loosen up enough to hear the humor in the scene. Or rather, when the characters turn to me and go, “You don’t seriously expect us to spout this drivel, do you?”
And a definite head nod on juxtaposing pain and humor, keeping readers on that emotional rollercoaster. That what keeps serious-issued stories from becoming maudlin and rescues lighter-hearted stories from the fluff-o-sphere.
But it’s so true that humor is subjective. There’s nothing like getting reviews for the same book, one of which cites the books as “hysterically funny,” the other of which says, “The book wasn’t really funny, although there were one or two humorous moments.”
Now that’s funny.
>
Oh good. That’s what I shoot for often in my blog. I go on the theory that if it entertains me to write an offbeat take on a situation or event (fights with land crabs, visits to dermatologist, while chin hair) then it will be more entertaining for someone else to read.
Marianne, it *is* a gift, isn’t it? And one I thank the Muses for every book!!
Karen, I love reviewers and would never say anything bad about any of them (in any public forum . . . ).
>>Don’t know about anyone else who writes funny, but the good stuff rarely appears in the first draft, when I’m all uptight and freaked about just getting words — ANY words — on the page to begin with. Often it’s not until I get past that stage do I loosen up enough to hear the humor in the scene
This is fascinating to me, because my humor has to flow intrinsically and organically with the scene, or it sounds forced. It’s all back to that subjectivity, I think – there are as many ways to *write* humor as there are to *appreciate* it!
Mary Stella, clearly I need to visit your blog!!
Alesia
Ah, but see for me, it’s the first draft that sounds forced. And banal. And trite.
It’s when I start the rewrites that the good — well, at least no-longer-makes-me-want-to-puke — stuff flows. But I think that’s partly because it often takes me until the end of the first draft before I really know the characters well enough to get myself out of the way and let *them* tell the story.
I still get the royalty checks, though.
>>I still get the royalty checks, though.
Well, that’s the important part!!:grin:
Alesia
I definitely see the world a different way – I have stopped preferencing myself to the hubby with, “You how I am, so…”
Like the commercial for batteries – that they show in a hearing aid – that is not closed caption – just me, that’s funny.
I find that I have to make jokes to keep sane – at the Grandfather’s funeral (devestatingly sad) I walked off on my own a few times to make cracks that would have had my mother backhanding me had she heard – needed to stay sane!
>> at the Grandfather’s funeral (devestatingly sad) I walked off on my own a few times to make cracks that would have had my mother backhanding me had she heard – needed to stay sane!
Dennie, I think a lot of people use black humor to keep from falling apart in tough situations. It’s a very normal defense mechanism. {Hugs} on your loss.
Alesia
Great article.. I can totally relate, believe me. When I finished the novel I’m shopping right now, I looked back at it and went, “Dang, this is some funny stuff,” even in the midst of torture and horrid moments…
And I didn’t sit down intending to write this funny book. Really I didn’t. It was just the voice that came to me. And the character is a riot, I hope I have as much fun with the next one.
Candice, huge good luck with shopping it out!! Alesia
Alesia-I loved your topic. The funny thing is that my eyes caught how tall you are & that’s what sticks out in my brain the most. I’m 6′1″ and I’m beginning to think that being tall is more humorous than anything. Bald spots on short men, smacking my head on anything anyone else can walk under…yup, my life is a walking, talking comedic hour.
I think they should have a Tall Writers United group, just so we can share the things shorter people just don’t understand. 