Scott Dikkers - How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

HOW TO WRITE FUNNY

Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

Scott Dikkers

Copyright 2014 by Scott Dikkers. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of a brief excerpts in the context of a review. For information write Scott Dikkers / 4044 N Lincoln Ave., #223 / Chicago, Illinois 60618.

ISBN-13: 978-1499196122

ISBN-10: 1499196121

For everyone whos put up with me

TABLEOF CONTENTS

1: INTRODUCTION

A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I dont know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and thats all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly.

Stan Laurel

When you get pulled into a good piece of humor writing, something magical happens. The string of words in front of you ignite a spark that sends outlandish images and funny ideas racing into your brain like a lit fuse, culminating in an explosion of laughter.

Most of us dont have a clue whats making us laugh, exactly. We dont have the words to articulate it. I dont knowI just thought it was funny, we say.

Maybe its the headline, or the tone, or a great joke in the first few lines. Maybe its the crazy characters or escalating absurdity, or the way the writer strings it all together to make you see the world or yourself with a skewed perspective that youve never experienced before.

Whatever it is, when you put down that story, lean back in your chair and wipe away the tears of laughter, one thing is certain. Youve just enjoyed a rare treat: the polished work of a master humor writer.

There arent many great humor writers in the world. You could probably count the ones whove made you laugh out loud on one hand. There havent even been that many throughout history. Its a one-in-a-million writer who can elicit sustained, hardy laughs from total strangers with nothing more than words on a page.

Why is that? Why are there so few writers who can do this? Ill tell you why. Because writing humor thats funnyreally, gut-busting funnyis one of the most difficult and challenging of all the literary crafts.

Other genres of writing, by comparison, are easy.

A horror story, for example, is extremely easy. You could probably write a pretty good one over a weekend, like Stephen King frequently does. Vampires, ghosts, blood, screaming, and a slew of other pre-vetted, inherently spooky clichs are sitting on the horror tool shelf waiting to be dusted off whenever a writer needs to drum up a scare.

A story thats a good cry is easy, too. Write about a pet dog or a beloved horse that dies, or a couple who splits up, or a kid yanked from his mothers arms. Separate some characters who are meant to be together, or kill them off before their time, when others are depending on them. Writing a story that makes readers cry is like pushing a button.

But what if you want to make readers laugh?

Maybe you can re-tell that great joke you heard the other day. No, wait, you cant do thatthat would be stealing.

Maybe you can tell a story from your life that you found hilarious. But, on second thought, most people probably wont find that funny. Its one of those you had to be there situations. Most funny stories from life are like that.

In fact, all the go-to funny ideas you can think of have been done to death: banana-peel slipping, mothers-in-law, three somethings walk into a bar.... How do you think of something new thats funny? How do you create laughs out of thin airand somehow transfer them perfectly onto a blank page?

We can scarcely explain why we laugh at funny writing. How can we possibly be expected to create it?

Where do we even start?

We start here.

To paraphrase E. B. White, comedy is like a frogonce you start dissecting it, its not funny. And dissecting comedy and the comedy-writing process is exactly what were going to do in this book.

So, get out your scalpel. In order to figure out how to write funny, we have to take it apart, analyze it, and learn how to put it back together.

Its not going to be an easy task. It may not even be funny. But rest assured, the end result will be you getting a lot better at writing things that make people laugh.

WHAT IS FUNNY?

To begin to understand how to make people laugh, we first have to ask, what is laughter, how does it work, and what makes people do it?

Peter McGraw is a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He believes hes discovered the unified field theory of humor. He can explain whats funny with a simple vein diagram showing how a benign violation is always funny.

Comedy teacher and Hollywood script doctor Steve Kaplan believes hes reduced the definition of all comedy down to one sentence that screenwriters and performers can use to generate laughs in movies or TV shows: an ill-equipped relatable character who faces impossible odds yet doesnt give up.

Psychologists have a lot of theories as to why people laugh: its a gesture of submission in a complex interpersonal dynamic; its the result of a positive state; its the brain processing an error in stimuli: or any number of other nuanced, involuntary, intellectual or social responses.

The ideas of these modern experts, as well as those of the philosophers and thinkers whove braved this topic throughout the eons, all provide some insight into what makes people laugh. But such intellectual humor analysis usually attempts to define only things that are funny in two areas: real life and performance.

The question for us is, How do you write something funny? In writing, theres no funny performer or engaging personality to sell the humor. This salesperson is a critical tool almost all media of humor take advantage of. People like people. They like watching funny people perform for them. They like when Uncle Bob tells one of his great yarns, or when their favorite celebrity comedian comes out with a new movie or a new bit.

When audiences read something funny, theres nobody there. Theres no funny face you love, no familiar voice. Theres just a page or a screen sitting there, lifeless. A bunch of symbols.

Furthermore, theres no sound, no image. Theres not even time or space in which timing can be controlled in order for an act of comedy can take place. Theres just a big block of intimidating gray copy.

So, how do you write humor when it seems you have no tools to do so?

THE TOOLS OF HUMOR WRITING

Weve all heard that humor is a matter of personal taste. What makes one person laugh is different from what makes another person laugh, and theres no predicting what people will find funny.

Lets say for a moment that thats true. There are no objective standards in comedy. That means no one has a better chance of making people laugh than anyone else. Professional comedy writers are on a level playing field with anybody off the streeteverybodys a comedian, tossing off jokes and hoping some of them stick, not having any idea which jokes will get laughs and which ones wont.

Obviously, thats not how it works. Professional comedy writers have a very good idea whats going to work. Its their job, and they need to be able to do it consistently. And they do it by using special tools, just like plumbers or drywall contractors use special tools to do their jobs.

The tools of the humor writer arent in a physical toolbox. Theyre locked away in the subconscious mind of the user. Theyre tools of knowledge. The professional comedy writer knows how to write humor that the majority of people will find funny, in a reliable and repeatable way.