That’s not to say that a comedic character can’t be effective in dramatic writing. The Character Funny Filter can be applied to any kind of writing, dramatic included. Any time a dramatic piece of writing needs a joke or a funny moment, it relies on one of the 11 Funny Filters, most commonly Character.
It may be a jarring shift in tone to introduce a comedic character with less than three traits into a serious story with, say, a well-rounded main character who’s a cancer survivor. So, the tonal treatment of each character must be managed carefully. A character who’s friends with this main character, who has maybe one dominant character trait but is otherwise realistic, could serve as an excellent source of comic relief in a story like that.
Even a dramatic lead character can be made comedic during a short sequence or scene—as long as one or two traits of the character that are more comedic than dramatic (simple traits that reveal a relatable flaw) are brought to the fore during that scene, and the character acts on those simple traits. This can serve to create a funny moment in an otherwise serious, dramatic story. For example, when JoBeth Williams encounters the Kramers’ son in the middle of the night in Kramer vs. Kramer. It’s a dramatic movie with dramatic characters, but this scene is made funny by reducing Williams’ character to 1–2 traits: she’s naked and embarrassed. Other Funny Filters, including Irony and Shock (Funny Filter 3), are employed as well, making the scene a guaranteed laugh.
Most stand-up comedians use the Character Funny Filter to create a character for themselves, their “persona.” These are case studies in the Character Funny Filter and how simple it is to use: John Pinette is the fat guy who loves to eat; Marc Maron is the anxiety-ridden over-sharer; David Spade is the smartass. They have 1–3 simple traits, and often start their acts by defining those traits so they can get laughs acting on them, or telling jokes in which they act on them.
ARCHETYPES
There are several classic Character Archetypes, characters who have been used and reused in performance comedy and prose for centuries. Many of them come from the Italian Renaissance theater (the Commedia Dell’Arte), but some have their origins even earlier, in Ancient Greek theater. Certain characters keep coming back because they have universally appealing qualities, and audiences love them. They include the Dummy, the Slob, the Snob, the Know-It-All, the Every-man or Every-woman, the Manchild, the Klutz, the Lothario, the Nerd, the Robot (or Straight Man), the Naif, the Bumbling Authority, and the Trickster. There are many others.
Most of these characters are self-explanatory. The Manchild is a character who acts with far more emotion than situations require, often bawling and throwing tantrums like a child. This character represents the child in all of us. Will Ferrell almost always plays the Man-Child. Sometimes this character is a Womanchild, but far less often. Lucy on I Love Lucy is one example.
The Bumbling Authority is the blowhard in charge, usually flashing some kind of badge or official emblem indicating station or rank. The Bumbling Authority talks big, but is an obvious fool. This Archetype represents bureaucracy, or the incompetence at the top of all power structures. Few things entertain audiences more than seeing authorities brought down to size, and that is precisely this character’s purpose.
The Onion is a Bumbling Authority character. It purports to be a serious and official engine of truth in the world, yet it spouts nonsense.
One fascinating character often used as the driving force in comedy is the Trickster. The Trickster plays games and can violate the rules of society or even reality in order to win. The Trickster has its origins in African mythology, and is often a rabbit or a fox. Dr. Seuss was a master of the Trickster, using him for Cat in the Hat, Fox in Sox and other books. In movies, Ferris Bueller is a famous Trickster. Bill Murray, in his heyday in the 1980s, often played Tricksters.
Stereotypes
Archetypes are not stereotypes. Stereotypes are Archetypes gone wrong, when a foreign people or, worse, an oppressed minority population, are characterized with cruel or offensive traits. Archetypes, on the other hand, are universal, and aren’t specific to any race or nationality. Stereotypes, like clichés, should never be used in comedy. They’re a red flag to readers, signifying bad writing. The only justifiable reason to use stereotypes in comedy is when you’re making fun them, or of people who use them, or otherwise deconstructing or commenting on them in an enlightened way.
For a comprehensive example of classic modern Character Archetypes, you needn’t look further than Looney Toons. In many ways this is the Commedia Dell’Arte for the modern age. Bugs Bunny is a classic Trickster. Daffy Duck is a Bumbling authority (often assaying roles as sheriffs, commanders or other authorities) who always proves himself a fool. Elmer Fudd is the Dummy. Pepé LePew is the Lothario.
When selecting a main character, it’s often a good idea to use an Archetype. Archetypes are a proven success that have been beloved for eons. Secondary and tertiary characters are less critical, and can get by as quirky, non-Archetypes. In any case, we needn’t limit ourselves to stock characters in prose. And we may not want to. Archetypes can have a tendency to come off as clichés because they’ve been used so often, especially if no effort is made to distinguish them from similar Archetypes of the past. Comedy always works better when characters sparkle with originality.
To create original comedic characters, you can use one of two methods.
One, you can think up someone with a nice mix of 1–3 traits. A nice mix of traits in comedy often involves some Irony. For example, an insurance actuary who wishes he were a football player, yet is a weakling constantly stricken with illness. This method of character creation is perfectly acceptable. However, you may not have a character that’s going to connect with many readers if it’s not an Archetype.
Two, you can use one of the Archetypes, but reinvent it. You can make Archetypes feel fresh by doing one of three things: (1) give them a job or station that we’ve never seen before, (Example: Ace Ventura is the Bumbling Authority, but he’s a pet detective); (2) make them a race, creed, species or thing we’ve never seen before (Example: Mr. Peabody is the Know-It-All, but he’s a dog); or (3) put them in an environment we’ve never seen them in before (Example: in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent is the Everyman, but he’s in outer space).
Some examples of Character:
“I don’t get no respect at all. The other night I felt like having a drink. I said to the bartender, ‘surprise me.’ He showed me a naked picture of my wife.”
—Rodney Dangerfield
Note how Dangerfield establishes his one trait (he gets no respect), then presents an example of him acting in accordance with that one trait (or in his case, him being acted upon, which reveals the trait just the same).
Philandering String Theorist Can Explain Everything
—The Onion
This a textbook Character joke. It establishes two traits: (1) he’s a philanderer and (2) he’s a string theorist. Then it shows him acting on both those traits at the same time in a double entendre (a product of another Funny Filter we’ll discuss later in this chapter).
CHARACTER SUMMARY:
WHAT IT IS: A character with 1–3 clear traits.
HOW TO USE IT: The character acts or is acted upon in accordance with one of the traits.
FUNNY FILTER 3: SHOCK
Sex, swearing, violence, or any overt gross-out are the go-to tools of Shock. This Funny Filter encompasses anything that would be inappropriate to mention in mixed company.
Shock startles readers into laughter, and shakes them out of the polite, civilized box society tends to squeeze us into without out realizing it. And it works wonders. It loosens people up and gets them laughing.
Shock can range from mild to extreme. A joke can have just a dash of Shock, or it can have an overdose, depending on what’s required to communicate the Subtext.
In most instances, Shock is best used as a garnish, not the main course. As a main course, its audience is limited. Just about everyone
enjoys a little Shock in their humor. Humor, after all, comes from surprise, and shock is simply an amped-up kind of surprise. Fourteen-year-old boys (and those with a 14-year-old boy sensibility) like it best of all. They’re Shock’s most eager audience. In fact, they can’t get enough of it. You can target that demographic quite easily by overloading your work with Shock. But beware—the more Shock you use, and the weaker your Subtext, the more you alienate the rest of the audience. Fourteen-year-old boys don’t require any Subtext in their Shock humor.
And that’s the most important guideline to remember about Shock—a little bit goes a long way. Individual writers have to be the judge of how much is too much for their audience. A good rule of thumb is if you think it’s gratuitous, it probably is.
Shock is best used in service of good Subtext. When used in moderation and with good Subtext, Shock can appeal to not just the 14-year-old boys, but everyone else, too. A good example of shock humor done well is the spread in America: The Book that shows the nine Supreme Court justices naked. Seeing old, out-of-shape people naked is inherently funny for its Shock value, but this stunt had good Subtext as well: Supreme Court justices, and therefore the laws they uphold, are not infallible, they’re (visibly) flawed, just like the rest of us.
POOPING AND FARTING
Amateur humor writers often turn to pooping and farting with the expectation that instant and hardy laughs will result. These and other bodily functions count as gross-outs and therefore Shock. That means they technically qualify as legitimate humor when used properly (that is, in moderation and/or in service of good Subtext). The problem with most amateur pooping and farting humor is that it’s not used in moderation, and it rarely has any Subtext.
The human butt is the single funniest thing in the known universe. This is undisputed. Any time a human butt is referenced, seen, or used in a joke, the effect is immediate: Everybody laughs. But people also recognize that the butt is a one-trick pony. They know it can serve as a great addition to an already clever joke or humor sequence (i.e., one that uses multiple Funny Filters and good Subtext), but by itself, they will get tired of it quickly.
Amateur humor writers don’t realize this fact, so they often milk the butt for as many poop and fart jokes as they can. They don’t realize the returns diminish very quickly. They also don’t realize that it’s the butt that’s the funniest thing in the universe, not pooping and farting.
Pooping is a serious gross-out reference. Those 14-year-old boys will laugh at your poop jokes, but you’ll lose everyone else almost immediately.
Fart jokes are of a slightly different order. They are, in fact, the H-bomb of comedy. We all recognize the power of farts to generate laughs, and it’s easy to imagine winning the war of comedy instantly and decisively by just “dropping the fart bomb on ’em,” but it’s worth considering what happens after an H-bomb is detonated: everything is destroyed. You can use fart jokes to get your big laughs, but once you’ve used the most powerful weapon in the humor arsenal, how are you going to follow it up?
Because they’re so easy and so lowbrow, a lot of humor writers avoid fart jokes altogether. They consider them “too easy,” the domain of amateurs.
But when comedy writers do brave the subject of the fart, they traditionally try to make the funniest possible fart joke they can. Their reason being, if they’re just making fart noises to get a laugh, that’s crass, but if they’re harnessing the immense power of the fart, they insist on doing it masterfully, so as not to come off as taking advantage of the “easy out.”
Some of the best examples of great fart jokes are Steve Martin’s “farting section on airplanes” bit, Blazing Saddles’ campfire scene, and Mr. Show’s “dueling fartists.”
EDGY COMEDY
Comedy that’s “edgy” is in great demand in the entertainment business. A lot of comedy writers mistakenly believe that by simply increasing the Shock value of humor, edgy comedy is achieved. This is not the case, as the unsuccessful Movie 43 demonstrated. This movie was promoted as a dangerously edgy comedy, but contained nothing more than Shock humor (mostly gross-out) with no Subtext and certainly no moderation.
Quality edgy humor is achieved in one of three ways:
1. Using the Shock Funny Filter in moderation and with astute Subtext.
2. Decreasing the amount of time in the equation “comedy equals tragedy plus time.”
3. Appearing to violate the first half of Humor-Writing Tip #10 (“Comfort the afflicted, Afflict the Comfortable”). By simply seeming to be hitting the wrong target (the afflicted), or getting tantalizingly close to doing so, all while being very careful to actually hit the right target (the comfortable), you will create edgy comedy. This is a tricky move, because if you don’t manage this illusion skillfully, and instead hit the wrong target, your humor will not only be unfunny, it will be reviled.
Here are a couple of one-liners that use Shock:
“You can’t fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up.”
—George Carlin
Carlin uses swearing and violence in this simple one-liner. Shock in moderation, which elucidates a very interesting Subtext: We all feel powerless and enraged when it comes to the incompetence of Government, and it’s even possible to understand the rage of a terrorist, because we’ve all felt it, too.
Even Carlin’s Subtext is shocking!
“My dick is too aware that your pussy is a chamber of financial ruin.”
—Louis C. K.
Using a simple sex reference with less-than-appropriate words, Louis reveals a dark Subtext he uses a lot: relationships are ruinous, and love is a tool to get humans to reproduce, despite their best interests.
I like to think of Shock as a dash of Cayenne pepper in humor, and that’s a good analogy to keep in mind when creating a Shock joke. It’s usually best when there’s just a hint of it, but in just the right amount, can make for some deliciously spicy comedy.
SHOCK SUMMARY:
WHAT IT IS: Anything shocking (sex, violence, swearing, or a gross-out).
HOW TO USE IT: In extreme moderation, and always with Subtext. The more shocking the humor, the more astute the Subtext needs to be.
FUNNY FILTER 4: HYPERBOLE
Hyperbole is another word for exaggeration. Hyperbole the Funny Filter, however, is “exaggeration plus.” When using Hyperbole to generate laughs, the writer needs to exaggerate not just a little, and even a lot may not do the trick. To make readers laugh with Hyperbole, the writer needs to exaggerate so greatly that the laws of science or reason are violated.
This type of comedic Hyperbole is the source of a lot of classic one-liners, the kinds of jokes Borscht Belt comedians used to tell. Rodney Dangerfield is a good example. So many of his one-liners used Hyperbole and Character. He was the guy who didn’t get any respect, so one of his jokes was, “My parents didn’t like me. For bathtub toys they gave me a blender and a transistor radio.” Obviously, if he had played with those things in the bathtub, he’d be dead, which defies both science and reason. This joke has a dash of Shock as well, since it suggests the violent death of a child.
Hyperbole allows you to get to ridiculous extremes by exaggerating so far beyond reality that you’re suddenly in a different, impossible reality. Joan Rivers was always fond of calling out Hollywood starlets for being overweight. One of her one-liners could be repurposed to apply to any target she wanted: “She’s so fat she’s my two best friends.” It’s the sheer impossibility of this Hyperbole that made it work every time she used it, in her prime. It’s a textbook example of a classic Borscht Belt-style Hyperbole. By now, though, it’s an old joke. So, it counts as a cliché.
Most writers think of Hyperbole instinctively as exaggerating big or exaggerating negative. It’s worth noting that Hyperbole doesn’t always have to go that way. You can exaggerate small, or positive, or in any direction you want. It depends on what you’re trying to say with your Subtext. But in all cases, the way you use Hyperbole is to start with your Subte
xt, then try to exaggerate it one way or other, and see if anything funny comes of it.
Hyperbole, more than any other Funny Filter, feels like real joke-writing. When you hyperbolize well, you’ll feel like you’re writing professional jokes, because this is one tool professionals use a lot.
Some other one-liners using Hyperbole:
“The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it.”
—Rodney Dangerfield
“NRA Calls For Teachers to Keep Loaded Gun Pointed At Class for Entire School Day”
—The Onion
“It’s so cold here in Washington, D.C., the politicians have their hands in their own pockets.”
—Bob Hope
You can see how simple Hyperbole is: it’s exaggerated Subtext to make a point with passion. But while it may be simple to see, Hyperbole can be very challenging to write.
The Subtext of the Rodney Dangerfield sample is “I drink too much.” The Subtext of The Onion’s is that the NRA has an extreme view on gun rights.
The Subtext of the Bob Hope joke is that politicians are moneygrubbers. But like many of Bob Hope’s jokes, it’s quite sophisticated and has a lot of other things going on. (This high quality is the result of the dozens of joke writers Hope employed, quantity being the key to quality.)
He’s not just using Hyperbole in this joke. He’s also using Character, two layers of Irony, a second layer of Hyperbole and a few others (we’ll cover them all in this chapter). The Character is the politicians, who have one trait: they always have their hands in other people’s pockets. The Irony is how the politicians are acting: they’re acting in the opposite way from what you’d expect. (This is called Character Irony, a standard pairing of these two Funny Filters) The second layer of Hyperbole is Metahumor (Funny Filter 11). He’s using the clichéd “It’s so cold here…” joke introduction, a standard set-up normally associated with a Hyperbole joke, but his Hyperbole is not impossible or beyond reason at all (politicians having their hands in someone else’s pockets is quite easy, physically). However, the very fact that they’re doing it in this ironic context makes its inherent non-impossibleness seem impossible, and therefore Hyperbolic, and funny.
How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing Page 6