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

by Scott Dikkers

  It may seem purely silly, but there’s Subtext in a joke like that. To me, it’s that any high-level diplomatic meeting with the Secretary of Agriculture is something that I, as a typical American news consumer, couldn’t care less about. So, he may as well be meeting with a head of cabbage. Americans don’t care what their government does.

  Another way to interpret that story might be that our government is bloated. We have cabinet secretaries who do things and meet with people, but how is that making our lives better? It’s absurd that human got along just fine doing agriculture for thousands of years before there was a Secretary of Agriculture. In other words, government is silly.

  This is the beauty of Madcap. It’s not only a Funny Filter that can help make any joke a little funnier, but it can serve to symbolize Subtext. Many times, the Subtext in a joke that uses primarily Madcap is, “[Such and such] is absurd,” or, “[Such and such] is ridiculous,” or, “[Such and such] is crazy.” The choice of Madcap as a Funny Filter communicates this kind of Subtext beautifully.

  Since Madcap is concerned with physical humor, it’s worth mentioning some examples from TV and movies, since they can shed light on how to best use Madcap in prose.

  The Three Stooges and Jerry Lewis are known for their Madcap physical humor, but they rarely had meaningful Subtext. So, their humor was very unsophisticated. The Marx Brothers, on the other hand, used Madcap to great effect, most notably in their classic “Duck Soup.” By treating the serious matter of international relations to a full-on assault of crazy Madcap humor, they were, in effect, saying, “the world is a crazy place,” which is such simple, beautiful Subtext, it makes all their silliness funny in a profound and fulfilling way.

  No one did Madcap better than Monty Python. Their “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch is a Madcap classic that says, “Government bureaucracy is lunacy.” Their “Election Night Special” is a brilliant parody of election-night news coverage. It features returns coming in from various precincts, and the two parties getting most of the votes are the Sensible Party and the Silly Party. It starts silly, but when the mainstream Silly Party candidate gets a challenge from the fringe, the “Very Silly Party,” they really let loose the craziness. It’s a masterpiece of Madcap, and has aged extremely well. After almost half a century, this political sketch is still as relevant as today’s headlines, especially when compared to American elections.

  “Seinfeld” is one of the most sophisticated sitcoms that’s ever been on TV. Most TV sitcoms rely on little more than Character, and occasionally Hyperbole, but that’s about all. “Seinfeld” used those plus Wordplay, Shock, and most of the other 11. Where the show really excelled was in its expert use of Madcap. The complicated, tightly constructed plots and sophisticated Character, Hyperbole and Wordplay humor alone could have come across as dense and more intellectual than fun. But as soon as Kramer came bounding into the scene, pratfalling and making funny faces, the proper balance was struck, and the tone of the show was expertly tuned for maximum laughs. The show used Madcap as a garnish, and always in service of the Subtext that came out of the various, interwoven plots.

  Here are some one-liner examples of Madcap:

  Racist Figurines March On Washington

  —The Onion

  “Here’s something you don’t often see” (makes a funny face and jumps up and down)

  —Steve Martin

  “My biggest comedy influences are an elderly woman and a recently mopped staircase.”

  —Dan Guterman

  The Subtext is clear in the first and third examples. The Onion’s is that mass marches on Washington are futile, and Guterman’s is using grade-A Metahumor (Funny Filter 11) to comment on the very nature of comedy. But what about Steve Martin? It seems at first glance like it’s just a funny face and a physical stunt. But it’s not. So much of what Steve Martin did, from his persona to the majority of his jokes, mocked the idea of show business and entertainment. His whole act was meta, with such meaty Subtext that it did no less than help define the ironic tone that dominated the entertainment industry for the later quarter of the 20th century.

  One watchword worth noting about Madcap: Beware of clichés. A lot of classic Madcap was so successful for so long that everyone used it, and many people still use it, and these are the worst of the worst clichés. I’m talking about things like banana peels, rubber chickens, Groucho glasses, and other standard comedy props. These things stopped being funny decades ago. They’re not funny anymore. So, don’t go anywhere near them!

  MADCAP SUMMARY:

  WHAT IT IS: Silly slapstick, inherently goofy items, non sequiturs, wacky words.

  HOW TO USE IT: Make sure it serves (and even symbolizes) your Subtext. Works as the main thrust of a joke, but also a very effective garnish.

  FUNNY FILTER 8: PARODY

  Parody is making fun of another entertainment or information product. Any piece of writing, type of presentation, or anything intended to be presented to the public in any medium can be the target of Parody. That means anything from a specific TV show, movie, book, magazine, or anything—all the way down to a church pamphlet, bus schedule or street sign. Media can be parodied, like movies, the stage or visual art. Specific authors or creators or voices can be parodied.

  Parody works best if readers are familiar with the work or medium being parodied. Not too many people may understand your brilliant parody of Inuit song duels. But if it’s a more commonly experienced format or medium, or a popular or at least reasonably well-known specific entertainment product, you can parody it and be assured people will get it.

  The Onion parodies a news website, and the AP style used in most newswriting, and they do so in just about every article they publish. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid web comic and books parody, of course, a diary. Ian Frazier won the Thurber Prize for American Humor largely because of his brilliant piece, “Coyote v. Acme,” which parodies both the Road Runner cartoons and a modern legal brief.

  You parody something by mimicking its format, voice, or anything about it that calls it clearly to mind for your reader.

  Parody is a powerful tool in humor. Readers will often laugh before they’ve even read any of your words—they’ll merely see the context of your Parody (a design, presentation, or other framing device) that calls to mind the specific thing you’re parodying, and that alone will amuse them greatly. You can see this phenomenon in action on “SNL” whenever they parody a popular movie. As soon as the lights come up on the set and the audience recognizes the movie’s likeness, they laugh. They laugh even harder when a cast member appears, looking very much like a key character in the movie. Before a single word of dialog is spoken, the audience is already laughing. This is how effective Parody can be.

  Humor-Writing Tip #13: Put the Funny Part Last

  A joke usually works best when the reveal, or the funny word or the funny detail—the funniest part of the joke—comes last. Often, when you’re assessing whether a joke works, you might notice the funny part is at the beginning or the middle. Try moving it as close to the end as possible. That often makes it funnier.

  With Parody, you accomplish two things. First, as with the other Funny Filters, you elucidate whatever Subtext you want. Second, you provide a kind of second Subtext—your opinion of whatever it is you’re parodying. For maximum comic effect with Parody, the medium becomes the message.

  In the examples above, Parody is used both to convey Subtext and lampoon the medium. For example, most stories in The Onion have their own Subtext, like, for example, a story about the government might have the time-honored Subtext, “our government is incompetent.” But on top of that they’re also excoriating modern journalism through their parody of it. This second layer of hidden meaning has very little to do with the core Subtext of the article. It casts a larger net, asking readers to question everything they read in the news.

  In “Coyote v. Acme,” Frazier casts a ridiculously logical light on Looney Toons. On top of that, he indicts our litigious soci
ety with his parody of the legal brief. His piece is brimming with Subtext: commenting on the ridiculous nature of children’s entertainment, the pervasiveness of liability claims, as well as weak consumer protections.

  There’s one simple rule to using Parody. The writing or the design, format or framing device of the writing, must mirror the thing being parodied as closely as possible. This is what readers love about Parody; they like to see how close you can get it. If you’re parodying another writer’s style, you must get it right down to every syllable and punctuation mark. If you don’t, if your Parody is half-baked, it won’t be as funny.

  Obviously, you don’t want to mimic the content as closely as possible. That’s the new and different element you bring to the table. You want to mimic only the form or format of your target. This might be the way it looks, the way it sounds, other quirks about it, or all of the above.

  Note how The Onion perfectly apes AP style in its newswriting. Note how Frazier gets every little phrase of his legal brief just right, so it sounds exactly like a real legal brief. Jeff Kinney uses the tone, syntax and even a hand-written font that makes his books look exactly like a kid’s diary.

  Readers love good verisimilitude—when Parody comes eerily close to the original. Verisimilitude is everything in Parody. The closer the resemblance, the better.

  A lot of humor writers think they can succeed with Parody by going half-way, and getting the mimicry close enough. This may work, and will result in some people finding it amusing. But in order to make your work accessible to the widest possible audience, go all the way with Parody. Play it straight, and don’t wink at the reader. This elevates your work to a kind of hoax, where those not in the know may actually be fooled into thinking what you’ve created is the real thing, which happens all the time to The Onion, and there isn’t much that’s funnier or more satisfying for the writer and readers who are in on the joke.

  How do you write Parody in a single line or joke? Think of other writing that is a similar size: a fortune cookie, a horoscope, a weather forecast, a newspaper headline or a tweet. There are so many. By borrowing a format like these and mimicking it so closely that everyone who reads it knows what you’re referring to, you harness the satirical power of the Parody Funny Filter.

  Some Parody one-liner examples (from me):

  • The least scary man-turning-into-insect movie: The Human Lady Bug

  • They should make an app that has car-trip games like License Plate ABCs, but instead of looking out the window you look at your phone.

  • Book: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a Complete Idiot

  PARODY SUMMARY:

  WHAT IT IS: Aping another entertainment or information format or specific presentation.

  HOW TO USE IT: Use verisimilitude. Make your Parody look or sound as much like the real thing as possible.

  FUNNY FILTER 9: ANALOGY

  Analogy is the comparing of two different things and finding their similarities. The two things should be very different—opposites are especially good, and you must be many similarities. It’s finding these connections between the two things and making the reader aware of them that makes Analogy funny.

  Analogy, like Parody, is slightly more complex than the other Funny Filters. It provides another “hidden secret” in your writing. The secret in Analogy is the half of your Analogy that you keep veiled.

  When you compare two things in an Analogy, you only want to overtly reveal one of them to the reader. The other is only alluded to, and readers are invited to add two and two to think of it on their own, thanks to your clues. This is an easier hidden nugget to discover than Subtext—it has to be discovered more quickly—but it is hidden all the same. If you mention it in your literal text, your joke falls apart, just as if you had mentioned your Subtext.

  George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a great work of Analogy. The two things being compared are animals on a farm and the Russian Revolution. The animals on the farm is the side of the Analogy that’s explained and revealed overtly. The Russian Revolution is the secret side. At no point does Orwell break character and say, “You realize this is really about the Russian Revolution, right?” If he did, it would all fall apart. He must play it straight, and never show his hand.

  One of the great achievements of Animal Farm is that readers in the know will enjoy the secret half of the Analogy, but readers who don’t recognize it will still enjoy an incredibly engaging book about political intrigue among funny talking animals on a farm. This greatly increases the work’s accessibility. It’s a far more popular book than it would have been if he had written it without the Analogy Funny Filter, and simply analyzed the Russian Revolution and its key players.

  But there’s still more hidden meaning: the Subtext. So, the two primary hidden messages in Animal Farm: (1) “these animals represent the Russian Revolution”—that’s the secret half of the Analogy. And (2) “power corrupts”—that’s the Subtext. The two are not the same, but they are related, and one serves the other.

  You can use Analogy in an entire work of fiction, like Orwell, or you can use it in the space of a comedic article, like one of my favorites from The Onion: “Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet.”

  The Onion uses Analogy a lot. Congress is compared to a schoolyard, classroom or garage band. Romantic relationships are compared to workplace relationships. The list goes on and on. Analogy does not always have to be complex. It can be extremely simple and still be effective.

  Whether it’s executed in a complex, long-form work like a novel, or a simple one-line joke, Analogy must always be used the same way: the two things being compared must be very different; one of them must be revealed literally while the other must be kept secret; and you must make the reader aware of as many points of comparison as possible between the two. Each instant that calls to mind the hidden side of the Analogy creates a joke beat in your writing.

  Examples of Analogy jokes:

  “Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy. Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch.”

  —Albert Brooks

  “Trying to skip past the FBI warning on DVDs is the new finding shelter.”

  —me

  Steve Martin’s farting-smoking bit is a classic Analogy:

  “No, do you mind if I fart? It’s one of my habits. Yeah, they’ve got a special section for me on airplanes now. I quit once for a year, you know, but I gained a lot of weight. After sex I really have the urge to light one up.”

  ANALOGY SUMMARY:

  WHAT IT IS: The comparing of two disparate things and finding as many comparisons as possible.

  HOW TO USE IT: Keep one of the two parts of the Analogy “behind the curtain,” while the other is laid bare. Every time you make a connection between the two that the reader recognizes, that’s a joke.

  FUNNY FILTER 10: MISPLACED FOCUS

  This is a Funny Filter in which the writer focuses on something other than the Subtext, but something related to it, maybe a small thing just to the side of it, or a lesser-known aspect of it, so as to surreptitiously direct the reader’s attention to the main idea by way of glaring omission.

  Subtext, like always, is never openly stated. When you pretend to be unaware of your Subtext, it’s like you have Myopia, and can’t see the Elephant in the Room. Instead, you’re intently focusing your attention on either the wrong thing, or that something that doesn’t matter.

  You can stir up a pretend sense of righteous indignation in the reader with Misplaced Focus. This works best with Subtext that’s going to elicit a strong opinion from people, something very wrong with the world that readers not only know about—many of them care deeply about it, or are angry about it.

  By using Misplaced Focus, you can rattle the reader’s cage about a serious issue, and make them fume that something horrible is wrong with the world (expressed by your Subtext), and you are not only not doing anything about it, not only ignoring it, you don’t even no
tice it!

  Pretending to lack of awareness of an important issue is fun for the reader, and a very simple trick. It’s you playing the dope, and it’s widely accessible because it works for all ages, depending on the complexity of your Subtext.

  Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” uses this technique to focus not on solving the problem of Ireland’s poor children, but on the fake solution of eating them. While laughing at the absurdity with which Swift focuses his great argumentative powers on this wrong-headed solution, the reader is compelled to realize how tragic it is that there are so many Irish kids living in abject poverty, and makes them want to ask, Why is no one doing anything about it? This, of course, is his Subtext. His seeming dismissal of the main issue (child poverty) in favor of his singular focus on this terrible idea for solving the problem (eating the children) inflames our righteous indignation.

  Like Analogy and Parody, Misplaced Focus can provide a second hidden message in Satire beyond the Subtext: the Elephant in the Room. Often the Elephant in the Room is the Subtext, but sometimes it’s not—it can also be a mere a prop that’s serving to elucidate your Subtext.

  The Onion uses Misplaced Focus frequently. In the story, “Secondhand Smoke Linked to Secondhand Coolness,” they bring to mind the dangers of secondhand smoke

  When this story was published in the mid 1990s, authorities still argued about whether secondhand smoke was bad for people’s health, and very few actual bans had been enacted into law (outside California). Cigarette companies certainly didn’t think secondhand smoke was so bad. People on both sides of the issue felt passionately about secondhand smoke. This story created laughter by inflaming those passions, focusing not on the real issue, but misplacing the focus onto something tangentially related, and far less important.