The Comic Toolbox: How to be Funny Even if You're Not

by John Vorhaus

  Here’s another fresh stab:

  The hero, a recent graduate from hotel-management school, wants nothing but a quiet little inn of his own. The door opens when he’s hired by an international conglomerate to run a rundown resort in a Third World country ruled by a despotic strongman. The hero takes control when he goes to the Third World country and starts to turn the resort around. A monkey wrench is thrown when the hero falls in love with a beautiful guerrilla leader and displaces his loyalty to her. Things fall apart when the dictator comes to stay at the resort and the guerrillas plot to assassinate him by blowing up the hero’s beloved hotel.

  Can you see the conflict between our hero’s original loyalty to the hotel and his new loyalty to the girl and her goals? As things now stand, something’s got to give. When you move toward a moment when something’s got to give, you’re ready to start wrapping things up.

  THE HERO HITS BOTTOM

  There’s an achingly beautiful moment toward the end of Tootsie, which takes place the day after Michael, as Dorothy, has made his pass at Julie, leading her to believe that Dorothy is gay. He comes to her dressing room to explain, but she won’t listen. “I really love you,” she says, “but I can’t love you.” In that instant, Michael knows that no matter what happens, as things now stand he’ll never have the woman he loves, so he’ll never really be happy again. Whenever I’m trying to remember how a hero hits bottom, this is the moment I grab.

  This is the moment that a good story aims for. Having taken our hero out of his world and thrust him into a new and challenging one, having given him early success in that world, having displaced his loyalty, having made his situation bad, and then made his bad situation worse, we bring him at last to the moment of truth. Every story you’ve every loved, from Sleeping Beauty to Moby Dick to Gone With the Wind, has a moment of truth. For my money, the moment of truth is what makes the story real.

  In our Mary Tyler Moore episode, the moment of truth comes when Lou hates Ted, Ted hates Lou, they both hate Mary, and Mary’s not too keen on them. More to the point, it’s the moment where Mary realizes that, unless something drastic happens, she’s going to lose her two close friends forever. What’s a girl to do?

  In Star Wars, Luke is attacking the death star. Darth Vader is on his tail, and all his efforts to hit the target have failed. The voice of Obi Wan Kanobi comes to him and says, “Use the Force, Luke.” To use the Force means surrendering his hard-won manhood to some higher power. Not to use the Force means to fail and die. What’s a boy to do?

  In City Slickers, the hero hits bottom when Billy Crystal’s beloved calf, Norman, gets swept into the river. There stands our hero, with his conflicting loyalties laid out before him. On one hand, he can turn away from that calf and continue to live, which he desperately wants, now that he know what living really means. On the other hand, he can plunge into that raging torrent and try to save that calf, but he might die trying. As things now stand, he has no reasonable hope of a happy ending. What’s a lonesome cowboy to do?

  The common denominator to all these moments is the sense of time running out. The hero has come to the end of the line, the final moment when at last he’ll have to choose between what he wanted when the story started and what he’s come to want along the way. He arrives at a choice between his original self loyalty and his new displaced loyalty. It’s a choice, in a sense, between “me” and “you.”

  In Romancing the Stone, Joan Wilder finds herself in a life-and-death struggle with Colonel Zola. At her moment of truth, as she battles for her life, she calls out to Jack Colton to come and save her. If he does, she knows that her dream of romance will be fulfilled. If he doesn’t?

  Then she’ll die.

  In The Mighty Ducks, Emilio Estevez hits bottom when his hockey team abandons him on the eve of the championship game. In Birdies!, Twyla hits bottom when her team abandons her on the eve of the championship game. In The Bad News Bears—well, you get the idea.

  If your story is tracking right, you’ll come naturally to the moment when your hero is poised between two things he really wants, two things which are clearly mutually exclusive. If Mary sides with Ted, she loses Lou. If she sides with Lou, she loses Ted. If Albert Collier gets in that crippled plane and flies, he might lose his life, but if he doesn’t, then Kathryn never wins her race, and Albert never wins her.

  By dragging your hero down to the bottom, you force him to make the ultimate choice. Use the Force or refuse the Force? Stay Big or be small? Be a woman or a man? Save the calf or save your life? These are the sorts of choices you want to make your hero face. And it’s no accident that so many fine comic stories come down to a matter of life and death. As we’ll discuss later, the greater the jeopardy, the greater the comedy, too.

  So how does your hero hit bottom? Write that answer now.

  If finding this moment seems difficult, well, yeah, it is. But it’s vital that your bring your hero to a choice of this sort, or everything you’ve invested in the story up till now will be lost.

  Surprisingly, it’s less difficult if you take a fresh running start at the story. In my experience (and this is why I’ve bothered to go to such tedious length on the subject), the Comic Throughline often serves to reveal an otherwise obscure or uncertain moment of truth. Let’s start with a new story and see if I can show you what I mean:

  Frank, a thirteen-year-old boy in Milwaukee in 1968, has the outer need of being a hippie and the inner need of learning to sacrifice. The door opens when he meets a seventeen-year-old hippie chick who rocks his world. The hero takes control when he bonds with the girl, learns from her, and becomes, to outer appearances, a hippie. A monkey wrench is thrown when he falls in love with the girl and dares to believe that she might love him, too. Things fall apart when her draft-dodger boyfriend turns up and our hero gets dragged into their efforts to escape over the border into Canada.

  Given this simple template, how must the hero hit bottom? Won’t it inevitably come down to a choice between what the hero wants for himself—her love—and what he wants for her—her happiness? In concrete terms, he’ll have to decide whether to help them get away, which means losing her, or to try and keep her for himself.

  I must tell you that when I first wrote this throughline, I assigned the hero the inner need of learning true values. Looking at his moment of truth, I realized that the inner need of learning to sacrifice would make his ultimate choice that much harder to make. So I went back and changed his inner need to what you see above. That’s how the system works. By laying out the story in its simplest terms, you can make changes on a rudimentary level, while such changes are still easy to make. Later, when you’re writing the script or the novel or the teleplay, it will be much too late, and much too difficult, to change the story in a major way. Do it now while it’s still easy.

  Do it now with some fresh meat. Try a new story and see if it doesn’t point itself inevitably toward some ultimate conflict. It won’t all the time, and when it doesn’t, you’ll know that there are some key story elements still unknown to you. Or you’ll know that the story you’re chasing is a dog. The advantage is that you’ll reach this understanding through the least possible effort, the smallest amount of actual writing. The Comic Throughline is the line of least resistance.

  And what happens when the hero hits bottom? Facing his moment of truth, staring into his abyss, what does our hero do?

  THE HERO RISKS ALL

  With no certain hope of success, the hero in a comic story hurls himself into the abyss. He abandons his entire investment in his original goals, sacrifices everything for the sake of his displaced loyalty. The key here is that the hero does the right thing even if he doesn’t know whether it will pay off.

  With no certain hope of success, Billy Crystal throws himself into that raging river to save that drowning calf. He doesn’t know if he’ll succeed. He doesn’t even know if he’ll survive. All he knows is that things
can’t go on the way they are, and that, in this moment, he’d rather lose his life than fail to take the shot. Notice that it’s just this sort of moment—one instant of genuine, authentic life experience—that he’s been seeking all along.

  With no certain hope of success, Michael Dorsey rips off his wig on national television and reveals Dorothy Michaels to be a man. In this instant, he doesn’t know whether he’ll win Julie’s heart or not. All he knows is that he can’t bear to live the lie another instant. He has to come clean.

  So often in a comic story, the hero risks all by coming clean, telling the truth, confessing to the lie that’s carried him through the story so far. Tom Hanks does it in Big when he admits that he’s not an adult. Dorothy does it in The Wizard of Oz when she clicks her heels and says, “There’s no place like home.” She’s admitting that she was wrong in wanting to leave home. Now all she wants is to have her home back. It takes a major leap of faith to risk everything on a pair of magic slippers, but that’s what Dorothy does.

  Luke Skywalker uses the Force. He doesn’t know if the Force will work, he just knows that nothing else possibly can. He yields himself up to a higher power.

  Mary Richards stands at her moment of truth, poised between Ted and Lou, loyal to both, and loyal to herself. Pushed to the end of the line, she finally shouts, “If you guys can’t grow up and behave yourselves, I don’t want to be friends with either one of you!” With no certain hope of success, she throws herself into the abyss. Is this a “strategy?” Does she hope that going ballistic will cause Ted and Lou to see the light? No. She just knows that she can’t live this lie (approval of their feud) a single minute more.

  She has to come clean. The fact is, she doesn’t respect either of them any more, and she can no longer keep that secret.

  Joan Wilder has her back to the wall, a knife at her throat. She calls to Jack, but Jack doesn’t come. What will she do? If she waits for Jack, she’ll die. When she can’t wait a minute more, she abandons her lie—that she’s a weak woman who needs a man to save her—and saves her own life. She throws off all her old notions of romance and comes into her own.

  In The Bad News Bears and The Mighty Ducks and Hoosiers and Birdies!, the moments of truth are all the same. The hero says to his team, his loved ones, “I don’t care about me, and I don’t care about winning. All I really care about is you.” In Birdies! as I see it now, Twyla will get all the way to the airport, badminton racquet in hand, ready to fly off to the Olympics. She’ll see something that reminds her of her hopeful proteges and she’ll realize, “I just can’t do it.” With no hope of winning back their loyalty, she’ll bag her flight and rush back to the competition site.

  In my story about the hippie wannabe, his moment of truth comes when he realizes that his loved one and her boyfriend will get caught unless he takes action. He risks his life to create a diversion. He has no certain hope of success, or even of survival. He has every reason to believe that his action will cause him to lose his loved one. But he knows that in the moment of truth there’s nothing else he can do but sacrifice, thus fulfilling his strong inner need.

  The moment of truth fulfills the inner need. In Everybody’s Dream Come True, Albert’s inner need is to acquire self-respect. In his moment of truth, when he overcomes his fear and flies that plane to victory, he’s serving his inner need. In Big, Tom Hanks’ moment of truth comes when he decides to go home. This fulfills his inner need of coming to terms with himself as a child.

  Storytelling seems to be a mystery, but it can be like clockwork. If you know your hero’s inner need, then you know what his moment of truth must be. If you know what his moment of truth is, then you know what his inner need must be. So ask yourself now, based on the story you’ve told so far, what must your hero do, what choice must he make or action must he take to fulfill the terms of his inner need? If all has gone according to plan, the answer will be obvious.

  Again, to make this tool work best for you (and for the practice if nothing else), start over with a fresh idea and walk it all the way through.

  The hero is an over-the-hill tennis star with the outer need to be a star again and the inner need to find the off court meaning of “love.” The door opens when she must take on her comic opposite as her doubles partner. The hero takes control when she improves his game and they start winning. A monkey wrench is thrown when she finds she loves him, which is a problem because she already knows she hates him. Things fall apart when their tempestuous romance screws up their game and the partnership dissolves. The hero hits bottom when she realizes that she can win a tournament or win her man but not both. She risks all by giving up her shot for the sake of his love.

  And what happens next?

  WHAT DOES THE HERO GET?

  They win the big doubles tournament. Our hero gets returned to glory and she also gets the man she loves. Oh, happy ending!

  I argue with people all the time over happy endings. No, I do. People upbraid me in parking lots and say, “Hey, pal, why are you so dogmatic about happy endings? Why won’t you admit that movies and TV shows and comic novels have happy endings just because that serves the marketplace? It’s pandering!” Yes, they serve, but no it’s not pandering. It’s organic. The natural ending of a comic story is a happy ending. If it were otherwise, then all the comic currency earned by the tale would be forfeited by its outcome, sort of a substantial penalty for unpleasant withdrawal.

  Moreover, the ultimate purpose of a story is to instruct, and the underlying message of any story is, “If you do a certain thing, here’s what happens.” If you kill your father and marry your mother, Oedipus, you don’t get a happy ending. You have to pluck out your eyes and be miserable. But if you do the right thing and use the Force, Luke, you get rewarded. You destroy the death star and get to hang out with the princess for another two movies. Just one thing: She’s your sister, so don’t sleep with her or you might end up like ol’ Oedipus there.

  So yes, I’m a fan of happy endings. But I’m also a student of endings, both happy and sad, and I’ve noticed something very interesting about the endings in real comic stories. Not only is the hero a winner, he’s a double winner, because what the hero gets is both his original goal and his new goal. Against all foreseeable odds, he manages in the end to serve both his self loyalty and also his displaced loyalty. Again, it doesn’t have to happen this way, but because it does happen this way in so many stories, we ignore the compelling logic of such outcomes at our peril.

  In Star Wars, Luke surrenders to the Force. Then what happens? He destroys the death star and acquires his manhood. He serves his ends and those of the rebel alliance. In City Slickers, Billy Crystal goes home with a renewed love of life and with the calf.

  In a good comic story, the hero ends up with the best of both worlds. Joan Wilder gains both her self-esteem and the man of her dreams. Albert Collier gains both his place in the world and Kathryn’s love. Mary Tyler Moore tells Ted and Lou to grow the heck up . . . whereupon they see the light, settle their feud, and meet Mary’s twin needs of keeping peace among her friends and maintaining her self-respect.

  Does this seem phony and forced? It certainly can be, if the sudden reversal of fortune isn’t justified by what’s happened before. But in a well-crafted story, the reversal is not only justified, it’s the only authentic outcome possible. When Michael Dorsey reveals himself to be a man, he doesn’t know that he’s going to win Julie’s love, but he must win Julie’s love, because revealing his true self is the only action that could possibly achieve this outcome. He also gets work as an actor for the same reason: In risking everything for his own true love, he finally comes to understand himself. For the first time in his life, he is the sort of actor who can get work. Paradoxically, nothing could bring him to this pass but the ultimate sacrifice of his career.

  After the hippie wannabe risks his life at that border crossing, the girl and her boyfriend escape safely into Canada.
He’s achieved his first goal: to understand the meaning of sacrifice. But has he achieved his second goal? Does he have the woman he loves? No . . . not until she comes back across the border, tells him Canada’s too cold for her, and drives him off to Woodstock. It turns out that his sacrifice, and only his sacrifice, could make her see his quality and win her love.

  If this sounds like the gospel of happy endings, well it is. But I put it to you that if you set out to write an authentic comic story without an authentic happy ending, no one will be satisfied. Not you, not your readers or viewers, not even your mother, who’s sworn the Oath of Writers’ Mothers to love every word you ever put to page.

  Try it. See if I’m wrong: Our hero is a struggling young writer whose outer need is fame and glory but whose inner need is to discover what being a writer is really all about. The door opens when he gets the chance to masquerade as a famous novelist at a writers’ conference. The hero takes control when he pulls off the charade, passing himself off as the novelist. A monkey wrench is thrown when he falls in love with a woman who, in turn, passionately loves the person he’s pretending to be. Things fall apart when a rival threatens to reveal his identity. The hero hits bottom when he’s forced to choose between love and glory, between continuing the masquerade or finally coming clean. The hero risks everything by closeting himself in a room, writing a 200-page confession, and laying it at her feet. He has no certain hope that she’ll forgive him or understand. He only knows that after all these lies, he has to tell the truth.

  What happens next? What does he get? Is he thrown in jail? Banned from publishing forever? Sentenced to grim obscurity and misery? I don’t think so.

  No, check that, I don’t hope so. Rather, I hope that the woman will forgive him and that his act of redemption, writing that confession, will teach him what it really means to be a writer and open the door to authentic fame and glory, the sort of reward that genuine good work brings. That’s the ending that feels right. And because it feels right, I submit that it is right.