I glanced over at Ken and patted my pocket. This time I didn't stutter, I just mouthed, “Thank you.”
He nodded, the cowlick visible in all its glory from here. My ex-husband, the scared little boy, sitting on the side of the afraid. But I'd take some of his fear with me. A good scientist remembered the risks, and the old women with fear in their eyes.
Copyright © 2010 Brenda Cooper
Special thanks to John Cramer.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Special Feature: THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF WRITING HUMOR
by Richard A. Lovett
I was tempted to start this article with a joke. After all, that's conventional speech-writing advice. A few years ago, I heard Al Gore give a keynote address to a group of scientists. “I'm Al Gore,” he began. “I used to be the next President of the United States.” It's a great opener because it not only allows his audience to settle into the upcoming speech, but it also gives them permission to relax.
But this article is about humor. And humor is a serious matter.
“The humorous story is told gravely,” Mark Twain once wrote.1 “[T]he teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.”
Humor is also notoriously difficult to define. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart might as well have been writing about it in his famous line (about pornography): “I know it when I see it."2 Some magazine guidelines, in fact, use almost precisely those words.
And, sadly, humor is underappreciated. My mother, a retired playwright and drama teacher, often complains that the Academy Awards are biased in favor of scenery-chewing drama. So too, I suspect are literary awards. If you get it right, humor looks so easy nobody sees the effort that went into it. Not to mention that the Holy Grail of literature is the Great American Novel (or space trilogy). Laughter is just a throwaway.
* * * *
Laugh Tracks and Monologues
Beginning writers tend to confuse humor with gags. That's because most of us are steeped in sitcoms and late-night television monologues. These work well enough in their native environments, but for fiction writers they tend to teach two bad habits. One is to confuse a string of one-liners with a story. The other is to make us expect the equivalent of a laugh track to underscore the jokes, so nobody misses them.
The best literary humor has more faith in the reader. Again, let's look at Mark Twain, contrasting his brand of humor with what he calls the “comic” story (i.e., gag, or sitcom):
[T]he teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the “nub” of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again.
Twain minced no words on what he thought of this type of comedy. “It is a pathetic thing to see."3
So now we have a few rules from the greatest American humorist of all time on how not to do it:
1. Don't just write a string of gags. Even a shaggy-dog tale (a long, pointlessly detailed narrative, typically ending in a pun) is, at core, a story.
2. No laugh track. And before you say, well, sure, you can't do that in print, anyway, think again. Having characters laugh, roll their eyes, or otherwise highlight a joke is the same thing. I have used this technique precisely once, and hated doing it at the time. The story, “Spludge” (Analog, September 2010) involved a visitation by archetypal little, green aliens:
By this time, little green women, equally Mayan in their Earth-mother attributes, had decanted from an honest-to-goodness flying saucer on the White House lawn. Maybe they were drawn by the color of the grass. There certainly wasn't any reason William could see for them to be attracted to the current president.
Still, it was the President's job to greet them, and if he wanted to be reelected, hiding in the situation room wasn't going to do it. So, to the obvious dismay of his Secret Service contingent, he too was on the lawn, trying not to stare.
One of the little green women raised a four-fingered hand in an odd V-pattern. “Take me to your leader,” she said. “Nano-nano. Live long and perspire.”
William spurted coffee across the room, but the president didn't get it. “Uh, you too,” he said, plummeting a couple of points in the polls with each word. “I think. Whatever you say."
I really didn't want to use the line about the spurting coffee. Readers over a certain age didn't need it. But the references to Star Trek and Mork and Mindy were thirty-plus years old, and it was critical for the reader to recognize that the aliens were pranksters. So I disguised the laugh-track-style signaling in a disparaging remark about the president. But in this case it was because the plot absolutely required the readers to recognize that the aliens were making a joke, and not to tell people, ba-ba-boom, it was time to laugh.
Another aspect of William's story is that it runs counter to prevailing trends in non-humorous science fiction: although William is the viewpoint character, the story is told in a very detached point of view. Parts of it, in fact, are in an omniscient author voice: William has no way to know, at the time, that the president is falling in the polls with each word.
Writing the story, I struggled with this. Analog readers are used to relatively tight POV, and I didn't want to be distracting by doing something too out of the ordinary. But one of the best ways of writing humor is to have an outside observer—an Everyman type who is free to see things that people living too deeply in the story can't see—and that often works best with an authorial voice not too strongly limited by any given character.
Not that this means you can't write humor in tighter POV, especially in first person, where you're setting the narrator up as the observer. It's an approach that was used quite effectively, for example, by Jean Shepherd, author and narrator of the now-classic movie, “A Christmas Story.”
* * * *
Story Elements
Humorous science fiction stories are composed of three basic elements: story, prose, and science fiction.
The story is the framework. It's like any other story, with character, setting, conflict, and resolution. But to make people laugh, you need more than a humorous situation. You also need timing. And the key to that lies in the prose. Let's look at a simple, mainstream joke:
A priest, a rabbi, and a Presbyterian minister are sitting in a rowboat. Unfortunately, the fish aren't biting and the morning is cold.
"I wish we'd thought to bring coffee,” the Presbyterian says.
"No problem,” says the priest. “I've got a thermos in my car.” So he stands up, steps carefully out of the boat, and walks across the water to shore. A couple of minutes later, he's on his way back.
"Nice,” says the rabbi. “But you forgot the cream and sugar.”
"Oh, drat,” says the priest, starting to turn back.
"No, no,” says the rabbi. “I'll get it.” So he walks across the water, rummages a bit in his car, and is back a minute or two later. “Hope you don't mind Sweet ‘n Low. That's all I've got.”
"No problem,” says the Presbyterian. But what he's thinking is holy cow. And his honor is now on the line because he wants to prove his faith is as strong as his friends'. “What we really need are some donuts. I've got a box in my car.” So he gets up, steps overboard . . . and sinks like a stone.
The rabbi and the priest stare after him for a moment. “You know,” the priest says, “we really ought to tell Larry about those stepping-stones."
Is it funny? That probably depends on whether you've heard it before. But either way, we can draw a few lessons.
1. Often, the best humor is character-driven. We sympathize with the third cleric, whose mistake stems from a very human desire not to be outdone by his friends. A lot of the best humor comes from laughing with someone, not at them. That's why, in nonfiction, first-person essays often w
ork quite well: the author is telling the reader it's okay to laugh.
2. More subtly, I as the writer sympathize with him. The reader may not pick that up directly, but it doesn't matter. I'm a Presbyterian. That's why Larry's also one. I'm picking on my own kind, and even if nobody else can possibly know, it will temper my prose.
3. Humor often works best in triplets. It's kind of like the countdown for a race. “Ready . . . set . . . GO!” Here we have a triplet in the opening line, then more in the basic structure. Three clerics. Three attempts to go to shore. There's even a triplet in the priest's initial actions: “He stands up, steps carefully out of the boat, and walks across the water to shore.”
If you look at other types of art, you'll find that triplets and trios are very common. Visual art is often strongest with a triangular layout of the primary points of interest. Straight lines pull you out of the frame, breaking the spell, but a trio of points form a triangle that causes the eye to circle it, staying in the frame. Four points of interest, on the other hand, feel artificial: forming a box. Something similar happens in writing, and in humor it's critical for the writing not to get in the way.
4. Details are critical. They provide the rhythms of prose . . . the pauses and surges that produce the needed timing. Too many and you've created a shaggy dog. Too few, and the story feels rushed, making the humor fall flat.
Again consider the stepping-stone story again. I could have stripped it to bare bones:
A priest, a rabbi, and a minister are in a rowboat. They want coffee, so the priest gets out and walks across the water to shore.
“Nice,” says the rabbi. “But you forgot the cream and sugar.” So he walks across the shore to get some.
“What we really need are donuts,” says the minister. So he gets up, steps overboard . . . and sinks like a stone.
“You know,” the priest says, “someday we really ought to tell Larry about those stepping-stones.”
It's the same joke, but it's lost its punch.
Timing is everything, whether you're a standup comic, an actor, or a writer. Mark Twain referred to it as pausing. “The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story,” he wrote, “and a frequently recurring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right length—no more and no less—or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble. If the pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and [if it is too long] the audience has had time to divine that a surprise is intended—and then you can't surprise them, of course.”
I ran into something like this in a recently finished short-short (not yet published), called “Multivac's Singularity.” Before submitting, I emailed the draft to a friend and fellow Analog contributor. The response I got back epitomized what you're after in humor. “I was sure I saw the end coming,” she said. “And I did. Aaaand . . . I didn't.”
The point is that I set her up to expect one ending . . . gave it to her . . . and then twisted it before she had time to realize the expectation was false. When it prints, you'll find that it looks straightforward, but in the writing I sweated the timing of every word.
Even then, your efforts at timing won't work for everyone. Some readers are irritatingly perceptive. Others have the mental acuity of paving bricks. You cannot write to both at once.
* * * *
Twain thought there were four major aspects to his type of humor. Two we've already discussed: the “pause” and the storyteller's demeanor—the refusal to even hint that you think the story is funny.
The other two are related. Twain called them “the slurring of the point” and “the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one were thinking aloud.” He was specifically talking about oral humor, but the same applies to any form of the type of dry humor often associated with the British.
How to do this is difficult to describe outside of the context of specific stories, but it was something Twain was very good at. Read him. His prose is a little dated, but if you can figure out what he did and how to do something similar in your own voice, you're on your way. Here's an example, from his essay “Taming the Bicycle” (which in his day was a precarious high-wheeler).
I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down and bought a bicycle. The Expert came home with me to instruct me. We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air between me and the Sun. It was well it came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured.
Five days later I was carried down to the hospital, and found the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite sound. I attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on something soft. Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is better. [Ellipses omitted]
Converting all of this to science fiction is a bit trickier because humorous science fiction must also be science fiction. Often the science-fictional element requires explanations that can wreck your timing if you're not very, very careful.
Humorist Jim Foreman faced a similar problem a quarter century ago, when he wrote an essay called “Going Tubeless,” about his decision to take a three-month vacation in a place with no HBO. In the original version of the essay, he wrote:4
"During the next six minutes, while good old J. R. Ewing swindled a dozen of his best friends, went to bed with five different women and had Sue Ellen committed to a Betty Ford Center, I plotted how to break the news to the little woman who had promised to love, honor and adjust my vertical hold that I also wanted [to live without TV for a few months]."
The punch line here is the bit about “love, honor, and adjust my vertical hold"—which we'll get to in a minute. His editor, however, was concerned that some readers might not know who “J. R. Ewing” was (unlikely at the time, though today, that name will be lost to history for many younger readers). So the editor tossed in the following explanation of “J.R. Ewing” and “Sue Ellen” into the middle of the sentence: “(starring characters in the CBS series, Dallas, which airs on Friday nights at 8:00 pm in most time zones.)”
Even if you needed the parenthetical to get the joke, by the time you read through all of it, the timing's wrecked and the whole thing's gone clunk.
Worse, today's readers may not know about vertical hold—a control knob on the television that had to be perfectly adjusted or the picture would roll maddeningly upward at an ever-increasing speed, a bit like scrolling a computer screen. Anything from shifting position on the couch to a passing freight train could make the thing go catawampus, and there was no button on the remote control (if you even had one) to fix it. You had to get up, walk to the television, and fiddle with a knob. After which, the mere act of walking back to the couch was apt to send it out of kilter again. In 1980, the line “love, honor and adjust the vertical hold” was quite cute. But if you're under 40, it's pretty much meaningless.
Science fiction has the same problem, only more so: it's chock full of background material that can really interfere with your timing.
Let's go back to our priest joke, but change the setting (and presumably the punch line) by imagining a joke that begins: “So a priest, an ape, and a banana walk into a bar. The banana looks around and says . . .”
Well, I have no idea what it says, and would probably rather not know. But the point is that we know what a banana is. Likewise, for the ape and the priest—and the bar. We know that in the real world bananas don't talk. So those eighteen simple words carry a world of context.
In science fiction, we're inherently unsure. The equivalent joke might start: “So a quark mechanic, a chlulxchat, and a ring nut snap into a hubmote. The chlulxchat tachypeeps around and emits . . .”
By the time we've explained even half of that, the joke's DOA.
So how do we get around that?
One way is to start the story in as mundane a setting as
possible. That's what Douglas Adams did in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At the beginning, Arthur Dent is faced with the very understandable problem of a construction crew wanting to build a freeway bypass through his house. By the time the Vogon Constructors are doing the same thing to the entire Earth, for an interstellar shunt, we are totally on board for what will follow.
I've used the same trick myself. “A Plutoid By Any Other Name” (Analog, September 2007) begins with a university memo on the political correctness of planet and dwarf-planet classifications . . . and ends with the Milky Way being downgraded to a backwater. Similarly, “Nigerian Scam” (Analog, October 2006), opens with a bored young man trying to get back at a spammer and moves on to a weightless cat drifting on the breeze, plus an alien invasion.
As I look back on my science-fictional humor, I realize that all of it's followed that formula: introducing a character in a seemingly normal environment, then making the environment weirder and weirder. What can I say? It works. The mundane start allows the reader to identify with the character, and the evolving weirdness allows the reader to experience the science-fictional developments along with him or her, reducing the need for backfill.
* * * *
Also useful is to make the protagonist an outsider. That's helpful in any humor context, but particularly useful in science fiction because the outsider's voice can be both inherently humorous and a good source of material that would otherwise have to be done by flashback. That outsiderness was another part of Douglas Adams’ success, in the deft pairing of Arthur Dent and the guidebook itself. The guidebook was an outsider's view of everything it described, including us “mostly harmless” humans. Dent was an outsider to everything he saw off-Earth. What this allowed Adams to do was to step back and wryly comment on anything and everything.
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