On writing comedy · 4:14pm May 26th, 2016
A confession about "Do That Again": It didn't make me laugh. I don't think I smiled while writing it. What was in my head while writing it was a series of calculations along the lines of "HUMANS WILL LAUGH AT THIS WITH PROBABILITY 0.57", to a soundtrack of guilt for writing feature-box clickbait that wasn't even proper clop.
Partly I felt the story didn't have enough funny lines--look at a page from Pratchett or Douglas Adams, and you'll see nearly every paragraph is funny. Partly I didn't like the flow / pacing / transitions between topics / lack of story structure. Partly I wondered why I was posting something publicly on the Internet that would associate me with people who use the word "ponut".
TOO EVIL FOR EVIL
"Some fan-fiction should never be published", says Viking Books
The formerly-respectable stallion B.H. was fired from his position as ombudsman for Evil, Inc. after discovery of a fan-fiction he once wrote about sadomasochistic, necrophiliac bestiality...
There are some lines I think I would have laughed at if someone else had written them, but plenty that I don't know if I would have ever found funny. I was definitely not consciously writing for myself.
It was a rushed job. I still find myself not knowing whether it's not funny, funny but not my thing, funny and my thing but I can't laugh at it because I wrote it, or funny and my thing but I'm suppressing that knowledge.
But that's usually how I feel when writing comedy. Even if something is funny at first, it stops being funny after I've read it 10 times. A stand-up comedian isn't laughing at his own material; he's laughing at the game he's playing with the audience. Writing comedy is like taping a stand-up comedy routine with no audience.
I felt a little better about this when one of the speakers at the 3 Rivers Screenwriting Conference said that writing comedy was so hard because, unlike all other kinds of writing, you can't tell from your feelings whether your comedy is any good. Comedy shows are written in a "writer's room", a big room with a round table and several comedy writers throwing lines and ideas at each other. This speaker said he had never been in a writer's room for a comedy show where the writers were laughing.
If you write something sad, you know it's sad if it makes you cry [1]. If you write something uplifting, it makes you feel good. But comedy relies on surprise, and you're not surprised after the first moment a joke occurs to you, and the joke isn't quite right the first moment it occurs to you. The wording is wrong, the context is wrong, and you have to fiddle with it until it can sound funny, and by then it doesn't surprise you anymore.
Postscript:
Maybe dividing our feelings into neat categories--comedy, tragedy, romance--is a modern thing. The separation of reason into the rational and the emotional is a thing that happened at least twice in history, first in Plato, then again in the 18th century. The Elizabethans, like Shakespeare and the "metaphysical poets" like John Donne, united rationality and feeling in their writing. The phrase "metaphysical poet" almost means "a poet who uses a precise, scientific metaphor to convey passionate feelings", as in Donne's Valediction.
This includes comedy. Shakespeare wrote a bunch of "problem plays" which people don't know how to deal with now, because they aren't strictly comedy or drama. A few years ago I wrote on this blog that Shakespeare used cheap alternations between the comic and tragic, but that's not always right. The gravedigger/Yorick scene in Hamlet, or maybe some scenes with Shylock in Merchant of Venice, are funny, but in an almost cruel or ironic way that we don't write humor anymore, a way that you might need to be less "Enlightened" to appreciate.
[1] Not me, of course. Villains never cry. That's just eye-venom leaking out.
And that is what makes it even more so?
...
...
...
Now, mama don't 'low no sado-necro-equine bestiality here!
Mama don't 'low no sado-necro-equine bestiality here!
We don't care what mama don't 'low--
She never saw Equus anyhow!
Mama don't 'low no sado-necro-equine bestiality here.
--The HOPSFA Hymnal, "Mama Don't 'Low"
I on the other hand am just tickled that I can now officially say that you have typed the word ponut. I've done it, by George. I can quote this now
Comedy is a weird area of writing indeed. It's, like, that thing that I just can't do. Or, I can, sometimes, in tiny doses, but it's hit or miss and I only get one chance to hit because it becomes invisible to me during editing and revision, and then it scares me away from trying because I know that if it works, it's great, but if it doesn't, it's horrendous.
I envy anyone who knows the secret to nailing it consistently.
Eye venom leakage?
That one made me laugh.
Sometimes a comedic bit comes over me suddenly[1] and I giggle a bit, but even when it is labored I tend to feel how funny[3] something is. I don't laugh at it anymore, of course, but it tickles some aesthetic sense in me. The synesthete in me wants to tell you it is a sort of oily yellowish gleam, but I recognize that this is not very useful info for people whose brains aren't broken.
[1] The little ficlet I wrote in your comments[2] ended suddenly when I realized where Celestia was. I, and possibly I alone, found that really funny.
[2] Sorry should have put comedic in all sorts of quotes. Comedic for Ghost values of 'comedic' let's say.
[3] Well, how funny according to me. I often send my stuff to pre-readers with a note to the effect of "I've no earthly clue if this is funny or not" because what I find funny and what the rest of the planet finds funny don't coincide all that often.
3974004
Yes. Exactly. That's what the venom does. Next come the cramps, necrosis, and sudden explosive discorporation.
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I... laugh at some of my own jokes. And there are some jokes other people have written that I always find funny, no matter how many times I see or read them. The biggest sort that I almost always find funny are gags that come from character-- that rely on an understanding of this character in this situation and how silly/clueless/annoyed/etc they would be. Even when I've watched them a million times, they still get a smile or a chuckle from me, as much from fondness for the character as anything in the joke itself.
To pull some from the show, I'm thinking of lines like "I like to think of them as everypony's trophies, with my name permanently etched onto them." or "Were you insulted because I insulted your mane?" or "Rarity? We don't generally wear clothes." (And other assorted AJ reactions.)
To pull one from one of your fics, I can't look it up right now, but Rainbow's reaction to Pinkie being called a TARDIS is perfect. The implied pun is old and groanworthy, but the phrasing makes it clear that Rainbow is trying to defend her and has also had to have some pony explain not to say stuff like that herself, which is so perfectly Dash that it always makes me giggle.
I will admit that's my favorite kind of comedy, though, so I'm not sure if it holds up because I love it, or if part of why I love it is that it holds up.
I like to think I can do comedy. I smile when I do it, but it's the smile of satisfaction of putting the right piece in the right place.
It's basically an imitation game. I'm good at remembering not just the correct wording for lines from movies or TV shows or whatever, but also the original cadence, rhythm, and tone. Those things are an inherent part of the information that makes up a remembered line for me, which is really useful when you're trying to do a style imitation.
I basically work from having the corpuses of Pratchett, Adams, and Monty Python (plus a slight leavening of 'growing up on the internet') stuck in my head, and it's 'right' if it has the cadence and setup-punchline pattern that I can recognize from those sources.
3974000
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3974183
I think we're talking about the same thing. We have a natural direct sense-perception of funniness, and also a craft-knowledge of what's funny. Unlike sad or joyful writing, the direct sense-perception of humor evaporates during rewriting, and you're left with just craft-knowledge.
3974117
Well, those are the actually funny jokes.
Like, "Now choose: Either die in the vacuum of space, or... tell me what you thought of my poem."
Maybe the bigger the context that the joke pulls in is, the longer it keeps working.
3974117
I agree with this. I often laugh at my own "jokes," which I assume is because the humor I write (and like to read) is almost entirely character-based. The fact that it's based on appreciation for a character rather than "surprise" may give it more longevity.
Alternatively, it could be that I'm just a comedic-narcissist. That may also be true. ~ Sable
Here's where a disadvantage can be an advantage.
My memory stinks. When I re-read something that I have put aside for a week or two, there's a lot of 'new' in it.
(Maybe that's why I like writing comedy. I *can* laugh at my own jokes.)
I need to finish reading that.
I'm afraid I've got nothing to say to help here. I've made, I think, one attempt at a comedy.
I'm with 3974117; there are some jokes (both by others and by myself) which consistently make me smile, maybe even chuckle, while others are only passing or only work a few times or periodically.
A lot of them, in retrospect, are character-based. Most of the rest of them are either terrible puns or black comedy.
That said, I do know the sense you're talking about of not being really amused anymore by your own jokes, though I will sometimes laugh at them the first time when I think of them (or at least, giggle a little). But a lot of it is construction for other people.
I think the thing about comedy--in particular in the west--people try too hard to come up with one liners and one-off gags. They also just... well, try too hard and too much to be funny.
Let me put it this way: consider pacing. Why aren't games, movies, books of the appropriate genre non-stop action? Because it's exhausting. By being overexposed to the action it loses its potency. This is how I feel about comedies which rapid fire darts at a board to see if any hit.
Good comedy writing is often about the story. It's about the build up, it's about the characters and the situation. Most importantly: good written comedy doesn't need to make you laugh. A good story with some parts that get a smirk or smile out of the reader is often enough. As I like to say about one of my favorite shows, Red Dwarf (a british sci-fi sitcom), "it's not overly funny, but it's always entertaining."
I believe it's also much easier to tell whether a situation is funny rather than a single line.
My favorite humor is certain Goon Show bits, and some of 'em involve enormous setup, others almost none. Usually there's some sort of tip-off that a gag is coming (but the more setup, the less warning) and then when it's sprung, it seems to be not 'nonsensical' nearly so much as making perfect sense that is WRONG
For instance, there's this sequence of questions for 'History For Schools':
"How do you spell C—A—T?" "Cat!"
"Name three English Queens called Elizabeth" "Jim!"
(It's delivered very confidently, the fellow's very happy with his 'Jim' answer and hardly hesitates at all. As near as I can figure, the broken reasoning is like 'Jim's a nice name. We will name them all Jim. Wait, what?')
Or, Ned Seagoon must leave the country to find the secret banana plantation. He's purchasing documents and papers from Henry Crun, who's been falling asleep while filling out the papers. Old man Crun calls his old lady friend Minnie Bannister to help (she's more than a bit daft). Peter Sellers knows what's coming so he's on the verge of cracking up when delivering his line (and he's introducing Ned to Minnie so she's expected to say hello):
"Minnie, this gentleman is going to South America!"
"OH! Goodbye!"
Or, this one capped off an entire show: the cast are in a horse-drawn zeppelin and they've brought along a strange man who's trying to prove the earth is flat, with all manner of earth-is-flat gags to keep you remembering what the guy's up to. They're zeppelining through the clouds, with most of the Goon cast, the strange flat-earth man and Eccles, the cast idiot, when:
Flat-Earther: "We must look through the clouds to determine if the earth is flat!"
Eccles: "Here, here, I just saw the earth through the clouds!"
Flat-Earther: "Did it look round?"
Eccles: "Yeah but I don't think it saw me!"
(That one was such a conceptual boot to the head that the studio audience was silent for a moment, then roared with laughter… and the Goons wound things up with a few hasty lines and beat a quick retreat, because there was nothing more Goonish than to set up a gag like that for a whole show and then spring it on people at the end. Again, one of those gags where they set you up for one thing and then pull the rug out and deliver (with every confidence and perfect clarity of expression) something completely wrong.)
People usually don't want to explain comedy because explaining all the moving parts generally means bolting them down so they don't move anymore, plus if you told people how to do comedy then everybody would want one ;) however, there's one useful concept and that's the punch WORD. Hemming and hawing after delivering that isn't a good choice. With the Goon examples I gave, they're good at springing the fullblown concept on you at the last moment before your reaction: "Goodbye!", or Eccles seeming to begin with 'Yeah it looked round and not at all flat', preparing for a different point of view with 'but I don't think it' and then boot to the head with 'saw me' (which fits with 'did it (turn its head as it was passing by and) look (a)round' but is so totally not what we're expecting)
Another really deadly practitioner of 'boot to the head on the last word' is Emo Philips. That horrible, wonderful gag ending 'I cried and cried, because I couldn't make them skip'
I sympathize. This is something I've heard over and over, that writing comedy is hard, and I can see it. You need a good funny beat every so often to keep the flow going and the whole thing involves surprising amounts of cold calculation.
I don't know about 'separating your emotions' being so new, but I do think that there have been periods where people were (and are) way too caught up into separating things into genres. A story just has to be a good story, it doesn't have to be a comedy or a drama or whatever other neat little box you want to put into. You see this with art movements, to a degree, as well. Genres were created as descriptive, not prescriptive. Saying something's flawed because it doesn't fit into them is like saying the duck-billed platypus is flawed because it's an egg laying mammal. Nature and art don't care about the labels.