Being a Better Writer: Comedy - Good, Not Cheap · 10:02pm Sep 18th, 2017
Oh boy.
You know, I think if I were to sit down and list all the topic requests I've received since I started Being a Better Writer, and probably even some of the requests I received before starting it, comedy would likely be at the top of the heap. This is a constantly asked-after topic. And yet, for four-plus years, I've steadily declined. Why?
Simple: I don't write comedy. Sure, I have funny moments here and there in my stories, and may write a short or a chapter every once in a while that prompts quite a bit of snickering, but I don't see that as being a comedy writer. I write adventures, reflective pieces, etc, etc, but almost never have I sat down and told myself "I'm going to write a really funny story." Those moments of comedy in my stories? Those are the characters being funny. And sure, the characters are an extension of myself and my intent, but at the same time, I don't see that as "comedic writing." That's characters and situations I have taking advantage of the moment to be funny, rather than me writing a story with the express purpose of delivering laugh after laugh. This doesn't mean that I don't enjoy writing characters or scenarios that produce a good laugh—to the contrary, I welcome it—but that the comedy is never the sole goal of the story ... save perhaps with one exception, that being the short story Kitchen Creature from Unusual Events. Comedy is a side dish, yes, like fries to go with the burger, but it's never the main course in my works.
Why? Well, I'll go back and repeat the old adage once more: Dying is easy, comedy is hard. You might recognize that in variance from my post on tragedy, but the fact is that it keeps coming up because comedy is hard. Crud, Battletoads-slash-classic-Nintendo-hard.
Actually, let me rephrase that a bit as we finally begin to circle inwards towards today's topic: Good comedy is hard. Cheap comedy? Fairly easy ... but, well, cheap. Low-cost, really. And, on that note, fairly low-brow as well.
I don't really write comedies either. My characters are way funnier than I could hope to be.
Oddly, I quite like what you call cheap comedy. Of course, I'm not saying I don't like any other kind, but that cheap is great too.
Case in point, my favorite comedy fic I've read:
- MLP: FiM
- Comedy
- Random
Twilight finds herself desperately seeking Uranus(Shameless promotion, too)
While I'm also no expert, I do have one observation of the greats that I think you missed. If you watch/read great comedy, they usually have a wide variety of types of jokes rather than just one. I think that is essential if you are doing anything beyond a short because otherwise you can't do the unexpected because after ten sneaky sex jokes in a row, even the densest members of the audience will know what's coming and thus the joke will fall flat. This also seems like it should help for dealing with a variety of audience types (which is essential in a prepared media like writing or film where you can't adapt to the audience) because the variety of jokes mean that even if some types of jokes fall flat for some people, there will still be others for them to laugh at.
Also, on the subject of doing the unexpected, one of the things that really kills "comedy" for me is when you can see the trainwreck coming from a mile away and everything crashes and burns exactly as expected. The result is that I just wind up cringing instead of laughing, and there have been plenty of cases where I gave up and walked away or skimmed ahead to avoid the failed joke. This is actually a problem MLP has had off and on since the beginning, and it seems particularly common with CMC episodes which is probably a big part of why I've never really cared about them all that much.
P.S. Thanks for shifting the link to the top. I was able to get into the article directly with no trouble at all, and I could still see a bit of the text here to boot.