Give me some help here.

[Weird Harold]

Maybe another thing that's coming out of this is all the responses are based on Television and Movies with the exception of Ogg ( BTW).

Does this mean nobody is writing The Many Loves of Dobbie Gillis or Please Don't Eat The Daisys now a days?? Originally I had thought of the printed word when I started this thread.

There are people writing printed humor -- In my preferred genres, Terry Pratchet's Discworld series is the written equivalent of movies like "Airplane" and "Naked Gun." Peirs Anthony's Xanth series has had a long, successful run by cramming in as many puns/page as possible.

As for writing humor, I tend to write humor by just letting ordinary situations get out of hand -- just take an off-hand comment from a character and let things escalate:

“Wait a minute. Who said anything about living in sin? I said I wanted to marry you.”

“I can’t marry you. You’re a gold digging gigolo. You’ll have to settle for living in sin and being a ‘kept man.’"

“No. I won’t do it. I’m calling my lawyer.”

“What do you need a lawyer for? You can’t divorce me; we’re not married. You can’t even dump me until you dump my sister and move in with me.”

I decided that things were just too crazy in my apartment, so I would go visit my lawyer in person. I stormed out and slammed the front door before I realized two very important things.

First, I was naked, and standing outside my locked apartment door. No pockets meant no keys either.

Second, I don’t HAVE a lawyer.

That exhange is part of a longer, somewhat surrealistic, scene where the conversation doesn't match the action -- It starts with a cliche question, "What are you doing?" directed at a couple having anal sex in the kitchen.

The whole story (Two Bags For The Bride) came from was inspired by a list of "She's so Ugly" jokes.

For me, writing for the Humor category is about picking a joke (or series of jokes) to tell and dragging it out for as long as I can keep a straight face.

 

[gauchecritic]

Funny depends a hell of a lot on common experience.

Humour comes from anticipation. If you anticipate the correct ending, the pratfall or the punchline it's just not funny.

Kids today... meh. Jackass??? I never found pain, self inflicted or otherwise, to be even slightly humourous.

In school I never laughed at anyone who farted in any situation whatsoever.

Now words on the other hand.

See SubJoe's stories, to illustrate the common experience thing have a look at a couple of mine.

With regard to words, the greater you can make your audience concentrate, the funnier the line becomes A la Bill Bailey's "Dr Qui" or Izzard's "French language lessons"


Bill Bailey. If you slow down the Dr Who theme it sounds a lot like 60's Belgian Jazz. (He plays his version and then recites):

C'est lui,
Dans la nuit,
Dr Qui.
Il voyage dans la Tardis -
la boite de téléphone
fantastique d'espace
l'interieur est beaucoup plus grand
que l'éxterieur! mais ça,
c'est la mystère de Docteur Qui!

 

[ungenderless]

For me, writing for the Humor category is about picking a joke (or series of jokes) to tell and dragging it out for as long as I can keep a straight face.

That's a pretty good way to put it. Now...will you please post a link to your stories in your sig?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

There are people writing printed humor -- In my preferred genres, Terry Pratchet's Discworld series is the written equivalent of movies like "Airplane" and "Naked Gun." Peirs Anthony's Xanth series has had a long, successful run by cramming in as many puns/page as possible.

As for writing humor, I tend to write humor by just letting ordinary situations get out of hand -- just take an off-hand comment from a character and let things escalate:



That exhange is part of a longer, somewhat surrealistic, scene where the conversation doesn't match the action -- It starts with a cliche question, "What are you doing?" directed at a couple having anal sex in the kitchen.

The whole story (Two Bags For The Bride) came from was inspired by a list of "She's so Ugly" jokes.

For me, writing for the Humor category is about picking a joke (or series of jokes) to tell and dragging it out for as long as I can keep a straight face.

Yes. That's a good example, Harold. Personally, I don't laugh when I'm writing my tripe. My mind is on the meter of the line and sometimes the sound of the words. Also, slipping in as many side jokes as possible, even though they have nothing to do with the story and are sometime quite obtuse.

Taking a running joke and letting it get out of hand is one genre of Humor. I'm looking to catalog more genre's to make sense of the Catagory in general. That's why I asked, "What's funny?"

Everything is funny if you look at if from a right angle. But the question is why? Why is it funny when Larry slaps Moe and whacks Curly with a ball bat? Why is it funny when Wylie Coyote is blown up in his attempt to use the ACME Rocket to catch the Road Runner? And why is it funny when (or not) when Henny Youngman stands on stage and says, "Take my wife - PLEASE."

An element I have identified is one of historic time. White comics do not make jokes about the "Coon Chicken Inn" (an actual resturaunt, btw), Spiro Agnew was forced from the Vice Presidency for telling the joke, "What are the only three things a black man cares about?"** You don't do these because the morals of society have changed. But, at the same time, it's still "politically correct" to make fun of politicians. And so it goes...


(** Brown shoes, tight pussy and a warm place to shit)

 

[TheeGoatPig]

If you anticipate the correct ending, the pratfall or the punchline it's just not funny.

I disagree. Not all of the time, but sometimes, the correct answer is looming there, waiting to happen. Everyone knows exactly what is going to happen. They know that something bad is going to happen, they know how it will happen, they just don't know when. Sometimes, if you do it right, you can see everything happening in your mind's eye well before it reall happens, and when it finally does, you laugh even harder than you would have if you hadn't known it was going to happen.

Sometimes you have to set that joke up a few scenes in advance though. You have to make the reader think that this something is going to happen right away. Show the setup in detail. Then make the reader forget about for a minute. Move on to something else for a bit. Then come back to what they already knew was going to happen, and slam through the entire scene played out just when you weren't expecting exactly what you expected to happen.

The when is just as important as the what.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Funny depends a hell of a lot on common experience.

Humour comes from anticipation. If you anticipate the correct ending, the pratfall or the punchline it's just not funny.

Kids today... meh. Jackass??? I never found pain, self inflicted or otherwise, to be even slightly humourous.

In school I never laughed at anyone who farted in any situation whatsoever.

Now words on the other hand.

See SubJoe's stories, to illustrate the common experience thing have a look at a couple of mine.

With regard to words, the greater you can make your audience concentrate, the funnier the line becomes A la Bill Bailey's "Dr Qui" or Izzard's "French language lessons"


Bill Bailey. If you slow down the Dr Who theme it sounds a lot like 60's Belgian Jazz. (He plays his version and then recites):

C'est lui,
Dans la nuit,
Dr Qui.
Il voyage dans la Tardis -
la boite de téléphone
fantastique d'espace
l'interieur est beaucoup plus grand
que l'éxterieur! mais ça,
c'est la mystère de Docteur Qui!

True, gauchecritic,
That is one of the differences between funny and not funny. But it's still the mechanics of humor and not the genre. I'm quite certain I could take any action section from any book written in the 20th century and twist it to make it funny. What I'm really thinking about is what IS funny - not the joke, not the situation or the characters, but what is the thing that tickles you and makes you laugh?

I think there must be some generic quality that binds all types if humor together, but it doesn't seem to work all the time for everyone.

I LOVE Jonathan Winters. My mother would get up an leave at the mention of his name. Maybe there is no understanding of that.

 

[ungenderless]

So you're looking for the "why"? The basic reason for what makes a person laugh? Hmm...I like this question...it provokes me to analyze myself...

1. Unpredictability. For me, part of good humor is the surprise. I hate it when I sit down to watch a sitcom comedy, and 5 minutes into it I can tell you exactly what's going to happen for the next 25 minutes. If a joke appears to be heading in one direction, but catches me offgaurd, I'm pleasantly surprised and that increases its funniness.

2. Self-referencing. I'm not entirely sure, but I THINK I enjoy this because it makes me feel like I'm *in the know* of an inside joke. Ex; in your story, when someone was complaining of the barbie dolls smelling, I shared the secret laugh with the main character. Parodying also fits under this one, for the same reason; The joke is like a reward for understanding it, which makes me feel good for laughing at it.

3. Relatability. There are a lot of comedies on television that I enjoy, but my favorite is Scrubs. Why? Because I was a CNA, and so many of the medical-related jokes remind me of something that happened at my job.

Is that kind of what you were looking for?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

So you're looking for the "why"? The basic reason for what makes a person laugh? Hmm...I like this question...it provokes me to analyze myself...

1. Unpredictability. For me, part of good humor is the surprise. I hate it when I sit down to watch a sitcom comedy, and 5 minutes into it I can tell you exactly what's going to happen for the next 25 minutes. If a joke appears to be heading in one direction, but catches me offgaurd, I'm pleasantly surprised and that increases its funniness.

2. Self-referencing. I'm not entirely sure, but I THINK I enjoy this because it makes me feel like I'm *in the know* of an inside joke. Ex; in your story, when someone was complaining of the barbie dolls smelling, I shared the secret laugh with the main character. Parodying also fits under this one, for the same reason; The joke is like a reward for understanding it, which makes me feel good for laughing at it.

3. Relatability. There are a lot of comedies on television that I enjoy, but my favorite is Scrubs. Why? Because I was a CNA, and so many of the medical-related jokes remind me of something that happened at my job.

Is that kind of what you were looking for?

Pretty much love... I can see the "zinger" or suprise twist, the under the table giggle from the "inside joke" and so on. I hadn't really thought of the "shared experience" though.

Makes me wonder if it doesn't have to do with the relationship between the characters and the reader. Hmmm...

Why do farts smell? So deaf people can enjoy them too

 

[ungenderless]

I hadn't really thought of the "shared experience" though.

Well, I don't think of this attribute as exclusive to humor...and I hate to keep using HP as an example and sound like some Rowling stalker, but I thought that the way she wrote the story was positively brilliant! I mean, here is this main character who is experiencing all of these new things for the first time. And since this is a new magical world, we, the reader, were also experiencing it for the first time. It created a unique and intimate bond with the main character that I don't often feel.

 

[oggbashan]

Stand-up Comedians

I think that the following comedians can/could hold an audience with almost any material:

Billy Connolly
Frankie Howard
Tony Hancock (with a stooge like Sid James)
Tommy Cooper
Noel Coward

and mentioned before:

Gerard Hoffnung
Joyce Grenfell
Flanders and Swann

From the US but comedy that travels:

George Burns
Phil Silvers
Victor Borge

Modern slapstick films:

Jackie Chan Karate
Some Woody Allen

 

[oggbashan]

Literotica examples

I think it is worth looking at the AH chain stories:

The Literotica Olympics, and

The Worst Chain Story Ever, and

The collected works of DurtGurl

for examples of written humour.

Obviously I like my own contributions:

The Literotica Olympics - Rowing

The Worst Chain Story Ever Ch 01

Og

 

[TE999]

Some of the funniest prose I have ever read was in the 'National Lampoon' magazine back in the 70's and 80's.

It was crude, sophomoric, mysoginistic, scatalogical and just plain funny!

The writers (Doug Kenny, Anne Beatts, Chris Miller, Tony Hendra, Michael O'Donohue, George W.S. Trow, etc.) went on to create 'Saturday Night Live' and movies like 'Animal House' and 'Caddyshack'. They're still funny today.

Theres a spot for a pie in the face and a spot for a well turned phrase (eg: Oscar Wilde, George S. Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, etc.) but I don't think that latter venue is here on this site.

People laugh at crude humor, but it takes a clever mind to appreciate satire which IMHO, you excel in writing.

Not sayin' that clever people don't read the stories on this site, but I think the subtleties escape many of them. Just like in life. Not everyone appreciates the dazzling wit at the cocktail party. "I just don't get it", they mutter walking off to get another canape'.

Just keep on writin', Jenny. There's a lot of us here who appreciate what you do and the effort that goes into it.

Peace.

Tom (TE999).

 

[ungenderless]

Victor Borge! Yay! I love Victor Borge! ^_^

 

[Weird Harold]

That's a pretty good way to put it. Now...will you please post a link to your stories in your sig?

Nope.

Dirty Old Man (the "author" of my stories) has one in his, I think -- It's been so long since I've even loooked at his forum profile I can't remember.

"Weird Harold" doesn't write stories (he only writes How To essays) and it would not be inappropriate for me to advertise "someone else's" stories in my signature line.

 

[Liar]

Although I did enjoy Douglas Adams. Not just the Hitchhiker's Guide, but his Dirk Gently books as well. Good stuff that was.

Actually, if you ask me, Dirk Gently's got the sharper comedy. Probably becaused it's got a more goth/horror-ish lean to it.

But anyway, for his funniest work, check out 'Last Chance To See'. Because it proves that the real world is just as bizarre as his fiction.

"I didn't notice I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals."

 

[Weird Harold]

Taking a running joke and letting it get out of hand is one genre of Humor. I'm looking to catalog more genre's to make sense of the Catagory in general. That's why I asked, "What's funny?"

I don't think "Humor" can be analyzed without breaking it down into genres or resortingto platudes like, "Funny is something bad happening to someone else."

Everything is funny if you look at if from a right angle. But the question is why? Why is it funny when Larry slaps Moe and whacks Curly with a ball bat? Why is it funny when Wylie Coyote is blown up in his attempt to use the ACME Rocket to catch the Road Runner? And why is it funny when (or not) when Henny Youngman stands on stage and says, "Take my wife - PLEASE."

Each of your examples are only funny to some people some of the time. The only thing those examples have in common are "delivery" and "timing."

I don't remember who the comedian was, but I was saw a demonstration of "Delivery" and "Timing" -- might have been Abbot and Costello? -- where reading random names from the phone book elicited "belly laughs" from a live audience when read by the "top banana" and dead silence when read by the "stooge." Part of the laughter was that the audience expected the delivery and timing to be "funny" but the the differences in the delivery and timing was readily apparent and one was "funny" and the other "not-funny" even without benefit of the set-up shaping the audience's expectation.

I think that "Delivery and Timing" is just about the only defineable factor that is common to "humor" of any genre in any medium -- but how they apply to each individual genre or medium is as different as the genres and mediums and audiences. Slapstick Delivery and timing generally doesn't work for Satire and vice versa.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I don't think "Humor" can be analyzed without breaking it down into genres or resortingto platudes like, "Funny is something bad happening to someone else."



Each of your examples are only funny to some people some of the time. The only thing those examples have in common are "delivery" and "timing."

I don't remember who the comedian was, but I was saw a demonstration of "Delivery" and "Timing" -- might have been Abbot and Costello? -- where reading random names from the phone book elicited "belly laughs" from a live audience when read by the "top banana" and dead silence when read by the "stooge." Part of the laughter was that the audience expected the delivery and timing to be "funny" but the the differences in the delivery and timing was readily apparent and one was "funny" and the other "not-funny" even without benefit of the set-up shaping the audience's expectation.

I think that "Delivery and Timing" is just about the only defineable factor that is common to "humor" of any genre in any medium -- but how they apply to each individual genre or medium is as different as the genres and mediums and audiences. Slapstick Delivery and timing generally doesn't work for Satire and vice versa.

I tend to agree, Harold. The scene that comes to mind is the film version in "A night at the opera" with the Marx Bros doing an old vaudville skit.

In typical Marx Bros circus fashion there are ten things going on with Groucho in the midst arguing with a fat lady, when Chico comes on from stage right and announces in a loud voice, "The Garbage Man Is Here." Everone ignores him. He leaves.

But Chico comes back two more times and says the same thing. On the final time, without missing a beat, Groucho looks over his shoulder and says, "Tell him to leave three bags" and goes right back to the arguement as if the scene never happened.

The timing was exquiset from the years the scene was practiced on the vaudville stage.

 

[gauchecritic]

...and two boiled eggs.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

In addition, Harold, I've come to think that humor is media specific in most cases. The Marx Brothers were able to transfer Vaudville to films in the 40's, but the old classic radio shows of the 40's and 50's (Ozzie & Harriet, Lub & Abner, et al) don't translate to the visual media. Ozzie & Harriet, Burns and Allen and Jack Benny translated, but only because they were completely rewritten for the newer media. (Could Rochester play today on television? I think he's gone the way of Step N Fetchit.)

 

[JamesSD]

Humor is very subjective. I think I've given 1 or 2 "5" votes EVER to Humor and Satire stories (and I've read quite a few)

I like intellectual humor, but the stuff that gets me laughing the hardest is often absurdist. I LOVED Arrested Development (although I discovered it just as it was being cancelled). Hitchiker's Guide the book was fantastic, movie was alright.

I like a lot of Family Guy, South Park is hit or miss, the mid-early Seasons of the Simpsons are incredible. Kevin Smith's jokes in his movies usually hit the right notes for me.


Isn't "slapstick" really hard to write? I guess to me slapstick is physical comedy. I agree that delivery and timing have a huge impact on humor, but those have less impact on the written word, especially when you have one of those readers like me who tends to skim and speed-read.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Humor is very subjective. I think I've given 1 or 2 "5" votes EVER to Humor and Satire stories (and I've read quite a few)

I like intellectual humor, but the stuff that gets me laughing the hardest is often absurdist. I LOVED Arrested Development (although I discovered it just as it was being cancelled). Hitchiker's Guide the book was fantastic, movie was alright.

I like a lot of Family Guy, South Park is hit or miss, the mid-early Seasons of the Simpsons are incredible. Kevin Smith's jokes in his movies usually hit the right notes for me.


Isn't "slapstick" really hard to write? I guess to me slapstick is physical comedy. I agree that delivery and timing have a huge impact on humor, but those have less impact on the written word, especially when you have one of those readers like me who tends to skim and speed-read.

You are right, James. Slap stick is hard to write because it doesn't translate well from the visual to the text media. For example...this is a short piece of a story with Jenny filling out an Unemployment Application...

"Jenny took her application to a seat at a table near the front of the office and opened the application. The guy next to her tugged at her sleeve and whispered, "Hey, doll. You got a pencil?"

She raised her head to look at this cretin. The classic holes in the knees of his "Can't Bust 'Um" bib overalls was a dead give away as to the intelligence of this moron. "Yes. I have a pencil, thank you," she said dismissively.

"No, doll. I mean can I have a pencil?"

"You actually came to fill out an application having nothing to write with? No pencil? No Pen? No charred, pointed stick? Nothing?" she asked."

You can't slap the idiot, because it won't translate, so you have to make a verble fool of him. That's the best I can do in most cases.

 

[Weird Harold]

I like intellectual humor, but the stuff that gets me laughing the hardest is often absurdist. ...

Isn't "slapstick" really hard to write? I guess to me slapstick is physical comedy. I agree that delivery and timing have a huge impact on humor, but those have less impact on the written word, especially when you have one of those readers like me who tends to skim and speed-read.

Absurdist Humor is the "slapstick" of the written word. Absurdist Humor would't work as well in Vaudeville and Vaudeville's kind of slap-stick humor doesn't work well in print.

It occurs to me that "Timing and Delivery" is the answer to more writing questions than just humor. You may not be able to calculate the timing of the written word with a stop-watch, but the best Vaudveillians didn't time their routines with a stop-watch either -- timing is about making the audience wait (or not wait) just exactly the right amount of time between the set-up and the punch-line.

The 'timing and delivery" of a story is about how many words and how much detail to invest in the setup and where to put the punchline. Speed-reading and skimmming can throw off the the "timing and delivery" of the written word, but not as often or as much as you might think.

Mystery writers have to do without the music and lighting that build suspense in a move mystery and adapt the delivery and timing to fit the written word -- they have to decide how much "time" to invest in the set-up and how to "deliver" the clues and final resolution -- basically the same issues as a humorist has to deal with but with different answers.

"Timing" is more than gauging the audience's readiness for a punchline, it's about the situation or context. An "insult humor" gag delivered onstage will quell a heckler and get a laugh from the rest of the audience; the same "gag" delivered to a beligerent drunk in a bar might get you knifed.

I think, as a writer, I can only gauge whether something is "funny" in the context of how the characters in the story react to it. I can't control the readers' mood or sense of humor, so I have to rely on those elements I can control -- the characters and the setting of the story.

If I write a likable character with a sense of fun about life, I'm more likely to get the readers to laugh along WITH the character.

If I write a character as an over-the-top stereotype I can usually get the reader to laugh AT the character.

But I realy have to decide before hand whether I want the character laughed WITH or laughed AT before I can write something funny involving that character. Only then can I work out the necessary timing and delivery to create the effect I want to create.

 

[rgraham666]

An "insult humor" gag delivered onstage will quell a heckler and get a laugh from the rest of the audience; the same "gag" delivered to a beligerent drunk in a bar might get you knifed.

Sigh. Memories.

 

[Matadore]

Garrison Kieller anyone?

Did I miss Mark Twain?

Then there are puns, shaggy dog stories, and limericks. Only Ogg mentioned songs, which is poetry in a special way.

 

[JamesSD]

"The classic holes in the knees of his "Can't Bust 'Um" bib overalls was a dead give away as to the intelligence of this moron."

I found this line quite funny. Subjectively, of course