If you want
to write or create anything funny, this just might be the most important blog
post you’ll read this year.
I have a
universal formula for creating humor, and I’m going to try to relate it to you
in a single post that you should be able to read in under five minutes, ten if you're a slow reader.
So pay
attention, and take notes if you have to. There WILL be a test, and I’m not
the one who will be grading it. That privilege belongs to your audience. You will either pass or fail. As Yoda says, “Do,
or do not. There is no try.” You’re going to want a laugh, or, at the very
least, a smile or a smirk.
Are you
ready? Here it is.
The Quest
When I was a
teenager, I used to sit with a spiral notebook and a pen in front of the TV
while I watched shows like Soap and Taxi. (Yes, I am that old. Shut up.) I took apart and analyzed these shows, trying
to figure out their formula. Why were they funny? I had to know.
In college,
I studied English Literature and Theater. One of my Theater professors taught a
class on Comedy, while another taught a class on clowning. Both turned out to
be cases of “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” The Comedy class
taught the classic formula, which is pain+distance=comedy.
Now give
that a little bit of thought. First take something painful and add distance to
it to see if that makes it funny. Then take everything you know that’s funny
and see if you can find the pain and the distance in it. You’ll discover, as I
did, that this formula DOESN’T WORK. It
only explains SOME comedy, but not all comedy. You can’t take something painful,
add some distance to it, and then expect it to be funny. Is the Lincoln
assassination funny just because it happened about 150 years ago? No. And what
about the other way around? Is there any pain and distance in “Why did the
chicken cross the road?” No.
So I knew I
had to keep looking.
The Discovery
About a year
and a half after I graduated from college and earned a teacher’s certificate, I
started to work as an editorial cartoonist, a job I held for seven years.
During that time, I came up with about a thousand cartoons. That’s when I
discovered my universal humor formula. I reduced it to just three S-words, and
for reasons that will soon be apparent, I called it the House of Funny formula.
Here it is,
everything you need to know about creating any kind of comedy:
Setup+Surprise+Sense=Laughter!
This formula
works for all kinds of comedy and humor. All kinds. I have yet to find any joke
or comedy or funny cartoon or comic strip that didn’t utilize this formula. A
humorist, cartoonist, comedian, or comedy writer might say, “Well, I don’t,”
but when pressed, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell you how he comes up with
funny stuff. Most funny people use it‑‑they just aren’t aware that they do.
So how does
this formula break down?
Setup
The Setup
part is easy. That’s whatever your funny thing is about. If you’re a comedian, your setup is probably either your
life or a character or characters you’ve created. Then again, maybe your comedy
is more like an editorial cartoonist, and your setup is the news. If you’re
writing a comedy or humorous fiction, your setup is the plot and your
characters. Your setup can be anything, really. That’s one of the beautiful
things about humor. It can be about anything.
Surprise!
Surprise,
and in a way Sense, are the parts that make this the House of Funny formula.
Like a House
of Fun, the House of Funny is made up
of mirrors and lenses that show you something in surprising ways.
To turn your
setup into something funny, just look at it through a House of Funny mirror or
lens.
In a House
of Fun, there’s a wavy mirror that makes you look like something you’re not. It
can stretch your neck to make you look like a giraffe, or it can shorten your
neck and legs to make you look like a penguin. In the House of Funny, there are
also microscope lenses that take something small and make it big, and there are
lenses that take something big and make it small. There’s a rosy lens that
makes things that shouldn’t be happy happy, and a blue lens that makes things
that shouldn’t be sad sad. There are all kinds of character lenses that simply
take things and show them to the audience through the filter that is the
character. There are regular mirrors that flip things from left to right and
concave mirrors that turn things on their head. There’s that strange mirror that
puts something in a surprising place or puts together two things that don’t go
together, like that mirror in Disney’s Haunted House that puts a ghost in the
seat next to you. And finally, there are those cool mirrors that show you
things exactly as they are, which is surprising since standard mirrors always
flip things from left to right. In some ways, this is the ultimate House of
Funny mirror. There’s nothing more impressive that showing people a truth that’s
always been there but that they’ve never really seen. This is the mirror of
wit.
Sense
Many of
these mirrors come with their own sense. For example, if I take something and
exaggerate it, it’s still the thing, so it makes sense. Or if I take something and
show it through a character lens, both the character and the thing are still
the same, so they make sense. Or if I’m showing you a similarity between
disparate things, like how you look in a House of Fun wavy mirror and a giraffe
or a penguin, you can see that makes sense with your own eyes. It’s mostly when
you use the mirror that puts together two things that don’t belong together or something
in a surprising place that sense is something you need to create. It doesn’t
have to be something that makes sense in the real world. It can, but it doesn’t
have to. It just has to make sense in some kind of context. For example, the
sense of a pun is a linguistic one. Puns make sense because this word or these
words are like that word or those words that make sense in another context. For
example, “Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns don’t work!” Cows have
bells and horns, and so do bicycles. By taking something that make sense in the
context of bicycle bells and horns and applying them to cowbells and cow horns,
you have a pun. Pain, however, generally doesn’t make sense to the person
feeling the pain, no matter the distance. Causing your audience pain is
something you want to avoid if you want your joke to make sense.
It’s all about the Audience
Each part of
the House of Funny formula only works
if it applies to the Audience.
The Setup
has to be known to the audience. Sometimes you need to explain it in advance,
and sometimes you don’t. For example, if I did a joke today in America about
Donald Trump, I can assume the audience already knows the setup: that Donald
Trump was on a show called The Apprentice,
that he likes to put his name on buildings and water and pretty much anything
else, and that he’s currently running for president. If I were doing the same
joke in, oh, France, I might have to explain the setup. I might also have to
explain it in America in ten years. But in America today, I don’t.
The Surprise
only works if it’s surprising to the audience. For example, if you’ve heard the
joke before, it won’t be surprising, so you won’t laugh.
And,
finally, the joke has to make sense to the audience. There has to be a moment
of “oh, I get it!” in the audience’s mind. If the audience doesn’t get it, it
won’t be funny. Duh!
So that’s
the House of Funny in a nutshell. Now all you have to do is take whatever setup
you’re using, look at it through a House of Funny mirror or lens, and find the
sense in it. As long as you do all these things within the context of your
intended audience, you’ll be able to pass the test.
Two other things to keep in mind:
Brevity
really is the soul of wit. In general, keep is as short as you can to keep
it funny. I can’t tell you how many times something that should have been funny
lost me because it took just enough time for me to figure out the punch line seconds
before it came. If your audience can figure out where you’re going before you
got there, you’ve lost that all important element of surprise.
Take it as far as it can go, all the way to
the edge of the cliff . . . and then push. If you’re using a microscope to make something
small big, make it as big as you possibly can. As I’ve told members of my
critique group, “Don’t do anything half-assed. It’s full-assed or nothing.”
If all of
this seems too overwhelming, I suggest you start by taking something you find
funny and breaking it down to its parts. What’s the Setup? What’s the Surprise?
What mirror or lens was used? What’s the sense? Be teenage me sitting in front
of a TV set with a notebook and a pen, and analyze everything that makes you
laugh. It’s a great place to start.
Good luck! I
hope this will help you bring more laughter into this world. We certainly need
it.
