Turning the Page Into a Canvas
“Beginning writers tend to fluff up humor with needless details, overwhelming the humor and rendering scenes and characters unrecognizable. Overloading a humor piece with information is like smothering the funny with a pillow filled with words.” —Mark Shatz and Bob Eckstein
Writer’s Digest
Why do we universally appreciate slapstick, sight gags, and cartoons? Because they are visual—the humor unfolds right before our eyes.
As writers, we have a unique challenge—to craft worlds, including humorous ones, using only words. We, a cartoonist and psychologist, present techniques from our fields to help writers make humor writing more visual, effectively showing readers the funny.
As we discuss ways to strengthen print humor, we remain mindful of E. B. White’s observation, “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process …” Our succinct dissection focuses on ways to spark readers’ imaginations while ensuring the survival of humor and the frog.
“Darth? Darth Vader?”
Bob Eckstein
Know Your Audience
The comedian Steven Wright pondered, “If you tell a joke in the forest but nobody laughs, was it a joke?” We say “no.” Humor that is not accessible to your audience is akin to that unheard joke in the forest. And that’s neither fun nor funny.
There are numerous theories about what makes people laugh, many of which revolve around psychological concepts like incongruity and superiority. The only common denominator is that funny is subjective and relative, so it’s essential to tailor humor to your specific audience.
Writing humor requires you to walk in your readers’ shoes, anticipating how they will perceive and construct the humor you are creating. Understanding the potential readership is critical to ensure your humor doesn’t fly over their heads. Or under.
The audience dictates every aspect of your humor writing, from word choices and phrasing to the gags themselves. For instance, writing a piece for The New Yorker requires a different brand of humor compared to MAD Magazine. Constantly tuning into your readers’ perspective can help you sidestep the dreaded “It’s just not right for us” rejection.
A comedic awareness of the readership will point you in the right direction, whether you are crafting a one-liner, a blog post, or a more extended piece. The following principles can help make your writing more vibrant, entertaining, and appealing.
Show, Don’t Tell: The Metaphorical Paintbrush
At first glance, writers and cartoonists have vastly different toolboxes and skill sets. But if you look closely, you will notice similar devices, such as exaggeration, contrast, and simplification. Before we delve into these techniques, it’s essential to cultivate the right mindset for writing humor that readers can easily visualize.
Think of humor writing as painting by numbers. You, the writer, sketch an outline, and the reader uses their imagination to fill in the details and bring out the humor. Your challenge is to provide enough information to guide readers in conceptualizing and understanding the intended humor.
Vague references can be difficult to imagine and leave too much to readers’ guesswork. But descriptive language—complete with sensory details, actions, reactions, and consequences—makes it easier for readers to understand what you’re getting at while creating a humorous scene in their minds.
Here’s an example. Instead of writing, “Julie was nervous before her speech,” you could try something more descriptive: “As she approached the podium, Julie’s off-white blouse darkened with pit stains, as she stumbled on the steps, quickly grabbing the ruby-red stage curtains to prevent her fall from becoming an Instagram sensation.”
“I’m 65, Mom—I’ll play my Blondie records as loud as I want!”
Bob Eckstein
And don’t forget about wordplay, similes, and metaphors. They can help you craft memorable, expressive characters with amusing traits, quirks, and physicality. For example, you might describe a character’s irritating laugh as “worse than a honking goose scraping its beak across a blackboard,” a vivid, funny image for readers.
Specific references can help prompt visualization. For instance, a melting SNICKERS bar triggers a more precise image than a generic “candy bar.” But again, ensure your reader will understand any concrete examples, emphasizing the importance of knowing your audience. How many readers would know that a Charleston Chew or Chick-O-Stick are candy bars and not vulgar slang terms from Urban Dictionary?
Simplification: Less Is Funnier
In many literary forms, embellishment enriches a piece. That’s not true for humor writing – humor can get lost with too much detail. It’s like looking for that joke in a forest—if you can’t find it, there’s no funny.
Smokey
Bob Eckstein
Just as a cartoonist simplifies a drawing to avoid detracting from the humor, you too must simplify your writing. Adding a bit of shading will give depth to an illustration, yet there’s usually no need to detail every feature. A good cartoon, or print piece, lets the reader connect the dots and experience that lightbulb eureka moment.
Beginning writers tend to fluff up humor with needless details, overwhelming the humor and rendering scenes and characters unrecognizable. Overloading a humor piece with information is like smothering the funny with a pillow filled with words.
There’s a thin line between lame and funny, and the difference often lies in whether a writer adheres to the universal comedic principle, “less is funnier.” By simplifying complex situations, characters, plots, and reactions, your work becomes more digestible and humorous. That’s why the final step of humor writing, aggressive editing, is key to creating hilarious material.
Exaggeration: Be the Funniest Humorist in History
Exaggeration is the Silly Putty of humor writing. You start with a realistic scenario, then bend and distort it for humorous effect. Exaggeration is one of the most straightforward and effective comedic tools, and it appears in all types of humor: Cartoonists magnify physical features, impressionists exaggerate speech mannerisms, and writers embellish language.
As a humor writer, don’t shy away from every chance to stretch the truth, whether by understatement or overstatement. In most circumstances, unmitigated exaggeration is viewed as lying. In humor, clever embellishment is rewarded with laughter.
“First of all, there was a bee in the car.”
Bob Eckstein
You can inject hyperbole into your characters, reactions, and situations to amplify the humor. For instance, you might write, “Julie is so indecisive that when she goes sailing, her boat goes in circles.” The description instantly paints a clear and humorous picture in your reader’s mind.
Effective humor is truth based, so it’s critical to strike a balance between realism and exaggeration. The following Jeff Altman gag works because it evokes a relatable, albeit somewhat plausible, image.
My dad’s pants kept creeping up on him. By 65, he was just a pair of pants and a head.
If there’s anything instinctual about humor writing, it’s avoiding too much distortion—simply being ludicrous or audacious won’t work. The relationship between exaggeration and realism in humor is like stretching a rubber band. A little stretching, even repeated stretching, is no problem. However, overstretching the band will cause it to break, as well as the humor and the reader’s trust.
Obscenities and graphic language are also forms of exaggeration. As humorists, we recognize the comedic power of “stepping over the line.” Yet, there’s a time and place for shock humor, and that’s not a @#$&ing exaggeration.
Contrast: Juxtaposing for Fun
Contrasting is the juxtaposition of elements not customarily coupled, a technique that cartoonists use to create humorous mismatches by placing significantly different elements side by side. Cartooning contrasts range from simple ones, such as someone wearing a tuxedo to a picnic, to elaborate juxtaposing, like Moses leaving the mountain top with the 10 Commandments on a ski lift.
Moses
Bob Eckstein
Juxtaposition begins with humor’s two most important words: What if? Let’s say you need humor for a piece about a protagonist going to traffic court. You begin by exploring possibilities without worrying about pushing the envelope. What if the character was a pet watcher and needed to bring three dogs to court? What if it was pigs? Keep asking yourself, “What if?” to create as many contrasts to characters and situations as possible.
Cartoonists have greater latitude in using absurd contrasts, like a judge yelling “Order, order!” because of three squealing pigs. Yet, as writers, we can still use juxtaposition to brainstorm new humor angles and create funny mismatches.
Contrasting also works with emotional tone. For instance, you might use a dramatic scene to set up a gag and then quickly switch to a lighthearted tone for the punchline. Richard Pryor often started a comedic piece with a tragic event, like a heart attack or self-immolation, then switched gears to an absurdist tone to make the humor potent and memorable.
Incongruity, satire, and irony are just contrasting mismatches between expectations and what happens. You create surprising, humorous twists by comparing or contrasting different ideas, things, or situations.
“I’m afraid there will be more cuts.”
Bob Eckstein
Aggressive Editing: The Samurai Humorist
Crafting humor requires extensive rewriting. Lots. As Carolyn Janice Cherry astutely noted, “It is perfectly OK to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”
When you’re writing humor, your first draft can be as long as you like. There is no censorship during brainstorming, just a playful, uninhibited creation of ideas.
But in the second draft, eliminate every nonessential phrase and cut out every superfluous word by the final draft. Just as no machine has needless parts, no good humor piece should have unnecessary elements. Your mantra should be: “Make every word work.”
During editing, also make sure not to reveal keywords in the setup and always save the funniest idea or word for the end. Precision, brevity, and holding the surprise will make your humor more enjoyable.
Aggressive editing is time-consuming and, at times, frustrating—you will discard most of the items you begin with. But your material will be considerably funnier if you embrace being a samurai editor and ruthlessly cut material that doesn’t resonate with the readers, advance the story, or stay true to character voices.
Conclusion
Humor is at its funniest when it’s visual, and writers can craft more humorous material by employing the same techniques used by cartoonists, such as vivid descriptions, symbolic language, and imagery. By thinking and writing visually, you can show the funny to readers.
“He was a great writer.”
Bob Eckstein
Are you one of those people who have thought, “I’d like to write a book someday, but I don’t know where to start”? If yes, then this is the course for you. All you need is to open yourself up and allow your ideas to flow, plus a writing implement to capture those ideas. Creative Writing 101 combines teaching the key elements of storytelling with developing the protagonist. Once you understand who this character is and how to make sure you’ve included the key story elements, you are well on your way to writing that book you have been squelching.
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