How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

by Scott Dikkers

an ill-equipped relatable character who faces impossible odds yet doesn’t give up.

Funny-Writing Tip #1: Concept Is King

The “concept” is the simple, funny idea that you’re writing about. You need to be able to express your concept in a single line or sentence, with as few words as possible.

Funny-Writing Tip #2: Quantity Is the Key to Quality

By writing more, you produce a larger pool of raw material to draw quality ideas from.

A humor writer must be a Clown and an Editor.

The Clown is equivalent to what psychologists used to think of as the right side of the brain: creative, subjective, outside the box, and nonjudgmental. To write humor well, you need to be a Clown. You need to write down every idea you have, no matter how stupid you think it is.

The Editor is the equivalent of the left side of the brain: logical, objective, organized, and analytical. Most writers are too much of an Editor. Instead of trusting their instincts, they question every choice, and judge every idea before it has a chance to shine. More often than not, they cut every line before they even write it. Nothing is ever perfect enough for the Editor.

To write humor well, you need to be an Editor, but not too much of one. You need to have a reliable system for judging your ideas to make sure

they’re not drivel, to workshop and finesse the raw material your Clown comes up with, then craft it into superb humor. But if you’re too much of an Editor, you’ll rarely produce any work. Just like we need to balance both sides of our brain to function in the world, humor writers need to balance both sides of their comedy ...

This exercise comes from Dorothea Brande’s schoolmarmish Becoming a Writer. Julia Cameron named it in her more user-friendly The Artist’s Way. Many writers have discovered on their own the astounding results that come from forcing themselves to write for a solid chunk of time every day, without judgment.

Since your focus is humor writing, one tweak I suggest to this exercise is to gently guide your mind to think amusing, funny thoughts while you write. (But it’s worth repeating that you still must write without judgment—even if you think what you’re writing is terribly unfunny. You must keep writing!)

The second exercise: Always keep a little notebook with you. Write down every idea you have, especially ones you find amusing. If you have a thought or make an observation at any point in your day that strikes you as funny, you must write it down.

If you have an idea that’s not amusing—maybe just an opinion about the world or humanity—write that down, too. These little observations are precious raw material for a comedy writer. They’re the crude oil of the humor-writing business. Failing to save them in your notebook is like letting oil from your well spill out all over the sand, costing you thousands—maybe millions—in lost revenue.

Once a week, flip through your notebook and save any ideas you still find amusing. This employs the skills of your Editor.

Once you have an idea that you like, be it for something big or small, it’s time to put on your Clown hat again and write a first draft.

Then put your Editor hat on and assess what

you’ve written.

The more you can forget the work of your Clown from days or weeks past, the better your Editor will be at judging it objectively.

Funny-Writing Tip #3: Make It Accessible

Funny-Writing Tip #4: Make It Short

Sometimes cutting a word or two can make a line twice as funny, or turn an unfunny line into a funny one.

Humor is the magic ingredient that makes a dull life fascinating, a sad life happy, and an empty life fulfilling. It’s a ray of sunshine in a cold and unforgiving universe—the light at the end of the tunnel of the human condition. Those lucky few who can find humor in a situation—any situation—will not only endure it, but enjoy it, and inspire others to do the same.

You ought to be commended for wanting to make the world a better place by working to improve your ability to make people laugh.

There are many things that are helpful in humor, like relatability, truth, timing, tragedy, or the breaking of taboos. But humor can still exist without these things. There’s only one thing absolutely required for humor to exist, and that

is surprise.

Good writing is creative. Good writers dream up new ways to say things.

Professionals come up with their own jokes, explore fresh ways of phrasing ideas.

They’re always searching for a new approach or a new angle that’s never been written before.

Only fresh ideas, unique perspectives or original thoughts can surprise.

concealing the writer and the writer’s true intent—and doing so believably—is one of the secrets to good humor writing.

Satire has something to say—something important—that’s hidden in the literal text. In the other categories, humor itself is the end goal.

We call this hidden message Subtext. In any sophisticated writing, there’s more there than just the literal words on the page. There’s something else that those words aren’t saying, but rest assured it’s being communicated clearly to any reasonably intelligent reader. What’s being communicated is the Subtext.

Funny-Writing Tip #7: Have Something to Say

To be a writer, the first thing you need is something to say—something you feel strongly about. Without that, why are you writing?

All good jokes have Subtext, as do all good comedy articles, short stories and novels. But in the less-sophisticated humor categories, the Subtext has nothing to say. It may reveal that a word has two meanings, reveal a character trait, or tell

a backstory, but there’s no meaningful message. What makes the Subtext of Satire special is the quality of its message.

Subtext in Satire is a value judgment or opinion held by the writer. In the best satirical writing, the Subtext is universal, something that just about anyone can relate to. In the very best writing, it points out something wrong with the world, a fatal flaw or weakness in humanity or the universe. It can even be a sad fact, something that cannot be chang...

Subtext isn’t the same as a theme or moral. The theme of a piece of writing is the general subject being explored, and it often can’t be reduced to a single statement. Subtext, on the other hand, can be. Theme is often overtly articulated in the writing. In certain screenplay-writing circles, for example, writers are told to be sure a secondary character verbally states the movie’s theme on a certain page in every script. Morals are similar. A parable or other type of lesson ends with “the moral of the story,” which is advice the writer would like readers to learn from the story and live by. Subtext is not advice. It’s a value judgment. Unlike with themes or morals, you never state the Subtext. If you do, your humor writing will fall apart. It’s called Subtext because it’s concealed under the text and never revealed except inside the reader’s mind. It’s like a subway. It travels underground.

Science-fiction Subtext is easy to spot. It’s typically a problem in our time and place played out in another time and place. In Satire, Subtext is more hidden, but it serves the same purpose.

You don’t want to leave humor writing too open to interpretation. You don’t want to shoot your message with a shotgun, spraying out ideas that lead to a variety of broad interpretations—this is the realm of fine art and other non-comedic modes of expression. In comedy, you want to shoot with a laser rifle, to avoid any possible misinterpretation of your message. If people misinterpret your message, they may not get your joke.

Subtext is the most important part of your writing. Jokes by themselves without much Subtext are a fun yet somewhat empty experience. As

a writer, you have one mission: to communicate ideas to readers. Your Subtext is where those ideas are. They’re not in your literal text. Your literal text is merely the delivery medium—a UPS truck. What you want your readers to get is the precious cargo inside—the...

It can be awkward to try to articulate Subtext because we normally don’t say it out loud—we only think it. But to write successful humor, you need to be aware of your Subtext. You also need to be in total control of it. You need to know what Subtext you intend to communicate, and you need to orchestrate it...

Subtext can usually be stated in a simple sentence: subject, verb, object. And it must be irreducible. It can have no hidden meaning in itself. If your Subtext has a hidden meaning, or deeper Subtext, or is itself trying to be funny or tell a joke, then it’s not your true Subtext. The Subtext of any piece of humor writing is a simple statement of opinion. Furthermore, it must be coherent, something people will understand.

You can identify Subtext by looking closely at a single funny line and asking yourself, “what is this line really saying?” What you’ll find is that once the joke is deconstructed, it’s communicating a strong value judgment or opinion held by the writer, an observation about life.

Don’t forget: Tomorrow is Bring Your Daughter To Tears Day. Subtext: The idea of Take Your Daughter to Work Day is sad, that in our society girls (not boys) need this extra exposure to the workplace. Couldn’t get tickets to the Daytona 500, so I just stayed home and set a box of Tide on fire. Subtext: NASCAR is a pathetic, too-heavily sponsored sport, and it’s a twisted fact that many people watch if for the accidents. Fun Fact: If you stretched out your intestines they would reach all the way to the cabin in the woods you were murdered in.

Subtext: It’s a little unsettling when people point out how long our intestines are. Notice how in each of these jokes, the Subtext points out a problem with humanity or society.

The best satirical Subtext does this. That is, in fact, t...