Explaining My Excessive Methodology Around Humor in Writing
So I’ve had a few conversations with writers in the past where the concept of humor has come up in whatever piece they’re either struggling with or asking for feedback on. And I’d give my thoughts – but always with the disclaimer that the way I view humor in my own writing is undeniably excessive. It is, for some reason, one of the factors in my stories I am the most fixated on. Objectively more so than what needs to happen, but if I’m writing a long-form project it is inexplicably a load-bearing mechanic of mine.
It’s one of those things I would always love to talk about, but never have. A big part of that is because of the fear that anyone would read my unhinged methodology and assume that was something they also had to do to be a writer. It’s not.
I could probably source why the fine mechanics of humor are such a sticking point for specifically me. It plays into rhythm and the flow of language, as well as often the dynamics of characters – which are two of the other biggest priorities of mine in writing. Also I’ve had a good deal of development in improv, stand-up, and comedic theater as a whole.
As you read on, the way I think might potentially make sense to you and be helpful in your own work. But there’s a solid chance this is the most meaningful to me and me alone, and writing all this will only show the public at large the mundane equations bouncing around in my brain at any given moment.
Putting it simply, with everything I write I consider two forms of humor: what relates to the character, and what relates to the narrative independent of the character.
I consider character-based humor more complicated. To get started there, I decide three more points:
- What is this character’s sense of humor? As in, what types of things do they find funny?
- How do they express this sense of humor? Externally, through words and physical actions? Or perhaps internally, through musings and observations about the world around them?
- What is their relationship to this sense of humor? Do they acknowledge it’s a sense of humor to begin with? Do they try and pretend like their idea of comedy is something else entirely?
I was going to say that the above probably seems simple on its own. Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. There’s definitely more to it than that though. This one is long and kind of insane so blame @mushroommanchanterelle for the manifesto.
So you might notice that my approach immediately implies every character I write to have a sense of humor. This is because as a person, I genuinely believe that everyone has a sense of humor. I’m open to being proven wrong, but looking into the alternative online gave no answers that swayed me in the least.
For my purposes a “sense of humor” is very simply just finding things funny. You look at a thing – maybe it was meant to be funny, maybe it wasn’t – and you find it comical. You might smile or laugh. You might not. That’s it.
By my standards, that does not necessarily make a person funny. I find the inherent assumption of one meaning the other really weird. Someone can love a certain type of mixed drink and have no idea how to make it themselves. They can learn, just like how a person can learn and the mechanics of what makes a certain type of comedy comedic. But that’s not an inherent, like, thing – you know?
The other online sources talking about people supposedly “without” a sense of humor often bring up how that’s so often a sign of autism. One old blog post I found talked about how people with Asperger's show “no sense of humor” and followed it up by talking about their “a bizarre sense of humor”. This is a super telling wording. Autistic people don’t find anything funny, and they also only find weird things funny.
It truly paints the picture of that Person who laments people who don’t “get” their jokes, despite humor being vast and intangible. And also their jokes potentially being dogshit. But that’s a separate rant of mine, I guess.
Back on subject. Every character I write has their own sorts of things that they find funny. It could be a style of art, an aspect of life, or some quality in the people around them. Big things and little things. Conventional things and odd, more insignificant things. Establishing all this helps me find some immediate aspect of familiarity in everyone I write. Which, at this point, I’ll admit is something I need.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to write a two-dimensional villain completely detached from reality. I’ve seen those types of characters in stories that I think work spectacularly for what the artist was trying to do. I just personally struggle to keep interest in any character I don’t find at least slightly familiar, even if they’re wholly deplorable to me. And in many cases, an easy way to connect to a character is to find the things they think are funny.
In my mind, everyone has things that they think are funny. And depending on when they first came across those things, it’s likely to have shaped their life or perspective in some way. Maybe they took a certain job or hobby because it would allow them to be around the things they find amusing more often. Or when they go around in life, they notice certain things that others find insignificant, just because it’s the kind of thing that makes them chuckle. It could be a reference that still sticks in their mind at unexpected intervals, or a memory they’ve recounted so often it’s evolved into a one-person show. All of that is important to me, even if it never directly shows up on the page.
The third point, about a character’s relationship with what they find funny, circles back to my real-life perspective of humor in the people I’ve talked to in life. I’ve spoken to many people who have openly said that they don’t have a sense of humor, even after I’ve seen them find things funny, and laughed after they’ve said funny things. I consider it akin to a person saying they’re not well-read or they don’t know about movies, even though they definitely read books and watch films. It’s a product of, in my mind, other people saying something needlessly smug and shitty that goes on to stick for way longer than likely intended.
But it’s a thing that happens, so I also incorporate it into the characters I write. Imagine a character’s core humor comes from Zippy, a Bill Griffith comic strip from the 70s so obtuse that I quietly consider it some sleeper agent activation strategy.
This is, for some reason, the funniest goddamned thing your hypothetical protagonist has ever seen. So given a cultural context that this particular comic is niche enough to barely be considered a cult classic, does this character proudly display that this is the type of shit they love?
Or is it closer to the opposite? Maybe they realized at some point that they’ve never met a single other person who has even heard of Zippy, let alone someone who also finds it funny. So now they’re a 28 years old indie author with a modest Tumblr following, and a frame of reference fucked to a degree that has to at least partially be the fault of Zippy Annual Volume 4. Do they allow that to be known? Do they hide the fact that they still read the strips and, despite barely understanding the punchline, still grin about them a lot?
I can’t be the only one who finds all these dynamics interesting. What a person finds funny compared to what they want people to think they find funny. Are they good at expressing a kind of humor they might like, but not genuinely like? If they think they don’t find anything funny, do they actually think that? If so, why?
With all of this being said, I don’t think I could ever call any character I write funny. Fiction writing is often long-form and an independent effort, and in my mind those two aspects mean I don’t really get to be the one to decide who is or isn’t funny in the story. I could tell you who I think is funny, and I can tell you which character is considered the funny by the other characters they interact with. Those two things have definitive answers that are true regardless of whether or not someone else thinks all the humor in something I write sucks. Which they might!
Anyways I’m out of steam and a little sheepish about how much I had to say about all this. I wrote this up for my brother @mushroommanchanterelle because he love analyzing writing and I am always down for a chance to dissect my own process until I get embarrassed.
i am no longer using this 8log anymore. i will 8e refollowing people as i remem8er (so if you get a new follower who s33ms quite similar to me; hi, that's me!!). i hope i can 8e more comforta8le and more honest on my new 8log, and i hope anyone enjoys going through any of my old 8logs to s33 what's on it (yes, you can notif-spam me looking through art i re8logged on here, even if this 8log is years-long inactive ;3P)
this 8log ran from july 16th, 2018, to today, july 1st 2023.
I saw something on here earlier about "cozy" fiction, and whether or not all stories need conflict. I started writing a response, but it quickly turned too long for me to feel good attaching it to someone else's reblog.
Uh, but I think it's an interesting question. And my answer for a long time now has been - not really? I don't think stories need a conflict in the way most people define the word. And I want to talk about that, because I've been rewatching the short-form alt comedy show Joe Pera Talks With You, and I think it's a good example of a non-traditional narrative. It's the kind of storytelling that will either not work at all for a viewer, or work just so weirdly well.
Joe Pera Talks With You is about Joe Pera - who, in the world of the show, plays a middle school choir teacher in a small town in Michigan. Every episode has a theme, and it's usually a topic he's decided to talk to You about. You, meaning the viewer, as he spends a lot of the show breaking the fourth wall.
The topics are mundane, and they usually relate to the primary conflict of that episode. If the topic is grocery shopping, the conflict of that episode is whether or not Joe Pera will be able to get all his grocery for the week with his usual budget of $70 dollars, and perhaps have enough left over to get some ice cream.
Many episodes don't have a conflict at all. In one about reading the church announcements, Joe Pera gets distracted reading the announcements at his local Catholic church to excitedly gush about how he discovered the band The Who for the very first time and is absolutely obsessed over their song "Baba O'Riley". That's the whole episode.
This format doesn't work for some people. Episodes have a beginning, middle, and end. Things happen, but rarely does anything really happen. So why do I think it works as a story?
The first is Joe Pera himself. He is tall, pale, and blonde. He slouches sometimes, and moves like he's far older than he actually is. Part of his brand as a comedian is to keep his actual age ambiguous. He looks both like the ghost of a Victorian orphan possessing an adult man's body, and also an elderly man who took an age reversal potion that only kind of worked.
I regularly tell people that his physicality and delivery makes him the human embodiment of Ambien. He is subdued and usually either quiet or info-dumping about whatever subject he's into at the moment. He is sociable enough to hold a job and maintain relationships, but knows he's not a big Party Guy and doesn't really know how to talk to people. But he is kind and just unimaginably earnest in everything he does.
Pera is not made the butt of the joke for his outlook and disposition. Still, this is a guy living in what is otherwise pretty much the world as we know it, and often you can see people even just silently acknowledging him as an eccentric person.
Only one person straight-up doesn't like him. It's the wife of his friend, and it's established she doesn't like him because she considers him a bad influence on husband. Which I think is delightful, because the best friend in question is at least twenty years older than him, and Pera is the kind of person who believes "eggs Benedict is too decadent to eat anytime but Easter".
Midway into season one they introduce a love interest for Joe Pera in the form of Sarah, the new band teacher at the middle school. But the romance is slow and takes place in the sidelines of certain episodes. In TV shows they talk about "A Plots" and the supporting "B Plots". By that logic I think the Season 1 romance between Joe and Sarah is like a "E Plot". He will spend an entire episode talking about a new song he loves or the idea of fireworks, and offhandedly he will get a text from Sarah or share a few words with her.
Even once they're officially a couple, their romantic relationship is still not the priority to Pera or the narrative. Talking to the viewer in one episode, he describes Sarah as "A friend, colleague, and romantic partner". This could be me projecting as an aspec person, but that absolutely reads like him describing the order of how he views her. She's more present in storylines (though not as important as the main subject, which might be gardening or teaching someone the piano), but the story isn't screaming at your face that these two people are a couple.
Sarah also reveals herself to be eccentric, but partially in contrast to Joe. They're different people who still care about each other, and they make efforts to accommodate and make space for the other in their lives. And by not constantly spotlighting them as a couple, it somehow ended up depicting a far more impactful relationship between two neurodivergent people. The last time I watched the series I was single. Watching it now in a marriage to another neurodivergent person, I was pretty blown away by the parallels between Joe's relationship and my own.
This is a cozy show. It's immensely comforting. I have been absolutely exhausted by recent events in my personal life, and I found the perspective of Joe Pera to be one of the only things to get me to relax. The way he puts so much focus on the beauty of the mundane manages to pull my mind away from existential concepts and hypothetical situations. None of those are of much importance to Joe - at least, not directly. Instead the narrative is put on the basic and tangible. It's put on the people around you. It's put on the aspects of life so normalized they can blur into nothing.
And I think that's a worthy story to tell. It's also a story still difficult to properly pitch. But every episode is like eleven minutes long, and they're all free on Adult Swim. I highly encourage you to give episode 1 a shot.
one thign they dont warn you a8t in regards to getting into homestuck is the fucking 8URNING urge to reread it at any given point. ive reread it 2 may8e 3 times already. im actively resisting reading it again. 833n staving it off for months. even if its 8130 pages long. even if its longer than the 8i8le. im like, aware of that, the urge is aware of that, its not like a misguided ohhh i wanna read this specific part of homestuck, its I Want To Experience All Of This, In This Order.it is a craving to SPECIFICALLY spend months trudging through every act reading every funny/heartwrenching/8oring/>_>/agonizing pesterlog watching every gif playing the alternia8ound games Again for the Trillionth Time even if they make me simultaneously impatient to get on with the story And "oooo must read every possi8le chat option nyeow" its sitting down and going ok no8ody even look at me cascade just started leave me alone for 13 minutes str8 Okay? okay? I DONT KNOW I DONT GET IT 8ut i want to have homestuck happen again. To Me.
i cant respect tum8lr users who never had a mastodon account. you never saw the markiplier rp acc. you never saw it get 8anned and remade. the todd8ot account. the timeline going at fucking hypersp33d so fast no8ody could discourse for a good month or two there despite all 8eing tum8lr users 8ecause everyone was 8EAMING every joke thought into it at once so hard youd rt/like the wrong posts sometimes with how fast it was going. how catastrophic it was when discourse did actually happen. how everything was super close together compared to tum8lr 8ut still ultim8ly just a social media we8site so it was like microdosing on having p33rs. getting followed/interacted with 8y ppl with, like, "lewd" in their display names and their kink lists in their 8io no fucking matter how old you were. the mastodon influencers were all naruto 8randed and you just had to call them [username] [naruto char's name] EXCEPT for 8ort jo8a and nico fursuit. 500 character limit (sometimes). people trying desper8ly to vague people that, due to the n8ure of mastodon, was To Their Fucking Face no matter what. Gargron These Nuts (mastodon heritage post in my 8rain specifically). it hum8led you okay?
