I Know Funny

After I sold my first book and people found out it was humorous, I got a lot of "you should do a workshop on writing humor." Okay, I replied, and you'll be very happy about it because it will last about two minutes then we'll all go for lunch and beer. I'd get this strange look and the inevitable "why." Because here's the workshop, I would reply: "Are you funny? No........then you can't write humor."

Workshop over.

Humor isn't something you can create in your mind like suspense or love or terror. It's organic and has to spring out of the story and the characters or it simply sounds forced and isn't funny. I tend to have this cynical view of the world and a sarcastic way of putting things that other people find funny. That's the way I write. It's improv, really. When I'm writing dialogue, I am playing every character - saying what I would say if I were them and there were no limitations like real life. But the only reason I can do this in writing is because I do it in real life and I have always been that way.

I remember a story my mom told me about a time when I was in elementary school and I'd brought home a report card with my usual straight A's. My mom fused over it, of course, and when my dad got home from work, I showed it to him. He smiled and puffed his chest a bit and said "I think Jana gets her brains from me." To which I immediately replied, "Probably so, mom still has hers." See......already a smart alec and not even in middle school yet.

Let's face it, there are two types of people in this world:

1. The kind that walks away from a situation and slaps themselves on the head a minute later because they just thought of something brilliant they should have said.

2. (Me) The kind that walks away from a situation and slaps themselves on the head because they probably shouldn't have said that.

The hardest thing about writing humor is that there's no where to go get it if you're out. There's no movie you can watch, wine you can drink or music you can put on to get you in the "funny" mode. That's where humor writers have to make an incredible leap of faith. We have to believe that every time we sit down at the computer, that something funny with come out of our minds, even if we have no prior knowledge of a single humorous thing before writing. And the really strange part is - it works.

Back a few years ago, I used to get people who would ask "I need a funny line here - give me a funny line." Uh, no?????? I think now everyone has figured out (by me explaining it a thousand times) that it just doesn't work that way. Or worst case scenario, they think I'm a real bitch and am sitting on all the good lines, saving them for myself. It's not standup, folks. I promise, I don't have a Jerry Seinfield list of one-liners in my wallet just waiting for my next book.

The second hardest thing about humor is that it's subjective. Let's face it, we've all met people with the personality of a rock and other people with a chip on their shoulder the size of the rock. They don't think anything is funny and they never will. I'm a software instructor, and I always go into a class thinking I will try to entertain them and have some fun while we learn. Sometimes, I have a good group and I can. Sometimes, I'm convinced Chris Rock couldn't get a smile out of them and I simply give up and teach dry technology for days on end.

I'm also a big fan of funny T-shirts, mostly because they offend those chip on the shoulder people. I have two current favorites. The first reads "I'll try to be nicer if you try to be smarter." God, I'd pay money to wear that one to some of my classes! The next one reads "Jesus loves you, but I'm his favorite." You don't even want to see the glares I get on that one. Of course, I usually wear it to I-Hop on Sunday morning, just to get the full effect, but that's just how I am. Mind you, I was raised and am still Southern Baptist, so this is not an anti-religious thing at all. I just saw it and thought it was darned funny.

So my ultimate point of all this jabbering is to say that as writers you always hear one of the cardinal rules "write what you know." Now this doesn't mean I have to write about accountants or software trainers, although I certainly know those things. I know beer and brownies, too, but that in itself wouldn't carry an entire book - maybe an anthology......hmmmmmm. But I digress. Writing what you know means writing what's a part of you. Your emotions - funny, sad, happy, sexual, frightened........the list goes on and on.

Humor writers write funny because we don't have any other choice. It's what we know.