What is comedic writing? What makes a work funny? As a writer of Women’s Fiction/Humour, I have asked myself this many times. But humour is a slippery beast, not least because one person’s funny may be another’s eye-roll.
So – what can we say about writing humour? How can we define it?
When we read or watch something that makes us laugh it is safe to say it turns on the unexpected, on surprise. It’s the twist at the end of a sentence, the unexpected reaction in a sit-com. It can of course also be observational, poking fun at English traditions or famous figures, as in the Eighties comedy Spitting Image, which caricatured politicians and members of the Royal Family, blowing all their flaws and peccadillos out of proportion yet allowing us to recognise them as larger than life.
Turning to one of my favourite contemporary comedians, the late Victoria Wood, we see the element of surprise in her sketch about the bar room singer called Connie. Victoria Wood describes how Connie is singing in a smoky bar, her voice drifting through the smoke, conjuring images of forsaken romance and heartache and the viewer is drawn into this rather melancholy scene. Next, Wood’s piano playing changes from soft melody to hammering and she bashes out a rendition of ‘Oh I do like to be by the Seaside’, complete with raucous vocals in a pronounced northern dialect.
Humour can play with our expectations; it is often anarchic and deconstructive, turning those expectations on their head.
‘Marriage is an institution but I’m not ready for an institution.’ (Mae West)
‘I can resist everything except temptation.’ (Oscar Wilde)
So if we play with people’s assumptions it may not guarantee we are going to get laughs but it’s a great starting point: set up a premise (‘Marriage is an institution’) – then deconstruct it in the punchline (‘But I’m not ready for an institution.’)
‘I can resist everything.’ (premise) ‘except temptation’ (punchline).
Be preposterous, be daring, but – and here’s the thing – don’t try too hard. The best comedy always appears effortless. Let your natural feeling of amusement at the absurdities of life shine through. In fact, before sitting down to write comedy I recommend trying to cultivate a sense of amusement. Feel amused. Think of something – either in a book or in real life – that has amused you and use that feeling of amusement as the lens through which you create your work.
Look for the funny in everyday situations. I was in Marks and Spencer’s once and the paying machine malfunctioned, repeating, ‘unexpected item in bagging area.’ I chucked to myself, imagining the payee had left their baby on there by mistake.
Humour can and often is, absurd and can be predicated on the vagaries of language, on misunderstanding. Think of the Two Ronnies sketch, where Ronnie Corbett goes into a hardware shop and tries asking for four candles and the retail merchant, played by Ronnie Barker, produces two fork handles.
In Victoria Wood’s ‘Shoe Shop’ sketch, the shop assistant, played by Julie Walters, is barking mad and when Victoria Wood’s character askes if she can try on the shoes in the window, she replies, ‘You want to try shoes on in the window? It’s a shoe shop not a soft porn merchants.’
Last important point – we don’t have to be funny all the time. Making people smile is still funny, even if we are not being knicker-wettingly funny. But some darker moments can highlight the lighter ones and balance them out, and of course there is always black humour (or ‘gallows humour’) to help us out if we still want to keep the jokes coming.
In the later Adrian Mole series, Sue Townsend has a storyline where Adrian Mole has a cancer scare, similarly in Victoria Wood’s Dinner Ladies, the manager, Tony Martin is having chemotherapy for cancer. In the last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, set in the First World War, there’s a gradual shift in the comedic dynamic between Blackadder and Baldrick, so that instead of baiting him and gaining laughs at his expense, the knowledge they are both about to go over the top and get killed, bonds them and Blackadder is strikingly kinder towards him, making a graceful transition from the comedic to the tragic.
Writing comedy, like all writing, is always an experiment to see what works and what doesn’t. So here is my last tip: read it aloud. And preferably read it to friends, to gauge their reaction. Comedy, unlike tragedy which can be watched alone, is a largely social experience, so share it, enjoy it but first and foremost – write to amuse yourself; the rest will follow.
Contributed by Julia Wood
leicesterwritersclub.com 