/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20367447]

How do you become a consistently funny comedy writer without coming across as tryhard?

Is it a skill you can work on or do you have to be naturally witty and creative. I've been trying to write jokes for a while now but none of them come across as funny to me.

[Anonymous No.20367482]

>>20367447
Being funny in person is about delivery and is a different skill than making your writing funny.

[Anonymous No.20367485]

Timing, timing, timing.

[Anonymous No.20367503]

>>20367482
I can live with not being funny in person, I want my writing to be humorous but not overbearing or forced

>>20367485
Timing is less of an element in writing, no?

[Anonymous No.20367505]

>>20367503

No. Rhythm in writing is, how you say... necessary.

[Anonymous No.20367544]

Timing, but not so much how it is used in spoken comedy.
Spread the humour out, you don't need hilarity on every page. Some of the funniest shit I've read has been in fairly miserable books. You create all the emotional peaks and troughs in the story, use them

[Anonymous No.20367554]

show us an example of those not funny jokes
maybe they are funny just not for you since you already know the punchline.

[Anonymous No.20367564]

you can't force it, just write your story and it will either be funny or not, but you have to focus on your idea and try to tell it in the most entertaining way for you.
maybe you won't realize it is funny at all.
annie baker said when she is writing plays she is dead serious, and she is always surprised when people are laughing in the audience and tell her the play is hilarious
although timing is a big factor in a play so maybe it's not so relevant for you

[Anonymous No.20367572]

Silly anon, you are not funny and will never be funny because you are stuck in American poo poo culture where highest level of wit is to talk elaborately about the penis. American writing is only good for black man rhymes and effeminate lady-man philosophy and script of Hollywood film with many guns. This is why George Carlin is considered example of top American humour even though he forget punchline in every one of jokes. People laugh at big angry man who is angry and very loud at culture and they say this is stuff to have laugh until you make bowel excavation. If you want to make laugh I suggest you create elaborate disclosure of masturbation diary so we can go hahaha at how very sad is your living. It will make spectacular show of bowel excavations in the audience.

[Anonymous No.20367582]

>>20367572
now this is top tier comedy

[Anonymous No.20368267]

You don't, either you're funny or you're not

[Anonymous No.20369753]

>>20367447
Timing.

[Anonymous No.20369773]

>>20367485
>>20369753
How though, how to improve and know you're improving

[Anonymous No.20369787]

By writing something unintentionally funny like Call of the Crocodile. Pic related.

[Anonymous No.20370686]

>>20367447
slip on a banana peel.
works every time

[Anonymous No.20370689]

>>20369773
It's an innate trait

[Anonymous No.20371906]

>>20370689

Bullshit it is.

'Tis a skill, to be honed and practiced like any other.

These are some good bits of advice:

https://thewritepractice.com/four-commandments-to-writing-funny/

[Anonymous No.20371926]

>>20367447
If you were truly successful why the fuck would you care how people perceive you? shit why do you care how people perceive you now?

[Anonymous No.20371933]

>>20371926
I'm just trying to write funny shit without falling into *holds up spork* retardation

[Anonymous No.20371949]

>>20367447
I've been writing Humour books, poems, etc. for about four years now. It's a bit of a delicate art, in that you can easily come across as annoying if you over-egg things; boring if you make your jokes too subtle. A general rule of thumb, though: it's always best when writing humour to prefer nuance to explication.

[Anonymous No.20371956]

>>20371933
I see. I read OP as "how do I effortlessly write good comedy consistently? I dont want to be thought of as the natural comedian." I think george carlin is one of the funniest people to have ever lived and almost all of his material could be summed up into 2 categories. 1.) wordplay with reference to life events 2.) ghoulish over kill applied to handling annoying events or people. what kind of comedy writing do you want to do? funny novel? stand up routine? script?

[Anonymous No.20371958]

>>20371949
>A general rule of thumb, though: it's always best when writing humour to prefer nuance to explication.
until you establish that as a theme to your audience. after that the occasional explication can be funny through subversion. It largely comes down to first being able to ingratiate yourself to the audience.

[Anonymous No.20372105]

>>20371956
>I think george carlin is one of the funniest people to have ever lived
see, op, this is an example of a good joke

fucking americans, lmao

[Anonymous No.20372179]

>>20372105
What do you dislike about him, and who are some comedians you consider funny?

[Anonymous No.20372255]

>>20371949
The over-egg thing is a good point. Many authors I have read who "try" to be funny are very boring, cringeworthy and predictable. It's like that video on Youtube with millions of views called The Machine or something, basically some shirtless stand-up comedian telling a story which gets progressively more whacky, extreme and unbelievable but which he insists is true. It isn't funny all. It won't stand the test of time, and only retarded normie cattle will laugh it because "bro did you hear that story called The Machine? It's so wild!!".

True humour is the kind which communicates to you on a deep level, and is very often the product of an intelligent mind which has experienced much suffering. It transcends the mundane and superficial, usually avoids "taking sides" in political terms (partisan comedy often comes across as patronizing) and draws its humour from the deep well of human psychology. It breaks taboos not in the way a degenerate would do so (which is why so many taboo-breaking comedy writers / comedians aren't funny, because there is no soul there) but in the way a child would who has not learned what is appropriate and not.

Take some novels judged on this board to be very funny. A Confederacy of Dunces for example is very funny and is the product of a mind which would shortly after composition succumb to depression and paranoia and ultimately suicide. The novel is, on the face of it, very absurd in such a way that if the average novelist were to attempt to write the novel it would quickly become a slog consisting of you and the author elbowing each other and whispering out the side of your mouth "gee, this Ignatius guy sure is a cook alright!". It would be patronising and detached. Toole's genius is his ability to identify the humorous aspects of his past experiences (e.g., his academic background, his working in a factory and as a hot dog salesman), identifying what these jobs represented to him and to his society at the time, forming a cohesive narrative populated by interesting and distinct characters, reinforcing the narrative and characters with the aid of his academic knowledge (e.g., Fortuna), understanding the mainstream topics of his society at the time (e.g., civil rights activism) but refusing to become convinced that such issues are clear-cut, and then investing his own manic genius and also his more tender, authentic, childlike self into the work which makes it both hilarious, and touching and intimate.

I may be wrong though, because what I've read of Pynchon I didn't find funny despite the high praise here.

[Anonymous No.20372307]

How do I write like Vernon Chatman, XRA, Mindsploitation, and Shivering Truth are consistently hilarious and creative

[Anonymous No.20372328]

>>20371933
You have to have a certain scent for comedy. A nose for it. And you have to be white, although black is (everything). Wear it well, my son, and on your nose.
In short: I can’t tell the difference between crack and poor man’s coke, but there has to be a meth head somewhere in the madness or else the joke won’t toke.

[Anonymous No.20372337]

>>20367447
I'd say balance.
You can't have a story where all the characters are clever smug-asses who constantly pepper each other with snarky comments, neither can you turn everyone into idiots, because you have to have someone to contrast their behavior with.

[Anonymous No.20372383]

>>20372328
frittata

[Anonymous No.20372445]

>>20372383
Exactly. Pancake. Led the Loon.

[Anonymous No.20373072]

I got a bunch of followers on twitter by posting jokes. Posted unbelievably unfunny stuff on there for about a year before anything started clicking. The nice thing about comedy (and probably the thing that makes it a lower art) is that the feedback is pretty immediate. If people don't get it it's usually your fault. The clarity is worth getting down before the other stuff. As with any vaguely creative endeavour it helps to be deluded about the quality of your work in the beginning

[Anonymous No.20373113]

>>20373072
What if the shit I find funny makes no one else (who's normal) laugh, do I respec into wide appeal jokes or look for a niche

[Anonymous No.20373477]

>>20367544
>Some of the funniest shit I've read has been in fairly miserable books.
Comedy is about reversing expectations so that makes sense. There's a lot of discordance to it.

[Anonymous No.20373601]

>>20372179
There are no funny comedians

[Anonymous No.20375459]

>>20372255
>True humour is the kind which communicates to you on a deep level, and is very often the product of an intelligent mind which has experienced much suffering. It transcends the mundane and superficial, usually avoids "taking sides" in political terms (partisan comedy often comes across as patronizing) and draws its humour from the deep well of human psychology
kill yourself, poop is funny

[Anonymous No.20375600]

Contrasting emotions often results in humor, even where it is inappropriate, sometimes because it is inappropriate. For example, if a scene is meant to be dignified and reverential, injecting something crass and vulgar is often humorous even if it is also appalling. This is a very simple example but it works across a broad spectrum of emotional antipodes. But it's not usually enough to simply contrast things, an element of surprise usually gives it some punch. People like to be surprised, so a surprising contrast is more likely to be received as humorous.

This is humor at its most fundamental. You can apply this concept not only to scenes involving the way characters behave, but to your writing style. Describing something that is very serious in a laconic, silly way is a form of humor, so its opposite, being very serious and formal about the utterly ridiculous. The trick is knowing how much to contrast, and relying on the reader to pick up on implications rather than spelling it out for them. Going back to what I said about surprises, people also like to feel clever, and they feel much cleverer when they work out your meaning without having it spelled out for them.

[Anonymous No.20375602]

If you use the word tryhard it's already over for you

[Anonymous No.20375610]

>>20372255
I doubt you have ever been funny in your life, unless this entire post was an attempt at grand parody of an utterly humorless prig, in which case I'd remind you that brevity hasn't stopped being the soul of wit.

[Anonymous No.20376186]

>>20375602
I just know from experience how I hate when writing is not funny but I can tell it's trying its damnedest to be, it just comes off as sad and I want to avoid that

[Anonymous No.20376299]

>>20372255
they hated him because he spoke the truth