Jack Rawlins’ “How to Write Humor”

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For print humor, you can use some of the same techniques used to write humor for TV, radio, stage, or stand-up acts.

Sketches are usually short and built on characters and a situation or premise, rather than story. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also have a story.  Everything is a story of some kind.  Even a short joke is a story with a beginning, middle and end.

Comedy writer Gene Perret discusses three forms of the sketch format: The episodic; the progressive; and the bit. In the episodic, everything our hero tries, turns to crap, breaks, or just doesn’t work.  The piece is a series of episodes. For example the hackneyed camping trip where the tent fell down, a bear tore the place apart, a skunk stunk up the site, the mosquitoes were ferocious, a snake got in the sleeping bag, the poison ivy, the bugs  etc… You could juggle each episode around and it wouldn’t make any difference.

All of these episodes (even though they’ve been done and re-done) can be funny. They can also be mixed up. No order is needed for their chaos. It can still work.

Personally, I like stories. An episodic sketch can be structured to tell a story. Lack of story is a weakness I see in a lot of attempted humor that falls flat.

When you string together a bunch of episodes, you’re already telling mini stories. So why not think story? That way you’ll have a beginning, middle and end.

In a progressive sketch, there’s a natural flow from beginning to end. It must be presented in a logical order. Each part is dependent on what has already happened before you can tell what happens next. To me, this is story.

The bit sketch format doesn’t require a story or plot. It just needs a premise or idea that will sustain the humor.  Usually, it’s just one idea. The old Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First,” is a classic bit.

Just remember, a sketch needs a core funny idea to develop the humor. Following is an example of a short bit that might work on stage, radio or in print.

A Minicourse in Intercourse

By Jack Rawlins

”Son, I think it’s time we had a little talk about the birds and bees.”

“Please Dad, I don’t want to talk about them.”

“Why not?  You’re 26 and single. You should know what they can teach.”

“Dad, I’m not interested in flying or making honey. And I already have an MBA in marketing communications.”

“But don’t you want to learn about intercourse?”

“Dad, I’m a communications specialist. I have intercourse every day. Sometimes I do it with a whole group of people. Sometimes just one on one. But my real forte is public relations.”

“Every day?  With whole groups? Or one at a time? And you do it in public?”

“Exactly. That little four letter verb is my whole life.”

“You mean you’ve devoted all your energies to…ah… to… ah… to… ah?”

“Yes! I’m obsessed with T…A…L…K….the exchange of thoughts and feelings through the spoken and written word. I’m obsessed with intercourse. That’s how I make my living. That’s how I get my jollies.”

“Hmmmm….Well, Son, I’m glad we had this little talk.”

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© Copyright 2007 Smiling Jack (UN: jackrawlins at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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The nice thing about parody is that it gives you a frame of reference, structure, and a prompt that can get your creative juices flowing.

One dictionary definition of parody says it, “imitates the characteristic style of an author or work for comic effect or ridicule.”

Well, I think you can parody with no intent to ridicule. In fact it can be a form of homage to the original. (See example below.)

Gene Parret, author of Damn that’s Funny, Writing Humor You Can Sell! says “A major feature of parody is that the readers recognize the connections and references.” If they don’t you’ll earn an “I don’t get it” response. And yet, some familiar works have been parodied so often new attempts come over as hack material.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Hey, if you have a brilliant idea for another parody of Dickens’s Christmas Carol, Clem Moore’s, The Night before Christmas, or Joyce Kilmer’s, Trees, go for it– but it had better be damn good.

If topical humor is your forte, there are plenty of great sources for material you can parody: ads, TV shows, news stories, movies, and songs. But why limit yourself? You can draw on great and not so great works of literature–as long as they’re familiar to your audience. Don’t try to parody Shakespeare with the wrong crowd.

Another fertile source is fairy tales. Again, most of them have been parodied countless times, but if your approach is truly unique and funny they will work.

The following piece is an example of a parody with gentle humor and satire that imitates the original with no intent to ridicule it in any way.

Is There an Easter Bunny?

By Jack Rawlins

We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the email below, expressing at the same time our gratification that its faithful author is numbered among our readers:

Dear Mr. Rawlins:

I am 8 years old. Some of my friends say there is no Easter Bunny.
Papa says, “If you see it in Mr. Rawlins’ column, it is so.”

Please tell me the truth: Is there an Easter Bunny?

Virginia O’Hare

Virginia, your little friends are full of bunny poop. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. Yet, they are surrounded by un-reality they blindly accept as real.

Yes, Virginia, there is an Easter Bunny. He exists as certainly as greed, competition and economic opportunity. You know that they abound and give to life all the material stuff you “just gotta have,” that give to your life its highest beauty and joy and because all the other kids have it.

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Easter Bunny. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias, or Sponge Bob Square Pants . There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, and no romance to make tolerable this existence.

Your little friends could park their tiny heinies in the cold damp grass all night to catch the Easter Bunny, but even if they don’t see him, what would that prove? Nobody sees the Easter Bunny. Can you see the music on your iPod? Of course not. But whenever you want it, it’s there to vibrate your little ear drums on their journey to adolescent deafness.

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and un-seeable in the world: The Internet, cell phones, microwaves, remote controls, Google. Ask your little friends if they are real or if they’ve ever seen any of those mystical things that make them work. And ask them what they know about algorithms, too.

Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, greed and economic incentives can see the big picture. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in this entire world there is nothing else more real and abiding.

No Easter Bunny! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, even long beyond Y4K, he will continue to make glad the hearts of children, shop keepers, fuzzy- toy manufacturers, laying hens, candy makers and Hallmark.

Editor’s Note : Parody is fun and easy. Genius is not. Please Google and enjoy the genesis [sic] of the above: “Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus,” by Francis Pharcellus Church.
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© Copyright 2007 Smiling Jack (UN: jackrawlins at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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In his book, Professors are from Mars® Students are from Snickers®, author Ronald A. Berk says, “Analyze why your role model(s) make you hysterical. Is it the jokes themselves, the way they are told, or a combination of both.”

Role models are good sources to help guide your humor writing–guide, not copy. You still want to develop your own voice, but aping the experts can help you know what works on you and give you a feel for what will work for others.

The combination of the jokes and the way they’re told or written is probably what makes you laugh.  Still, good humor doesn’t always have to be laughing-out-loud funny.

I like gentle humor and satire that earns a smile, even if I don’t role on the floor laughing.

Sometimes when you’re content to write for smiles, and  you’re doing it well, the big jokes will come and surprise both you and your readers. Hilarious and hysterical are good targets, yet they’re hard to hit when you write uptight.  Relax and let it flow. Hear the voice of your role model(s). Would he/she/they think your material is funny?

Following is an example that earns a smile from some and a guffaw from others.

The Zambia Hippo Census of 2009

By Jack Rawlins

It was New Year’s Eve 2009, the day of the annual hippopotamus census in Zambia. I was with my sometimes unfaithful guide, Gumbo, on the west shore of the Zambezi River just below Victoria Falls. As lousy luck would have it, we startled a group of hippopotamus poachers. When we turned to flee, one of them got off a lucky shot and nailed me in the keister with a poison arrow. I thought, “Oh, crap. This is a hell of a way to usher in the new year.”

Now, I’ve had more than my entitlement of dizzy spells in the pubs of Victoria, but the shot in my bum caused immediate vertigo. I spun, buckled to my knees and pled with Gumbo to suck out the poison before it was too late.

His calloused response? “No way, bro.” he said, “I ain’t about to put my lips on that big white ass of yours!” He was gracious enough, though, to yank out the arrow, cauterize the wound with a cigarette lighter and then apply a pain-easing, cooling, poison-sucking poultice mud pack.

In retrospect, Gumbo’s alternative non-traditional treatment probably saved both our lives.
Our pursuers were not in the mood for pursuit, and as we crouched in the dark jungle growth, they returned to the gleeful butchering of the hippo. We watched from our hiding place until, after a lunch break, they packed all they could carry and headed downriver to pedal their illegal haul.

Fortunately, none of them had ever been boy scouts. They were careless campers. They left behind a smoldering fire and a simmering pot of hippo stew.
I was still rocky on my feet and my butt smarted, but I was hungry and the stew smelled delicious. I know that hippo meat is tough and requires long, slow cooking. A recipe favorite among natives advises, “Add one rock the size of a coconut with the hippo meat and cook slowly until you can stick a knife in the rock.”

Apocryphal perhaps, but nevertheless, we found the stew delicious. As we finished our meal, I mused on the role of bull hippos. They can have as many as fifty cows in their harem. That may be why they don’t rush around wasting a lot of energy, but will fight to death to protect what they have.

When the poaching party was long out of earshot, my sometimes unfaithful guide celled our base camp and ordered a chopper. As we waited and finished our meal he said, “Well, Great White Counter, how did you like the stew?”

I burped a polite little burpette and said, “It tastes just like chicken, Gumbo.”

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Whether it’s a skit, a joke, an essay, an article, or a book–you need a story. It’s a lot easier to find the humor when you have the foundation of a good story, even if it’s only about three guys walking into a bar.

In Immediate Fiction, author Jerry Clever says, “In its purist form story is just three elements: conflict, action, resolution.”  Your character is faced with a problem. Your reader wants to know how your character deals with it. So, your character takes action to solve the problem. This leads to a resolution –good or bad—which may, or may not please your reader, but it satisfies his need to know how the problem was handled and resolved.

Here’s an example: Manny, Moe and Jack walk into a bar. Manny accidentally bumps into a thug and knocks the guy’s drink out of his hand. The thug does not graciously accept Manny’s apology. He wants to stomp his ass. Obviously, Manny has a problem. How will he handle it?  He takes action by calling for   help from his two buddies. Unfortunately, Moe is already in the men’s room and Jack is out of earshot at the far end of the bar negotiating a pricing issue with a lady seeking temporary employment.

How will Manny overcome his problem with this big guy? Ask him to step outside and settle it like a man? No way. Prayer? Too late to think up a good one. Run? It’s too crowded to make a break. Lie? That’s it. Lie!

“Please don’t hit me,” he tells the thug. “I’m pregnant.” “You can’t be,” says the thug, “You’re a guy.” “I know, I know,” says Manny.” It’s a miracle –an amazing miracle! Guys can’t have babies. But don’t tell that to my buddies, Moe and Jack. They’re so excited about it! I don’t have the heart to tell them. ”

Manny is solving his problem buy lying and stalling. Meanwhile, contact negotiations have broken off with the bimbo and Jack is coming to rejoin Manny.  Jack is bigger than the thug. Moe has made room for more beer and is also coming to rejoin Manny.  Moe, too, is bigger than the thug.

As his friends approach, Manny tells the thug, “Please don’t say anything to upset them. They just got out of jail for assault and battery and they’re a little tense.” And then Manny hears those words all wimps love to hear when they escape getting stomped, “Look, I don’t want any trouble,” growls the thug. “Just be careful about bumping into people, see? And congratulations.  I’m sure you’ll make a good mother.”

So we have a resolution.  We also have the nucleus of what could be polished, fleshed out and developed in to a piece of humor that started with a story.

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It’s a lot easier to write humor when you have a target that’s fun to attack because it can     be attacked, should be attacked, or just because you feel like it.

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines satire as:

1.  a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn

2 trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

Well that gives you a lot to work with, doesn’t it?

For an excellent  discussion of how to write satire, and get it published, visit Not Theo Nion. The last time I Googled “satire” (12-28-09),  Not Theo Nion was at the top of the  page. I believe it deserves its position.

Following is a one of my efforts at gentle satire. It will tick some folks off, but I know  from positive reviews that it has made a lot of others laugh.

It’s Christmas Brag-Letter Time

By  Jack Rawlins

Well by golly, it’s that Season again and time to spam everyone with pure unadulterated bullshit about what a good year it has been for our bright, talented, lovely family…a family the good Lord apparently endowed with everything —except modesty.

However, as luck would have it, my wife Maud’s book club and its members, who are dedicated to intellectual snobbery, just finished discussing Pinocchio. (They don’t actually read books; they just talk about them.) They thought it was an historical novel, and Maud warned: “It could happen to you, Claude. Why risk an extensive and expensive nose job? When you write this year’s letter, just stick with the facts.”

So, here are the facts:

We felt we had a good year coming way back in January when Aunt Tilley (a.k.a. Wiggles) announced that she had finally conquered her tormenting rectal itch. While happy for her relief, we will miss her graceful movements.

Next, Aunt Bessie reported she achieved her first multiple orgasm between 10:00 p.m. Feb. 21 and 3:00 a.m. Feb. 22 while watching the Do It Yourself channel. There is some question, though, whether she should be congratulated or castigated. She admitted she wore out two sets of AAA batteries in the process. That does not sit well with those of us who are trying to conserve energy.

In early March, Uncle Stud Muffin (we had been warning him for years) finally did go blind from playing with himself. He says at eighty-seven it isn’t much of a sacrifice, and he can’t see what Portnoy’s complaint was all about. It’s a little embarrassing for the rest of us, though. Now he can’t see if anyone is watching and often picks awkward moments.

In April our Great Dane, Brutus, developed a gender identity crisis. When he lifted his leg to pee he couldn’t keep his balance. To compensate, he began to squat. We thought it was funny at first, but then he developed a false pregnancy and started having morning sickness.

We couldn’t cope with that, so we sent him to one of those new doggie shrinks we’d been reading about. The shrink didn’t fix the squat, but Brutus came back much smaller. And that’s a good thing. Now he eats and poops a lot less and it’s easier to coach him on his three-point stance.

Remember Nephew Michael who was studying for the priesthood? Well, in May he dropped out and went back to work in the produce department at the A&P. Said he aced Latin, but flunked bingo. It’s really in everyone’s best interest, though. We fear he might have used the confessional as a lead generator to target sinners who practiced his favorites.

Our daughter Gretchen’s sixteenth birthday party in June was literally a smashing success. Actually the newspaper’s account of SWAT’s involvement was rather exaggerated. And the extensive damage cited was mostly from the team’s tear gas canisters.

The kids thought the teargas was just a batch of adulterated grass that burned their eyes. They coughed, gagged, and toughed it out until the SWAT guys laughed themselves hysterical and went away.

And speaking of parties …I thought the neighbors were rather narrow-minded in their reaction to our little Fourth of July get-together.

Our attitude has always been that there is a certain amount of risk in any exuberant manifestation of patriotism when sixty or seventy fun-lovers are given unlimited access to booze.

The funny thing is, despite all their complaining, we were the ones who suffered the greatest financial loss. When our barn burned down, the heat blistered the paint on Maud’s obnoxious Hummer and melted all four tires off my tasteful little Toyota. The neighbors’ token damage, on the other hand, was limited to a few rather inexpensive tool sheds, two garages, a sun porch, and a few picture windows that happened be facing the ball field and rocket launching pad.

In August we sent Gretchen to an outreach camp in the Adirondacks to improve her self esteem. Meanwhile, we vacationed at Sunshine Park, a nudists’ retreat in Southern California.

Unfortunately, while she was building her self esteem, we were lowering ours. The Park, rather than being “A liberating experience at a ‘couples only’ facility,” as the ads promised”— was humiliating! Contrary to urban myth, all men are not created equal.

And although we should not have been surprised, we soon learned that when you drop your drawers, body hair becomes very important. As we gathered about the evening camp fires, instead of sing-a-longs and ghost stories there was a spirited dialogue about the pros, cons, cost and techniques of hair removal via laser, electrolysis, depilatories, wax jobs, motorized clippers, and old-fashioned tweezers. Obviously, without a little help, bare ass is just a figure of speech.

The big news for September was Cousin Leroy’s acquittal in the paternity suit that has dragged on since he was thirteen. True, he and his teacher did have an affair. What’s more, he admitted he clipped the ends out of his condoms “to make them more sensitive.” But when the child was conceived, court records show Lee was in a juvenile detention center doing a stretch for a flashing incident at Our Lady of St. Francis Academy. So, he was obviously locked up when the lady was knocked up.

Lee is twenty-one now. If you want to see a big smile, just ask him about his early education. In fact for a real treat, ask about his post graduate work.

One other thing: We’d like to set the record straight about our trial separation in October. Like most things we tried this year, it just didn’t work out. When you’re both horny, a week can seem like eternity. It was an aphrodisiac for both of us. We each took a two-week sabbatical. One week was to catch up; one was to get our strength back.

In November, while Gretchen celebrated Thanksgiving with her grandparents to give thanks that she’s their sole beneficiary, Maud and I dressed as Pilgrims and went to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. It’s owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and I guess they’re still pissed about the time they brought all the food to the party and the Pilgrims were grabbing their land before they stopped burping the bird.

Anyway, when I ordered turkey sandwiches and cranberry daiquiris they summoned a big brave to check us out. He didn’t think our outfits were cute. What’s more, he was much better at alliteration than public relations; He said I was “a witless, wise ass, white man who should be whipped. “

“Look, chief,” I said, “We came in peace.”

“Okay, pal,” he said as he took each of us by an elbow. “If you hurry, you can leave in one-piece.” So we took his advice.

But, hell, we really do have a lot to be thankful for and we wanted to share all this good news, not only with you, but also with anyone we ever happened to meet, and most of all with those who—when they get this letter — will wonder: “Who in the hell are these people?”

So, may the Lord bless and keep you and make his face shine upon you and yours. And may he punish all the ladies who go through the express line with more than 10 items.

Fondly,

The Warped Family,
Maud, Claude & Gretchen

PS: Starting Jan. 1, 2010 we will block all TV ads for personal female or male plumbing products. We’ve decided to just let Gretchen watch porn. It’s a lot less offensive.

PPS: Early response to this letter— despite two death threats, a few pieces of hate mail and the voodoo doll full of pins hung on our doorknob — has generally been favorable. No one is writing to us any more. In fact, no one is talking to us anymore.

© Copyright 2007 Smiling Jack (UN: jackrawlins at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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