The Comic Toolbox: How to be Funny Even if You're Not

by John Vorhaus

  But, really, how long does it take to beat a dead horse? You’ll find out for yourself what kind of endings your comic stories want to have. Just be aware that a happy ending is the icing on the comic cake, and if you don’t give your audience the whole cake they may feel cheated. And don’t be surprised when the happy ending creeps in.

  Before we leave the Comic Throughline, I’d like you to run through it at least one more time. Choose any story you’ve worked with up till now, or choose a new one. If all has gone according to plan, you’ll find it far easier going now than it was some umpteen pages ago.

  So. Who is the hero? The hero is . . .

  8

  More Tools from the Toolbox

  Welcome back to all you joke crackers, column scribblers, cartoon scrawlers, and striders of the comic boards who dodged the last couple of chapters like the draft for an unpopular war. If story structure bores you stupid, you’ll be pleased to know that the worst is over, at least until we get to the chapter on situation comedy, and you may feel free to ignore that one, too.

  In this chapter, we’ll look at some small, delicate tools that everyone can use. Where the last two chapters dealt with global strategies for comic storytelling, this one will focus on local tactics for improving your jokes as they appear on the page, or on the stage, or in smoky comedy clubs in the dead of last call.

  THE RULE OF THREE

  If you’re like me, you spent most of ninth-grade geometry class in a desensitized torpor resembling nothing so much as a good, sound sleep. If you’re not like me, then perhaps you’re what we used to call a “vector
  I remember only about two things from freshman geometry. One is that Claire Franklin learned not to wear a bra that year, and the other is that two points define a line. Delighted though I was by the former, it’s the latter that has served me well since the comic ursprache of my youth.

  Two points define a line. A line presents a direction. Direction implies expectation: “If I continue in this direction, I’ll move farther along this same line.” Well, it turns out that we can craft a joke just by creating and then defeating that specific expectation. This is not news; you’ve seen this kind of joke a million times before. By another name, it’s known as “setup, setup, payoff.” Here are some examples.

  I was teased about the typical stuff in high school: My height. Thee size of my nose. Oh, and that unfortunate arson conviction . . .

  All the great writers kept a journal: Gertrude Stein, Joyce Carol Oates . . . Dear Abby.

  “New MIRRO-GLO dissolves rust, polishes chrome, and gets your teeth an incredible white, white, white!”

  Each of these jokes is built on three iterations of an idea or theme. The first iteration presents the theme. The second iteration validates the theme like the second point defines the line. The third iteration violates the sequence. Introduction, validation, violation. The joke comes when the third item in the sequence cuts across the line established by the first two points and creates laughter in the explosive defeat of expectation.

  It’s almost like an IQ test question: Which doesn’t belong in this set—a forklift, a backhoe loader, or a tea cozy? To make the rule of three work for you, simply find two things that belong to the same set, and then find something that extravagantly doesn’t belong.

  In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted tell us that Beethoven’s favorite musical works include Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet. The first is a piece of classical music. So is the second. They establish the line of “things classical.” The third item could be any piece of music that’s not classical, but the further removed it is (by exaggeration), the funnier the payoff will be.

  Why two setups? Why not one? Why not three? Well, if you only have one setup, the audience doesn’t have enough information to form a positive expectation which the payoff can then defeat. And if you have three setups, it’s just redundant. If you said, “Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Verdi’s Aida, and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, you’d be giving more information than people need. The third setup only drains tension from the moment, which correspondingly dampens the potential for comic release. So avoid redundancy. Don’t over-explain. Try not to repeat yourself yourself. Let’s run a few samples through the old setup-setup-payoff mill, shall we?

  Setup

  Setup

  Payoff

  deaf

  dumb

  ugly

  jealous

  greedy

  Republican

  coffee

  tea

  nerve gas

  Deep Throat

  Deep Throat II

  Bambi

  Now suppose we apply another tool, the inappropriate response, to the rule of three. In this case, we’d want the two points that define the line to have in common a certain “appropriateness of response.” The third point will cut across the line with a wildly inappropriate response.

  Three things you should never do at a football game: Cheer for the visiting team; curse in front of children; pour cold beer on big drunk guys.

  Three things you should never say to the widow at a funeral: “He looks so peaceful.” “He’s gone to a better place.” “He was great in bed.”

  Three things you should bring to an I.R.S. audit: copies of your tax returns, all your receipts, a small-caliber weapon.

  Also remember that any time two voices or characters agree, then any third voice or character who disagrees in an exaggerated or inappropriate way creates a comic opportunity.

  The rule of three is not my favorite tool. It often appears to me, as I’m sure it seems to you, that this rote repetition of setup, setup, payoff routinely comes out feeling forced and, well, unfunny. Personally I prefer found art, like that revelation about Claire Franklin’s bra (damn well-found art at the time), but the rule of three is a handy little item to have in your back pocket. Forced and artificial as it may seem, it’s often the shortest route to a joke.

  Or if not a joke, a jokoid.

  JOKOIDS

  Jok•oid n. Not a joke, an incredible simulation.

  A jokoid looks like a joke and sounds like a joke. It walks, talks, acts, feels, and smells exactly like a joke, except for just one little thing: It isn’t funny. You would think that jokoids serve no purpose in your work. You would think that jokoids are to be avoided at all cost. You would be wrong. In writing comedy, in making a page of prose or a scene in a script funny, in working out a new routine on stage, or sketching out a new cartoon, there may be no tool more useful than the good old ugly ducking jokoid. And why might that be?

  A jokoid fills the place on the page where a genuinely funny joke will eventually go. It’s an interim step between no joke and the final, polished product. Maybe the jokoid isn’t funny because the wording is wrong or the drawing is unclear. Maybe the exaggeration isn’t extreme enough. Maybe the reader is asked to work too hard—or not hard enough—to get the joke. But when you go to repair a jokoid, you’re merely doing corrective surgery under local anesthetic. That’s far easier than crafting a perfect joke on the first try.

  It’s always easier to rewrite. It’s always easier to create a finished cartoon from an imperfect preliminary sketch. It’s always easier to polish existing material than to cut flawless new material from whole cloth. When I’m writing the first draft of anything, I give myself total license to put any damned jokoid down on the page. Later, when I’m rewriting, I go back and examine those jokoids more closely. I ask my
self what, in abstract, is the funny idea I’m going for, and then find new language to express the comic idea more strongly. That’s how I turn a jokoid into a joke.

  How many Amish does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

  Two—one to screw in the lightbulb and one to wonder what it’s for.

  That’s an okay line. Here’s a better one.

  How many Amish does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

  What’s a lightbulb?

  In the first version, the reader observes the Amish person. In the second version, the reader becomes the Amish person. The element of remove in the first version takes the edge off the line. It’s a jokoid. But it leads to the joke. That’s its job. (As an aside, I’ve always thought the Amish were a great target for TV comedy. One thing’s for sure—no letter—writing campaigns.)

  Here’s a joke:

  A man’s commitment to women’s liberation wilts in the face of a wet T-shirt.

  Which grew from this jokoid:

  A man’s commitment to women’s liberation lasts until the next bikini comes along.

  Why is the first line stronger than the second? Because the truth and pain of the joke (“men are scum”) comes in a slicker package, with sharper detail and more visceral kick. Sometimes turning a jokoid into a joke is merely a matter of changing some nouns around.

  If a joke isn’t working, then, it may not need replacing but only adjusting. Trouble is, how are you going to know whether a joke works or not if you don’t commit it to the page or the stage? This brings us all the way back to fear and the ferocious editor. By embracing the jokoid, and by recognizing that even unfunny things can become funny once they’re open to inspection, we give a new and easy goal to our creative process. We want jokes, but if we’ll settle for jokoids, we’ll naturally feel more willing to take a shot.

  Jokoids give you the freedom to create unfunny comedy. A very useful freedom indeed. Why not exercise that freedom now? Write five lousy jokoids and see if you can rewrite them into true jokes.

  We’ll talk later about how to edit your work and how to develop and trust your own sense of what’s funny and what’s not. For now, just trust that the jokoid is your friend.

  THE DOORBELL EFFECT

  Have you noticed how in certain situation comedies, Dad or Mom or Chip or Sally will say, “We’re okay now; everything’s going to be fine as long as that doorbell doesn’t ring’ or words to that effect? Whereupon, with the relentless certainty of a loan shark circling his prey, the doorbell proceeds to ring. That’s the doorbell effect.

  I sure make it sound stupid, don’t I? You’d sure be stupid to use it, wouldn’t you? Not necessarily. With a little misdirection, a little tweaking of the jokoid, the doorbell effect can be a very funny bit indeed.

  The character has a certain expectation—the doorbell won’t ring—and then that expectation is defeated—the doorbell rings. The joke is funny as a function of the way it catches the character’s expectation off-guard.

  In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Brian is on the run from Roman guards and hiding out at the secret headquarters of the People’s Front of Judea. Suddenly there’s a knock at the door, and a dozen Roman guards burst in, search the joint, fail to find Brian, and leave. Brian comes out of hiding, and he’s much relieved because he knows that, having just searched the joint, there’s no way in hell those Romans will come back and search it again. Which, of course, they do. It’s not the repetition of the gag, but the explosive defeat of Brian’s—and the audience’s—expectations that makes the moment so funny. Why the doorbell thing seems so lame in so many sitcoms is that the audience knows the joke

  so well that it no longer defeats their expectations.

  To use the doorbell paradigm to comic effect, then, simply give your character a strong expectation of a certain outcome, make your audience believe that the expectation is valid, and then defeat the expectation as rudely and ruthlessly as possible. Examples:

  Expectation

  Defeat

  getting cash from an ATM

  the machine takes your card—and your cash and wallet, too

  driving home from work

  you’re stopped for speeding—by Glorxians

  cool Christmas gifts

  a stocking full of cheese

  goodnight kiss

  goodnight kick in the groin

  Now you run a few.

  If you’re a stand-up comic, here’s how to use the doorbell effect to create a sure-fire joke. All you do is stand on stage and “admit” (telling a lie to comic effect) that hecklers scare you comatose (exaggeration). Then ask the audience please, please, please not to heckle you. You create the doorbell expectation that they’ll honor your request. Someone in that audience, in pure Pavlovian response, will obligingly provide the punchline by heckling you. It’s a lock.

  The doorbell effect is also a staple of the greeting-card industry.

  I bet you’re expecting some cash in this birthday card.

  I bet you’re expecting the tooth fairy to deliver it, too.

  As an exercise now, try using the doorbell effect to create some jokes in your genre. Remember that it works best when it defeats the expectation both of your character and of your audience.

  AVOID CLICHÉS LIKE THE PLAGUE

  For jokemeisters like us, life is no bed of roses, no walk in the park, no day at the beach. It’s a tough row to hoe, a bitter pill to swallow, a big hill to climb. But when the going gets tough, we put our noses to the grindstone and our shoulders to the wheel, because we know that time and tide wait for no man, and a rolling stone gathers no moss. We’d sell our own grandmothers to succeed because we know that nothing succeeds like success, and the early bird gets the worm, and a penny saved is a penny.

  And the moral of the story? Avoid clichés like the plague. Any time you use a joke, or a common phrase, or a comic idea that’s not uniquely yours, you run the risk of alienating your reader or your audience in a most unfortunate way. They’ll bust you either for being so lazy as to borrow someone else’s work, or so stupid as not to notice that you’re trading in clichés. Either way, you lose. It’s easy to fall into clichéd patterns of writing. Things become so familiar to us that we imagine they’re our own original thoughts. The best argument I can give against using clichés is this: A cliché is like a suit that you buy off the rack. Sure, it costs more money to buy tailor-made, but which looks better when you put it on? As a habit of good writing, then, or good stand-up comedy or good cartooning or whatever, get used to policing your work to make sure that borrowed thoughts don’t creep in. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where original thought leaves off and poaching begins. If you’re telling jokes about airplanes or sex or mothers-in-law, you’re treading clichéd ground by definition. This just means that your jokes have to be that much more personal, that much more keenly observed. I know it’s hard, but hey, I never promised you a rose garden.

  But whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and any landing you walk away from is a good one. By the same token, every cliché creates an expectation, in defeat of which you can create a joke, or at the very least a jokoid. If you start a phrase like, “You can’t please everyone . . .”your audience or your reader has a rock-solid expectation of what comes next:” . . . so you might as well please yourself.” If you finish that line with, “ . . . so you might as well please your boss,” or “you might as well please your wife,” or “you might as well please me,” you get the double benefit of having avoided a cliché and having defeated an expectation.

  Marry in haste, repent in Reno.

  The decision of the wife is final.

  On a clear day you can see the smog.

 
Today is the worst day of the rest of your life.

  Don’t bite the hand that feeds your ego.

  I never kiss on the first drink.

  A fool and his money are soon partying.

  Close only counts in horseshoes and simultaneous orgasms.

  And that’s just the tip of the icebag! You can twist clichéd situations the same way you twist clichéd phrases. If you’re writing a car chase, don’t put it on a street. The darn things always happen on streets. Put it where it doesn’t belong, like on a container ship, or at the zoo, or in a department store. You benefit from avoiding the cliché, from defeating the expectation, and from clashing the context.

  Same thing with characters. The most clichéd character becomes funny if you imbue him or her with an attitude that’s wildly inappropriate to the nature of his or her cliché. If your character is a beer-swillin’, stogie-smokin’ hard-hat redneck good ol’ boy who’d just as soon spit on you as look at you, yet who nevertheless happens to raise prize peonies and read the works of Emily Dickenson (in authentic Victorian ball gowns) on open-mike night at the local bohemian hangout, you’ve taken a cliché and turned it on its head.

  As an exercise, write down some cliché phrases and see what you can do to twist them around. Then take several cliché situations and try the same thing. I think you’ll discover that the mere act of deconstructing the cliché will create some pretty darned exciting comic possibilities.

  When all is said and done, after the dust settles, the bottom line is this: Clichés are both pitfalls to avoid and opportunities to embrace. When the Lord closes the door, he opens a little deli.