How to Write Funny

Language, plot, character development and comic timing were just some of the lessons they learned from movies and TV, probably without knowing they were learning anything at all. Like all good writers, funny or serious, they learned to open their minds to the influence and stimulation of whatever the world had to offer. They learned to apply their imaginations to the material gathered in their spongelike minds. The results have benefited us all.

For most of them, movies and television worked on their writing sensibilities in a subliminal way

With the possible exception of Sherman Alexie, who is now producing movies and doing stand-up comedy in addition to writing, our featured writers did not study TV and movies to learn how to be funny.

The writers in this book recognized that fact; they did not simply try to re-create movies and television programs on paper. They said they were not necessarily influenced by movies or TV shows in their entirety, but rather by specific elements in them. Joe R. Lansdale, who says the humor in his books comes naturally from his characters, cited Barney Miller and Taxi as TV shows that had some influence upon his sense of humor since both shows emphasized character development over zany plots.

There are rare exceptions—Woody Allen and Steve Martin are two—who have the ability to be funny in both formats.

There is a huge difference between making something funny on the screen and making it funny in print. A

Some of the younger writers found their sense of humor affected by television more so than movies; in a previous interview I had with him for a magazine, Sherman Alexie called himself the “first graduate of the Brady Bunch School of Writing.” In addition to Alexie's seventies sitcom favorite, other TV shows that provided some inspiration for the writers in this book included The Dick Van Dyke Show, Barney Miller, Taxi and Seinfeld.

The comedies of the Marx Brothers, Duck Soup in particular, were mentioned by some of the writers in this book as having had an influence upon their sense of humor. So, too, were some of the “classic” comedies such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The Apartment and Some Like It Hot.

Since writers are influenced in great part by what they see and hear, it would make sense that movies and television can affect their writing, especially in regard to humor.

Flannery O'Connor—A Good Man Is Hard to Find

S.J. Perelman—Most of the Most of S.J. Perelman

Charles Portis—Norwood

Francois Rabelais—Gargantua and Pantagruel

James Thurber—The Thurber Carnival

Calvin Trillin—Family Man

Mark Twain—Life on the Mississippi and everything else he wrote

Kurt Vonnegut—Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse-Five

Eudora Welty—The Ponder Heart, “Why I Live at the P.O.”

P.G. Wodehouse—Carry On Jeeves and other Jeeves books

Movies and Television