Three Steps to Writing Humor (Three? … Three!)
It’s tempting to define humor as similar to pornography. You know it when you see it. In fact, humor can be defined more neatly. It upsets the established order.
That was George Orwell’s idea. Every joke is a “revolution” or a “temporary rebellion against virtue,” he wrote. You know what? He was right.
Think of The Three Stooges low-brow physical jokes, Winston Churchill’s elegant put-downs of his upper-class peers, or Chris Rock or David Letterman’s classic jabs at middle-brow American society. Each comedian or humorist touched a nerve. A person or group’s unthinking puffery, self-seriousness, or ignorance was put to the test and found wanting.
To the extent that humor or comedy can be broken down, it requires two steps. You identify the established order. Then you make fun of it. That’s a tall order. It’s comparable to hunting for abalone today or whales in the 19th century—valuable but dangerous and time-consuming.
Some interest group is bound to cancel you. And writing a genuinely funny joke is a mean feat; even a master like Mr. Rock has said for the umpteen jokes he writes, only one will elicit laughter from an audience.
How can writers and reporters make readers laugh?
Writer Dan Epstein is an authority on the topic. He is author of several books on baseball and popular culture, including his most recent book, The Captain and Me, about the late Yankees catcher Thurman Munson. His 2009 book, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s, received a blurb from baseball writer Rob Neyer and praise from book reviewers at the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.
The book’s thesis—the ‘70s represented the decade when the counter-culture seeped into the putative national pastime—had immediate appeal. I was struck by its laugh-out-loud descriptions.
Step One: Show Writing Chops
These were not any generalized words like “horrible” or “dastardly” or below-the-belt profanities; they were cheerful put-downs of middle brow Americana; cheerful because they suggested the writer had been marinated in the culture. Take his descriptions of the uniforms of two National League teams that changed their styles mid-decade.
The (San Diego) Padres were cursed from the start with a mustard and fecal brown color combination, held over from the teams’ days in the Pacific Coast League, and their raglan-style jerseys and two-tone caps gave off what can only be described as a total fast-food employee vibe, which was perhaps appropriate given that their team was purchased in 1974 by McDonald’s mogul Ray Kroc.
But even at their worst, the Padres’ uniforms could not approach the pupil-gouging horror of the Houston Astros’, circa 1975-1979. ‘They look like Hawaiian softball uniforms,’ chortled Dodger knuckleballer Charlie Hough, and he wasn’t too far off the mark—though something about them also smacked of chain motel bedspread or 747 jumbo-jet upholstery.
In his temporary rebellion against ‘70s aesthetics, Mr. Epstein showed literary skill or flair. Few would say that’s adventurous intellectually, but it is one step to writing fine humor.
Step Two: Be Serious about Being Funny
Another step is to adopt a professional attitude—a serious, confident approach to being funny. That might sound counter-intuitive, but it worked for Mr. Epstein. (His low-key, casual demeanor practically invites you to drop the formality in favor of calling him Dan, so I will do that now). In an interview, Dan insisted he attempts to play it straight:
To tell you the truth, the humor thing isn’t intentional—at least not in the sense of thinking to myself, ‘I really need to inject some humor here.’ It just comes naturally as part of my personality/outlook, I guess. I find humor in all kinds of things – and if I find something amusing, I generally assume others will get a laugh out of it as well.
The more you think about his response, the more it makes sense.
To write humor, a writer needs self-confidence to bring down the esteemed, venerated, or powerful from their perches. You are a rebel or a revolutionary. To force this outlook is to weaken and undermine it. You are rebelling or you are not.
Step Three: Find the Proper Material
The book’s material — professional baseball in a bizarre decade — is fertile soil. That’s a third step to writing humor.
Of few subjects you can say that. As Mr. Orwell noted, whole topics have become off-limits—poverty, death, children. In our age, we might add a few more–body weight, racial and minority groups, most socially or culturally progressive social movements.
Professional sports, by contrast, remain open to ridicule. The outcome of the games may affect livelihoods but not lives. To a large extent, the games don’t matter. Yet people attach great importance to sports which makes them ideal fodder for humorists. (Why no writers have, in the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson’s hilarious takedown of the Kentucky Derby, satirized or made fun of the NFL Draft is beyond me).
Baseball and basketball are especially ripe topics. The likelihood a player will break his or her neck is low, so a humorist has leeway. He can poke fun without having to worry whether he or she might be carried off a stretcher. Is it any wonder two classic sports books, Ball Four and Loose Balls, are about these sports?
While David Sedaris and Christopher Buckley are popular, too few Americans look to books for humor anymore. Our culture is making a mistake. Truly funny books have become like sunken treasure.
My friends and I have thought so.
When Loose Balls came out three decades ago, one friend acted as if he had started dating the late siren Tawny Kitaen or touring with Van Hagar. He acknowledged getting up in the middle of the night so he could read about the ABA’s through-the-looking glass sports culture—players packing heat at practice, smoking cigarettes during half time, etc. I recommended the book to a friend in college. He liked the book so much he paid it the ultimate compliment he put the book on the toilet lid in his roommates’ apartment in case anyone wanted to read while nature called.
Learning about temporary rebellions and revolutions was never easier or funnier.
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Smart take, but dry observational wit isn’t the only way to write funny non-fiction, although any really amusing non-fiction is rare — often found in memoirs, or based-on-fact accounts, as in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. One hidden gem is Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, by Florence King, a hilarious memoir by a late-blooming butch lesbian in Southern genteel upbringing. One sign of a writer’s greatness is making you understand and find amusement in a world you know nothing about.
Mr. Levine made a point I wish I had: dry observational wit isn’t the only way to go.