How to Write Funny, Part 2 (A Writing Whip-It)

Specific Is Funny

Hey you. Thanks for showing up! My last blog post promised that this next blog post would begin to share the tools of writing funny. That this would be the first of 8 tools, matter of fact. It is! Here's the first tool: be specific.

If it seems easy, it is. Specific is more funny than vague. Let me give you two examples.

This first is a past blog post from the consistently hilarious Bloggess:

You know how when you’re having a dream you sometimes get angry, or frustrated, or delighted or calm…but you almost never get utterly baffled.  A giant purple ostrich walks into your house, which you’ll later realize (upon waking) is not your house at all but is actually a bakery you peed at once, and instead of thinking, "When the fuck did I get an ostrich?" you think "I wonder if it wants me to scritch it on the head?"

You can argue whether or not the above is funny (it is to me), but there is no debate that it's funnier than merely writing, "dreams are so weird!" Let me give you another example of how specific is funny in writing, this one excerpted from Carl Hiaasen's <i>Bad Monkey</i>:

On the hottest day of July, trolling in dead-calm waters near Key West, a tourist named James Mayberry reeled up a human arm. His wife flew to the bow of the boat and tossed her breakfast burritos.

“What’re you waiting for?” James Mayberry barked at the mate. “Get that thing off my line!”

The kid tugged and twisted, but the barb of the hook was embedded in bone. Finally the captain came down from the bridge and used bent-nose pliers to free the decomposing limb, which he placed on shaved ice in a deck box…

Louise Mayberry's gaze was fixed on the limb. "What could have happened?" she asked.

"Tiger shark," her husband said matter-of-factly.

"Is that a wedding band on his hand? This is so sad."

"Fish on!" the mate called. "Who's up?"

James Mayberry steered his bride to the fighting chair and the mate fitted the rod into the gimbal. Although she was petite, Louisa Mayberry owned a strong upper body due to rigorous Bikram yoga classes that she took on Tuesday nights. Refusing assistance, she pumped in an eleven-pound blackfin tuna and whooped triumphantly as it flopped on the deck. Her husband had never seen her so excited.

Hiaasen is the master of this type of specificity--"breakfast burritos," "bent-nose pliers," "shaved ice in a deck box," Tuesday night Bikram yoga classes that account for Ms. Mayberry's strength and possibly her vapidity. Hiaasen sprinkles these laser-focused gems throughout his writing, not too many so they load it down but enough that you should pay attention. Here's the thing: consciously using specific language is a good writing habit in general, but it's food, water, and air when it comes writing funny.

I'll prove it with an exercise. Pull out the last potentially funny (or actually funny) paragraph you wrote. Scour it for vague words. Replace them with one or two specific details. Hiaasen could have written, "Regular exercise gave Louisa Mayberry unusual strength." He instead wrote, "...Louisa Mayberry owned a strong upper body due to rigorous Bikram yoga classes that she took on Tuesday nights." Do the same find-and-replace in your paragraph, but go lightly--specific is like salt in that a little bit goes a long way, and if you oversalt, that's all anyone notices.

Hmm. That has me weirdly hungry for a hamburger. Specifically, a salty juicy burger dripping with melted cheddar, topped with butter-sauteed mushrooms, a diced jalapeno pepper, and raw onion. Yum! It's probably because I'm doing this ridiculous 5/2 fast with Terri Bischoff. Sigh. I'm off to drink water and crunch celery.

Happy writing.

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Jessica (Jess) Lourey is best known for her critically-acclaimed Murder-by-Month mysteries, which have earned multiple starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist, the latter calling her writing "a splendid mix of humor and suspense." She is a tenured professor of creative writing and sociology, a recipient of The Loft's 2014 Excellence in Teaching fellowship, and leads interactive writing workshops (including "Writing Funny") all over the world. <i>Salem’s Cipher</i>, the first in her thrilling Witch Hunt Series, hits stores September 2016 and her agent is currently shopping <i>Better than Gin: Rewrite Your Life</i>, a guide to recycling life experiences into compelling fiction.

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