TICKLING
YOUR FUNNY BONE
By
Vicki Ellis Griffis
with
help from Google, Bing, and Yahoo Searches
Including
Annie Binns and others who stole the thoughts from my mind before I
could think of them
(Oh,
Yeah, In the Places Where You Laugh Hysterically, Those Were My
Original Thoughts)
Children’s
author EB White once said, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a
frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies.” Never being
one to shrink from a challenge, I set out to make humor interesting
for you and to tickle your funny bone.
Seriously,
as Annie Binns says, laughter has instantaneous health benefits
including: relaxation, lowering your blood pressure, increasing your
immune system response, and curing male pattern baldness. Well, the
research is still out on that last part. . .but if it is true, some
of you men need to laugh a lot more! Seriously, you cannot be serious
about writing funny.
How
does one write funny? Well, for starters, if you are right-handed,
write with your left hand and vice versa. If you are ambidextrous,
use your feet. Your writing will look so funny.
Next,
you really need to come from slightly warped parents or have been
such a parent. Clearly, if you've got completely normal parents (or
were one) then writing funny is probably not your genre. But if you
have the sort of parents who did skits to the song Paul and Paula—but
your mom was Paul and your dad was Paula—in front of your whole
high school, or a mother who was Polly Darton in a country western
band—complete with enhancements—then you may be warped enough to
see the humor in the macabre and even crazier to write about it. Come
to think of it, my son and daughter should be best-selling authors!
You
say, “Vicki, I just can’t write funny—it is just not how I
roll—where would I start?”
Start
with a piece of paper and pen, an app on your iPhone, a small
recording device, or if necessary, the palm of your hand. If you hear
laughter—perk up, listen, and start writing or typing or talking
into your phone. I have used napkins. . .envelopes. . .my
granddaughter’s diapers. . .or the cool side of my pillow when I
was too lazy to get up.
Important:
YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER it when you get home or wake up in the morning!
It will be gone—Nada—Sayonara! Believe me. Many a funny moment
has been consigned to oblivion because I thought I would
remember—literally went in one thought and out the other.
Have
you ever heard anything that gave you a big belly laugh? Borrow it!
One of my favorite lines in one of my chapters in our soon to be
released book Jest the Two of Us is Ma Katie saying, “If
there is one thing that dills my pickle, it is. . . .” Perfect
saying when I needed it. My mom used to say, “I will cloud up and
rain all over you and make you walk home in the mud!” And, “I am
fixing to get in your eyes and sting like onions and burn like pepper
sauce.” Yep, used them! When you hear something like that, you will
use it at one time or another. It is okay! Now you cannot take a
whole column or a chunk of story from one that has already been
written, (disregard this column on that advice), but hearing snippets
or phrases is usable and valuable.
If
you can laugh, you can make someone else laugh at the thing that made
you laugh. Kind of like the song, “I was laughing back to see if
you were laughing back to see if I was laughing back to see if you
were laughing back at me! You were cute as you could be, standing
laughing back at me, and it was plain to see that I’d enjoy your
company!” Well, maybe that is a stretch in humor, but that is my
point. Don’t try to force humor like I just did. It won’t be
funny. . .well, maybe that was a little funny. . .or I giggled when I
wrote it anyway.
You
might say, “But, I write poetry | fiction | a blog | non-fiction |
screenplays | on bathroom walls.” Perfect, Ann! Humor can make any piece
of writing more. . .well. . .funny!
Don’t
let fear of being funny hold you back when the subject is serious.
Here’s an example from Robert Schimmel’s memoir Cancer on $5 a
Day* (*Chemo Not Included)
This
stupid hospital gown is riding up my tail. I try to pull it down, and
it snaps right back up like a window shade. I cross my legs, and
suddenly I’m Sharon Stone.
He
truly had a serious subject and proved sometimes you have to laugh to
keep from crying.
Last,
but certainly not least, when all else fails, laugh at yourself! And
give your readers permission to laugh at you. Sammy and I have
written many columns when we were out of ideas and were listening to
each other talking to other people. When we heard a laugh, a column
formed. A lot of our ideas start with, “Remember the time. . . .”
and the memories have us laughing until beverages shoot out of our
sinus orifices.
And
we write it down, so we can make you and others laugh. Or at least
that is what we pray for. And we know God has a sense of
humor—because he made us zany people called WRITERS!
Coauthor of Jest the Two of Us, A Humorous Look at His and Her Columns
Available at
http://www.amazon.com/Jest-Two-Us-Humorous-Columns-ebook/dp/B00YLWDARI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1435623828&sr=1-1&keywords=Jest+the+Two+of+Us
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