That's a Laugh

Exaggeration is the key element in any comedy story. Think of slapstick and Charlie Chaplin movies, the characters and the pratfalls are all completely exaggerated in order to evoke a laugh from the audience. Similar to horror stories, I feel it's a lot easier to achieve your goal through vision. We are currently in such a visual generation--with television and smart phones at disposal--that we are more inclined to the emotions of something visual as opposed to something mental, a.k.a stories. I also don't read a lot of comedic stories. I have read the screenplay for a few farce plays, but that's about all the stories I can think of off the top of my head. Going into this, I had no idea how to write a humorous short story. My main approach to writing this week was to try and be as witty as possible, and to use a lot of irony. I have been told many times that I'm a very witty person, but the problem I kept running into is that I don't know how to be witty on paper. A lot of my quick-smarts come from hearing someone say something and catching on, so it's a lot of merely building off of the other person. However, in a story, I can't really build off of another person's slips in speech, and I can't really think of something that would evoke a witty response. It's very weird, and for me it was an eye-opening experience that I really need to practice on how to write banter when I have no one else to play off of.

The week's writing was extremely difficult because of this. I did my best to write a story of two roommates (one named John and the other named The Man), who were complete opposites. Something like a The Odd Couple situation. John is uptight and serious, he always says things in a meticulous manner. Meanwhile, The Man was goofy and, frankly, very dumb. Any time John said one thing, The Man took it to mean another. For example, at one point John asks The Man to leave the room. The Man exits, but comes back with leaves and throws them all around (I leaf-ed the room!). The whole story felt very gimmicky, and I know that the reader would be able to tell how forced it was. Sadly to say, despite my efforts, I didn't complete the story. I spent most of my days this week just staring and staring at a blank page and coming up with stupid nonsense that wasn't as much funny as it was cringe-y. However, I don't think that's a bad thing. I know now that comedy in writing is a huge gap that I need to learn how to fill and now I can work on learning to write in a funny manner.

Thanks for reading and, please, come back next week where I will be reporting on writing a creative nonfiction piece.

#story #comedy