Okay. So you want to learn how to be a good humorist, do you? Congratulations, you have just joined the ranks of several million people who wish to be also. There's a reason there are not several million good humorists running around, beyond "they aren't funny," which is sort of presumptuous. Everyone is funny sometimes--even if unintentionally. No. What I am getting at is that these people who want to be humorists are not necessarily high-caliber because they don't know how to be. If there was a guide that told them how, chances are they would have found it, used it, and would be funnier. But, like I've said, not every aspiring humorist is a brilliant one. The odds are, then, that this isn't going to be the holy grail of humorism that can turn an accountant into an improv superstar. One hasn't been written so far; there's no reason to think this is the one. So don't get yourself worked up into an excited, attack-the-mirror frenzy. Secondly, I consider myself to be pretty damn funny. That consideration is probably half-truth, half-ego. However, I am not the Great American Novelist, Mark Twain, or a platypus. The point: Don't expect me to be some freakish expert on humor, and be able to impart all my knowledge on you. Believe me, if I could do that, I would find some way to cash in on it, and not put it on the net as free reading.

Both of those slightly morale-killing points aside, I hope that this guide is of some use to you, and will make you at least a competent comedy writer, if not a genius. There's probably a few things you can gain from this guide, I hope. My estimate is that it'll at the very least save you from making newbie mistakes. Even if the only thing you actually do in reaction to reading this is buy a better comedy guide, good. I don't care if you like what I've written or want to smack me in person for being an ingrate. If I can get you to get off of your ass and put effort into getting better, I am satisfied. A ton of pretty okay humor is infinitely better than the gobs of brain-melting garbage that comes out of the woodwork these days.

Sit down and let's write the perfect humor story: Think of every character that either you or your friends have thought up, even obscure ones, sit them all in a big room, and have them prattle off a ton of inside jokes, off-color asides, or completely unintelligible babbling, without giving the reader any clue as to what the hell is going besides talking, or bothering to distinguish the characters from one another beyond rudimentary dialogue markers.

If that paragraph sounds legitimate, I want you raise your right hand and strike yourself firmly across the face with it. Now, if you're wondering why you just slapped yourself (or, hopefully, if you didn't need to, but want to know why anyway), let me explain what's wrong with that scenario.

This is the sort of thing a lot of people start out with when they want to try their hand at comedy writing, especially if they don't write much to begin with. Why? Well, on the face, it seems pretty easy. The characters are usually familiar to the author, and (in the author's mind) don't need introductions or characterizations. Dialogue comes pre-packaged in the form of inside jokes, so they don't really have to think of anything witty. Writing descriptions, action indicators, and the like sounds hard, and often tedious, to beginning writers--or even to more experienced ones who just want to write a quick sketch. Thus, the easiest format is just to give the characters names, put the name before their speech, and forget all about conventional writing techniques.

Don't get me wrong--that kind of writing is fun, fast, and can be pretty amusing to your friends. However, there is a rather painful downside to it: No one else thinks it's funny. In the slightest. If you think total strangers will read one of these, read all the way through them (most of us lose patience the minute we see the format), and think it's great comedy, you're fooling yourself.

Why, you ask? Well, beyond the fact that most strangers won't get all the inside jokes (they're inside jokes for a reason), the problem is in the very way the writers approach this type of story. Simply put: Dialogue is hard, and it is rare that an inexperienced writer will write even mediocre dialogue on their first attempts. Thus, writing almost purely in dialogue is an awful way to start out writing. Beyond the fact that dialogue is hard to get to sound right (I'll touch more on this later,) part of the problem in this particular case is that even if you're an intuitive dialogue writer, you can't write good dialogue without characterization. The hallmark of these stories is a total lack of description, ergo, a lack of characterization beyond what you can squeeze into talking. It's definitely possible to characterize solely through dialogue, but typically this is rather flimsy, and to a reader whose only connection between who said what is a nametag, this type of characterization is often hard to follow. Again, most of the people who write these things are not experienced dialogue writers, so without some sort of outside characterization, the chances they convey individuality through speech alone is slim to none. The result is usually a bunch of characters who all sound like the same person, talk almost exclusively in cliches, overdramatically, or unusually aggressively, and are prone to act so unpredictably you'd think they were all mental asylum patients.

Speaking of characterization, what the hell are you doing, trying to write a humor piece based only on characters? Characters can be funny, yes, but funny people do not a comedy make. These characters need to do something, not just talk! You need a plot, not just a string of random actions! Most good comedy is situational, and does not depend solely on the characters. The characters are simply vehicles for funniness. Yes, of course, they can say funny things, but you really, really need to break out of your "Ohmygawd, I dunno how to write good" shell. It's not as hard as you think, and if you actually want to get better, you'll get over it even if it is hard.

For your convenience, we shall start from the shell of the story and work from there! So don't freak out. You ain't gonna be starting out writing Merchant of Venice. Let's review the tools in your toolbox as a writer, shall we? We'll start with the general ones, and then go to the ones specific to comedy.

Plot: Stop groaning! You need to have a plot. The first whiny comment of the day: "But Douglas Adams never used plot." He did; you weren't paying attention. It was more evident in the beginning of the series, but it was there. The weaker the plot got, the less people liked it. Plot is good. Even in its most primitive, rudimentary forms, plot is good. You need plot. Get over it.

Now, I am going to tell you how to write a good, structurally sound, clear, workable plot. Start with characters; at least one. They are in a situation; it can be normal or unusual/tension-filled. Something happens that would motivate the characters to do something. The characters make choices and act according to that event, their personalities, and the situation. These actions have consequences. They characters then have to deal with and make choices involving that consequence. These new actions have consequences, and so on. Repeat this cycle until you reach a logical conclusion. It's not exciting, it's not complicated, and it isn't necessarily interesting, but it's a plot. Plot isn't that hard; don't be scared of it. Obviously, you have to put thought into what the characters are like and what sorts of things happen that motivate them to do something, but guess what, that's what writing is, and it's what writers have been doing since stories were invented.

With comedy, the "rules" can be bent a little, because it's (usually) a more lighthearted genre and doesn't need to be complicated or perfectly stylized, only funny. Therefore, you don't necessarily have to even use the above framework strictly; it was just an example. Once you've gotten out of your plot-phobia, you can toy around with bending the rules more. A good rule of thumb about rule-bending: Do it "right" first, and then you know what is or is not a good idea to change, tweak, or omit. And, more specifically to plot: The events should all relate to each other in some way. There should be some sort of relationship between how Johnny gets from point A to point B, even if sort of random things happen in-between. (More on this later.)

Setting: Physical setting is one of the easier things in comedy. Why? Well, if you look on the stage of a play, does the set make you crack up laughing? Unless you're watching Dr. Seuss on Ice, probably not. Since this is humor, and the rules can be bent, that means that anything that does not contribute to the humor can be given less energy. Oh my god! I just gave the shaft to an important literary element! Yes, and here's why: Comedy is a lean animal. Any "bulk" should be cut down or off, or the animal looks out of proportion. Essentially: Comedy readers don't want to sit through a 20 page Tolkienesque description, especially not of the setting! It slows the pace down and it usually isn't necessary. You don't want a fat cheetah now, do you? Didn't think so.

Yes, yes, physical setting can be funny, or at least contribute to the humorous atmosphere, usually through irony or novelty. If it does, go ahead and give it some oomph. And I'm not saying you shouldn't give any clues as to where the characters are; tell them. Just don't give them every freaking detail. In general, you want to keep description of physical setting to a minimum so the reader can focus on the stronger parts of the piece.

Now, as for the other parts of the setting (time period, atmosphere, situational elements like recent events). You thought I forgot, didn't you? Oh, no. These are important. Time period, not so much. However, much of comedy lies in situations. If you want strong comedy, you really need to flesh out the atmosphere. This is different than Tone (see below) because it deals with the actual way things are and the way the characters themselves perceive them to be, not the way the narrator is interpreting them in writing.

Situation and atmosphere can be tricky to separate from physical setting and tone, respectively. I'm trying to save examples until later, but we could use one now. Let's look at Joe. Joe's about to jump off of a roof. Rather morbid. Joe's about to jump off of the roof of his doghouse and hopes it'll kill him. Sort of sick, but can now be considered funnier by a wider range of people. I know I just said cut down on physical description, so describing the roof as a doghouse roof seems to go against that. However, there's a difference between specifying and getting into nitty-gritty description. Now, take a gander at this: Joe, an eleventh grader with a slim build and messy blonde hair, is standing on the tarpaper roof of a smallish, red drywall doghouse, whose paint had been bleached by the sun and was beginning to peel from neglect (the family hadn't owned a dog in years). He is going to jump onto the Bermuda grass about two feet below him, and deep in his blue, morose eyes, you can see his intent is to never get up from that grass again. Bored? Yeah. See the difference? It isn't necessary to go into great detail about things. Describing what and where will usually suffice in humor. As usual, there are exceptions, but I'll deal with those later.

Point of view: This one's super-flimsy. There are only very simple guidelines I would suggest. If you're new-ish, go with 3rd. It is like having a wider angle, thus presenting more opportunities for humor than a 1st person story. If you're more experienced, try out 1st for a change; it can still be quite funny, and present its own opportunities, but they take a bit more work to use. However, if you are more comfortable with one style or the other, it's best to stick to that. And for god's sake people, stay away from 2nd. I really shouldn't have to explain this one.

Style: Style has a lot of components, most of which I will detail later on. Meanwhile, let's see about basic style. Most people go with conversational (casual) style for humor. There is sometimes this misconception that to be funny, it has to be casual. After all, humor is the genre of levity, right? Hell no. Humor can be written (and written well!) in a variety of styles. It may be counter-intuitive to use academic (formal) style for a humor piece. However, keeping a professional, rigid style while describing events which are, in and of themselves, ridiculous, can have a great impact on the story through irony. The same goes for ornate or archaic prose--the bizarre style can add loads to the comedic effect, either through irony or because the style is so flowery it gets ridiculous.

I'll touch on more specific stylistic elements later.

Tone: Same as style; your tone doesn't have to be humorous. As you may have gathered, irony is a powerful tool for any humorist to harness. Obviously you can keep a humorous tone and it won't be "OMG you are lame, straightforwardness is so Lewis Carroll." In fact, depending on your story, a humorous tone may be the only real workable one. However, if you toy around with the narrator sounding depressed, indifferent, frustrated, angry, or clueless about the stuff going on (which is, of course, meant to be funny) it can make the reader giggle even more that they are in on something the narrator is missing, or laugh at someone else's misfortune. People love doing that, you know.

Theme: Okay. This is the element you can basically have your own free reign with. Here's the good news: Humor doesn't need theme; it needs to be funny, it doesn't need to get a message across. Whee. You're free. Now, of course, if you feel like doing so, you can include a theme. It doesn't have to be super-deep, though it can be effective this way--you'll get the satisfaction of making some people think, and even if they were too dumb to get your point, at least they'll laugh. Themes end up in humor by accident sometimes, just because you focus on a certain subject so much. That isn't a bad thing. In fact, it can be good. For one thing, you can take credit for being brilliant when some overanalyzer comes along and finds stuff you didn't even mean to add, and another, it's super-fun to watch overanalyzers fight each other. The only problem is that some asshat will get mad if they find any theme at all ("You didactic sonofabitch!"). Actually, that has never happened to me personally, but do try to avoid preaching, because it takes a major bite out of the humor.

Characters: Oh, you thought you were getting off easy on all those other wimpy elements, but I saved the evilest one for last. Characters! These poor little people get shafted like hell because a lot of writers refuse to give them any personality at all! Character abuse is often rampant in humor and when it occurs it almost always lowers its quality significantly.

Now, you are expecting me to say "You must make your characters all amazingly well-rounded and dynamic so they are just like real people!" Hahaha, no, that would make every humor piece you tried to write a huge character analysis. Developing characters to extreme realism is something that isn't necessary in humor, though in longer pieces it can add a lot of vibrancy to the work. I'm assuming, however, that you don't want to write a novel every time, so I'll save that explanation for when I'm old and actually figured out how to do it well enough to teach other people.

However, it really makes a story difficult to read when the characters have no characterization, period. It isn't just that they are flat characters. They have no personality. People are in such a big hurry to write a quick humor sketch that they forget that their characters aren't just random entities; they have to have something that distinguishes them from other characters or from a lightpost. Remember what I said about plot being carried through by the characters motivations and their subsequent actions? If your character has no personality, it can't really have motivations (or at least, not consistent or interesting ones) and therefore, the plot suffers majorly and usually reverts to a string of random events happening to the character, rather than around the character. This is bad. Yes, stuff can happen to the characters, but that shouldn't be the staple of events in a story.

So, making good characters is key to keeping your plot alive and kicking. In comedy, "good" can mean flatter than roadkill on the interstate. However, whether the character is two-dimensional or more realistic isn't nearly as important as how well-developed they are--or rather, how well-established. You don't have to describe everything about the character so we know every gory detail of their lives. The basic qualifications are: Can the reader identify this character as separate from the other characters? and Does the character have enough of a personality so that its actions make sense, are consistent, and can be identified as a result of the personality and the motives of that personality? The thing is enough. Like I said, you don't want a fat cheetah--you don't need to know all of the personality, just the relevant parts. Sounds sort of tricky, but it's really not so bad.

In comedy, you have the liberty to be a little cheesy and over-obvious with your characterizations; you can use cliches, stereotypes, or over-exaggerated personality traits to do your bidding if you are either putting more emphasis on event humor (i.e., the characters' involvement in the story is fleeting or secondary to the humorous plot/situation) or are too lazy to make up original characters. After all, humor's main job is to be funny, not to be realistic. You may get eye-rolls if you use stereotyping (and you have to be careful about it or you may just look like a jackass) but it gets the point across. Usually, real characterization does the job much better, even if it isn't as instantly identifiable as a cliche is. However, length and character involvement permitting, caricatured characters are usually acceptable.

Now, how much is too much? Where do you use a flat character as opposed to a round one? Well, first of all, it depends on the character's involvement. First person narrator usually equals round (or at least the very thorough end of flat). Any "main" character, whether in first or third, also qualifies as one where you want to lean on the side of well-rounded. Minor characters are generally less well-developed than the main ones, and the extent of their description is usually only enough to cover what is directly relevant to the story. (Watch out--minor characters are often neglected, and when they all sound the same, it can bring down a good story even if the main character is written well.) "Bit" characters, or ones that only have a few lines or so before they leave/are killed off, usually need little to no development. Any development here is usually cliche so that it is identifiable in a short amount of time and can serve their purpose reliably before disappearing. (And, yes, you can have an entire story of bit characters. But they have to go away, they can't stick around for the whole story!)

It also depends on the length of your story. If it's a humor novel, you really don't have any excuse to leave your main characters flat. However, if the piece is only two pages in its entirety, you don't have much time to get your characters across, and this is when cliches/flatness are better. Most stories end up in between this spectrum of lengths, and therefore can have varying levels of development in the characters. No matter what, though, you must be able to tell the characters apart. It's best if even your bit characters have some distinguishing mark.

Whew. Well, that took a lot out of me. Now you know how to make the framework for a comedy. However, that still leaves the small problem of making it funny. Making the entire piece a humor piece as opposed to just any other story is extremely difficult to explain, and it can be just as difficult to actually write. This next part is in fact the hardest; it's harder than following a few guidelines about technical parts, and it's harder than inserting a few devices at key places. Since this is just a quick guide to improving your work, rather than how to write a perfect humor masterpiece, I'll stick to general tips and save the in-depth crap for a later tutorial. Looking for examples, then whoop-dee, you found them.

Where do you start? Getting started is hands-down the hardest part of humor. What kind of plot should you use? What characters are appropriate? How far do I want this to take me? In my personal experience, it's best to start out with a concept first. This concept can be plot-related or character-related, but you shouldn't jump into microdetailing it just yet. What do you want it to be about? This can be simple (following a character's frustration as they miss the bus to work and frantically scramble to hail a cab, board a train, etc.) or outlandishly bizarre (radioactive lobsters try to further their plan to take over the world by holding a garbage-man hostage for millions of dollars). Just get some vague idea, and then start writing. Write a character description of a particularly nutty main character, or get the ball rolling with a quick setting, character, and then bam, introduce action. There's no "right" way to start, or a "right" formula for a funny piece. You can make just about any plotline/story idea funny if you work at it. If the concept sounds amusing to you, chances are it's amusing to other people, too.

Don't sketch the whole plot out beforehand. With all this talk about plot and its importance, that may equate to your brain as, "Oh, I should sit down and draw the little heartbeat diagram with the rising action, climax, denouement, etc." No! Don't do that! In fact, if you plan on continuing to write in other genres for any length of time, get that programming out of your brain right now. That chart is useful for children's literature and not much else; then it becomes limiting. Particularly in comedy, having a rigid, predetermined plotline with defined rising action and such, more often than not, takes away much of the fun and interest by making the story contrived and creating "dull" spots which are devoid of much humor as the author tries to haul the story in an awkward direction just for the sake of carrying out a plot point. Most of the time, in comedy, the story fares much better if the author fills in the story as it comes, or has an idea where they want the plot to go, but don't restrict themselves with a certain way of getting to that point. This may seem frightening, like trying to find your way through a parking lot blindfolded, but in reality it is not much different from following a plot. The only difference to the author is that the plot occurs as it goes along, not all at once.

Why should this be so? Well, beyond the fact that stories of any genre fare better when their plot can progress in a manner other than the standard one you learned in school, comedy is unique in that its principal goal is not to be perfectly technically sound, but to make the reader laugh. For this reason, while plot is of course necessary, it does not have to be standardized, and, often, it can be created as the story is written.

The plot can be loose, but it has to be there. Let's make a really simple, on-the-spot plot.

Bobby was playing basketball with a few of his friends when a rock got into his shoe and he had to take a break to get it out. He sat down on a nearby bench, took off his shoe, and dumped out the rock, along with quite a bit of blood. As he was trying to tie the sock around his foot like a big gauze strip, a passing wild poodle smelled the blood. Going into a growling frenzy, it ran toward Bobby, grabbed his shoe from the bench, and scampered away again, shaking the bloody Nike prize in its mouth. "Hey!" Bobby yelled, "Come back with my shoe!" Being a poodle, it didn't speak English, and had no clue what Bobby was saying, but probably didn't care anyway. So, Bobby, now in a growling fit of his own, limped off after the psychotic fluffball, leaving a little red spot with every other step.

I just thought that up off the top of my head. It's not great, but it qualifies as a plot because there is a clear cause-effect pattern throughout. There is an element of "random" in there (the rock getting in the shoe, the passing wild poodle) but neither of those things is inconceivable, out of the blue, or so random that they don't make any sense being there. And there is a feeling of randomosity, but if you look closely, everything proceeds logically. Bobby was playing basketball (setting). A rock got in his shoe (cause) and he had to stop to take it out (effect). He was bleeding (another effect) so a passing dog smelled this blood and stole the shoe (consequence of that effect). Bobby then gets angry (effect of having his shoe stolen) and decides to chase the dog (action taken due to motivation). There's no real "randomness" in here. The choice of a poodle may seem random, but think about it: If I had said "mutt" or whatnot, would it have seemed so random? No, because stray dogs are a common occurrence. A stray poodle may be unusual, but it's just a funny spin on an actually commonplace thing.

From this little skeletal plot beginning, it can go in any number of directions. Does Bobby follow the poodle into its nest of vicious, rabid poodle-wolves? Does he end up getting sidetracked by something else entirely, and chasing the poodle was just the reason he ended up in an even weirder situation? Does he catch the poodle and get into an awful fight wherein he contracts rabies and goes on to gnaw on the arms of all of his friends? It doesn't really matter. The point is that you can have a plot that isn't pre-determined as long as it makes sense.

Now, let's take a look at what not to do:

Jane was playing with her dolls in her room when an alien knocked on the door. "Who is it?" she said. "It's an alien," the alien said. Jane opened the door and was suddenly in Fiji! "How did that happen?" Jane thought. She walked around until she found a telephone. She dialed her mom's cell phone. "What time is lunch?" she asked. "Around ten," her mom said. A monkey threw something at Jane's head. "Ouch," Jane said. She walked around some more until she got tired and fell asleep. When she woke up, everything was upside-down. Eventually she figured out how to get home and did. Then she went back to playing dolls.

Can you see the difference? Things happen randomly, which can be okay, except that they aren't logical, explained (even in a cursory way), or followed through with. This could be salvageable if Jane tries to figure out how she got into Fiji, and eventually this is explained (maybe the aliens beamed her there to study her reaction, she fell through a crack in the space-time continuum, etc.) so that even though it is random, it contributes to the story. However, no effort is made to explain any of this. Nothing there leads to the ending of this mini-plot; it just happens to be between the start and the finish. Also, Jane's actions and reactions don't make much sense. Okay, so anyone would say "Ouch" if something hit their head, but what the hell possesses her to call her mom and ask what time lunch is? She's either a mental patient or a badly-written character. The above sequence may be a bit amusing to you, but try to read 5 or more pages of it, and you'll tire of it fast.

As you get better at plotting, it will actually become difficult to write in the "bad" style above. That is a good sign; it means you've internalized what makes a plot workable and what doesn't.

Unusual=Good. Now, why did I take all the time explaining that boring technical crap, and tell you that you shouldn't lay out your plot beforehand? Well, let me give you some psychobabble. Humor, or things that people find funny, is almost always centered around the unexpected. It's not as funny when you know the punchline to a joke--or worse, if you can guess the punchline. Weird, unpredictable things stand out, and the unexpected makes people laugh. Basically, humor is the release of tension, and by making unfamiliar situations--even if they don't last very long--you're creating areas of tension followed by release (the reader gets over their initial surprise). If it's weird, unusual, bizarre, etc. then it's probably funny. This is a general rule and applies to anything you can think of. Stay away from cliche lines and ideas (we're going to ignore cliche characters in this section). Even if it's not funny to everyone, it's funnier, and it lines up with the next point. Characters with weird personality traits/flaws also tend to stand out more and appear more dynamic.

Bad example: Susie wanted to be a dentist.

Who cares? If you're going to do this kind of characterization, do it better than that:

Better example: Susie's obsession was dentistry. Since she was little, she would approach any unassuming stranger and, if they were unlucky enough to be sitting where she could reach them, she'd pry their mouth open with two hands and comment, usually loudly, about the state of affairs.

Another better example: Susie wanted to be a dentist so she could meet another dentist--or better yet, a sexy periodontist. She'd always had this thing for guys in lab coats wielding intimidating-looking instruments.

Bad example: The leaves blew across the street.

Oh my. The artistry blows me away. No! Make it more interesting!

Better example: The Styrofoam peanuts blew across the street, along with leaves, cigarette butts, and an unfortunate homework assignment or two.

Jar the reader out of their comfort zone.