Book SummaryHow to Write Funny, by Scott Dikkers

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of How to Write Funny

The Fundamentals of Writing Humor

This section lays the groundwork for understanding the nature of humor and the specific challenges encountered by humor writers. It explores why humor is difficult to create and explain, emphasizes the importance of surprising and subverting expectations, and introduces some key techniques for generating laughs.

Defining Humor and Its Unique Challenges

This subsection delves into humor's intricacies, highlighting its elusive nature and the challenges involved in its creation. Dikkers sets the stage for the reader to understand that writing funny is not a simple task, but a craft that requires dedicated effort and the application of specific techniques.

Creating and Explaining Humor Is Hard

Dikkers argues that creating genuinely funny works is a challenging literary craft, more difficult than other genres like horror or stories meant to evoke sadness. Unlike those genres, which rely on easily accessible emotional triggers and familiar tropes, humor requires originality and a deep understanding of how to evoke laughter. There is no easy formula or set of hackneyed expressions that can reliably produce humor. Dikkers points out that comedy is frequently an elusive concept, difficult to define or dissect. While we might instinctively know what we find funny, articulating or replicating that process is a complex undertaking. The author asserts that finding comedy is a mental connection made in an instant, a recognition of something aligning with our internal sense of what's humorous.

The unique challenge for humorists is that they lack a performer with charisma to convey the humor, unlike stand-up comedians or comedic actors. A reader interacts with only the words on the page, with no visual or auditory cues to bolster the joke's delivery. Someone writing humor has to rely solely on carefully crafted language, structure, and comedic techniques to elicit laughter from the reader.

Other Perspectives

• Emotional triggers in horror or sad stories are not necessarily "easily accessible"; they require skill to avoid clichés and to genuinely move the audience.
• The use of running gags and callbacks in comedy shows that repetition can be a tool for reliably producing humor, as audiences often find repeated elements increasingly funny over time.
• The experience of humor can be gradual or build upon previous information, as seen in storytelling or comedic narratives, where the humor emerges through the development of a story rather than an immediate recognition.
• The interactive nature of reading allows readers to pace the humor to their own liking, potentially making the experience more enjoyable than a live performance where timing is controlled by the performer.
• The use of punctuation, such as exclamation marks, ellipses, and italics, can also serve to mimic auditory cues and influence the way a joke is perceived by the reader.
• Cultural references and shared knowledge can play a significant role in...

How to Write Funny Summary The Dual-Minded Approach (Fool and Critic)

This section introduces a key concept that underpins writing humor successfully: the dual-minded approach. Dikkers uses the metaphors of a "Jester" and a "Copyeditor" to represent the two contrasting yet complementary mindsets necessary for crafting effective humor. This dual-minded approach emphasizes the creative generation of concepts and the critical evaluation of those concepts to produce polished and impactful jokes.

Cultivating the "Clown" Mindset

This subsection explores the mindset of the "Clown," which emphasizes the importance of tapping into one's inner child and unleashing unrestrained creativity. Dikkers explains specific exercises and strategies to cultivate this mindset, allowing writers to break free from self-judgment and generate a wealth of unrefined comedic material.

Generating Unfiltered Content Through Creativity and Unrestrained Writing

Dikkers advocates for cultivating the "Clown" mindset, engaging the right brain's creative, nonjudgmental faculties to produce raw comedic material. He emphasizes that prolific writing is vital for achieving comedic success, urging writers to embrace an "unstoppable force of nature" approach to produce a...

How to Write Funny Summary Reaching and Engaging Readers

This section shifts focus to a crucial practical challenge for comedic authors: reaching readers. Dikkers acknowledges the overwhelming amount of content vying for attention in the modern digital landscape and the difficulties inherent in drawing in readers. He provides practical solutions for addressing this challenge, emphasizing the importance of making one's work easy to understand and attractive to the broadest possible readership.

Challenge of Gaining Readership in a Crowded Landscape

This subsection highlights the daunting reality of the modern media landscape, where writers face fierce competition for audience focus. Dikkers realistically assesses the uphill battle writers encounter in a content-saturated landscape, challenging any preconceived notions of effortlessly acquiring a large readership.

Competing Content for Attention Online and in Physical Publications

Dikkers emphasizes the immense amount of written content published online daily, surpassing the total output of human civilization throughout history, and doubling every few weeks. He realistically assesses the odds of comedic work gaining recognition amidst this overwhelming influx of material,...

How to Write Funny Summary The Anatomy of Humor (Subtext and Funny Filters)

This section delves into the underlying mechanisms of humor, introducing the concept of Subtext and Dikkers's 11 Humor Filters that explain how humor works. He dissects the elements of effective jokes, explaining how writers can utilize these tools to consciously create humor that connects with people.

The Critical Role of Implicit Messages

This subsection introduces the idea of Subtext, a key ingredient in effective humor writing. Dikkers explains that Subtext functions as the concealed message underlying jokes, giving depth and meaning that extend beyond mere silliness.

Hidden Messages Underlying Humor

Dikkers argues that Subtext, the hidden message or opinion underlying a joke, is what truly makes humor satisfying and memorable. He clarifies that Subtext isn't identical to a theme or moral; instead, it's a concise assessment or insight that the writer discreetly conveys to the reader through humor. The author emphasizes that effective Subtext often has a universal nature, touching on shared human experiences, flaws, or societal issues that resonate with a wide audience.

Dikkers highlights that top-notch satire uses Subtext to point out the world's problems,...

How to Write Funny Summary Practical Techniques and Processes

This section offers practical advice for generating and refining humorous writing. Dikkers outlines three distinct methods for approaching the task of crafting jokes: Filtering, Polishing, and Divining. This framework offers a structured approach to tackling the creative process, allowing writers to move from initial idea generation to polished punchlines.

The Filtration Process

This subsection describes the Filtering Method, a systematic approach for transforming existing subtext to a humorous statement. Dikkers presents this process as a series of steps, walking the reader through the decision-making process and showcasing ways different humorous filters might be used to achieve humorous results.

Underlying Meaning and Comedic Filters

Dikkers describes the method of Filtering as starting with a pre-determined Subtext, the hidden message or opinion the author aims to communicate. The writer then applies all eleven humorous filters to transform the Subtext, exploring how each one alters the original idea and searching for possibilities that generate humor. He emphasizes that this involves experimentation, requiring the writer to embrace a playful mindset and...

Shortform Exercise: Surprising and Subverting Expectations in Humor

Explore how humor writers can create comedy by surprising and subverting expectations, as described in the fundamentals of humor writing.

Think of a common expectation or cliché in daily life. How might you surprise someone by twisting or subverting it?