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Freud was very interested in jokes. And with good reason. We are the only animals
on the planet making them.� And only
human beings laugh. If you don�t count jackasses. Jokes have something to do
with the rules of language itself. They spring from our compulsion to play
around with it, to subvert it, twist the syntax, undermine what is considered
orderly behaviour. Jokers are anarchic. And someone always gets hurt, because
jokes are cruel. I love comedy.
I
was always the annoying one at the back of the class, or the club, or pub, or
meeting, who chipped in with the irreverent quip. I always saw the funny side
and I just couldn�t stop myself from making a joke. Making a joke usually meant
twisting something someone had just said and getting a laugh. That�s the real
payoff for me- hearing everybody laugh and look over at me and shake their
heads. I should have been a stand-up comedian. But I just don�t have the
bottle. I know this for a fact, because I�ve tried it. My mouth went dry and I
sweated. I once rang a London comedy club and booked myself in to do a turn,
even wrote a script, but I was far too faint-hearted to turn up. No, I know my
place, it�s right here behind my keyboard, safe from the hecklers and
proverbial egg laying of stage life. I�m that low thing- a comedy writer.
I
should move to France. At eighteen minutes per day, they are the biggest
laughers. Brits crease up for about fifeen minutes a day, but the Germans can
only manage six, according to recent research. Eastern European Jews are the
greatest joke-makers, followed by the Scots, who for some inexplicable reason
had a golden age from about 1860 to 1935. All this must mean something, but I�m
far too lazy to go figure it out. My attention zone, my cone of silence- the
only thing that can shut me up- is thinking about my own writing. I�ll analyse
anything that makes me laugh. And if you want to write comedy, you�ll have to
do the same. Because we don�t all share the same sense of humour and you'll have to familiarise yourself with as many kinds as possible. (For example, I had never found men dressed as women that funny, but then I saw Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot. I'm still not sure about Tootsie, or even Mrs Doubtfire, although I like Hoffman and Williams.)
When
I started out writing, I wrote funny poems, then I tried my hand at short stories and scripts- I sub-edited children's comics for a while. I�m not counting the James Bond rip-off I wrote in an exercise book when I was twelve,
even though I considered it a novel. My spy was called John Steele. Note that
�e� on the end of steel- even as a kid I had class. Next, I moved on to
literary masterpieces. I typed one and a half of those. Then I rested for a few
years. When I took up my Tippex again, I was into blockbusters and busted my balls for a few more years. Obviously, I failed, or you would have heard of
me. Finally, I settled on comedy sci-fi. I go into the reasons why in an
interview I did for the Boson Books newsletter. But, briefly: I liked the
limitless possibilities of stories set in space and time, and have a passing
interest in history. And then I struck lucky. A book I wrote about two characters laughing their
way through the byways of time, a double act, got accepted for publication. To
be honest, I didn�t expect it to grab anyone�s attention. I wrote it for
myself, in pretty much my own voice(s), and never tried to second-guess any
audience. In other words, I broke all my own writing rules. But there was some
method in my madness. Somewhere up in that lonely laboratory of my mind I was concocting a masterplan. I was just waiting for the lightning of chance to strike...the right person to pick up my manuscript. Someone whose sense of humour would spark with mine and bring the monster I was creating to life. Tempus Fugit was born!
As
I�m sure you know, the chances of getting published if you�re not a celebrity
or an established author are slim to anorexic. You have to give yourself an
edge, I told myself. Either you have to be brilliantly original (er, no can
do), or you have to be funny. I opted for the second. A story is a very subjective
thing- I mean, readers could dismiss it, even though it�s brilliant, as they
frequently do. How many bestsellers-that-were-turned-down-twenty-times-stories do you know? But humour, now that�s a different story. If I write a good story, but shoot it up with an overdose of comedy, that could hit the spot. You see, I
reasoned, if I can make an editor/publisher/agent laugh, I would be bypassing
the natural subjective prejudice they all have towards unknown writers. (I'd compare it to heart-surgery, but most of them don't have one! Hehe.) Anyway, something very subjective becomes more objective, because if they laugh- almost
a visceral thing- they have to admit to themselves that the writing works, and
if it works on them it will work on others. They cannot be sure of this with a
straightforward novel. I had my edge, but only if I could sustain a humorous
narrative over a novel�s length. That�s the hard bit.
It�s
mostly hard because it takes such a long time. And the doubts start to creep
in. Is this funny or silly? Will anyone apart from my mother laugh at this? And
what exactly is a joke? Avoid trying to answer that last one, it�ll drive you
insane! No, you have to do what everybody else does and slog it out for the
duration, till you reach that South Pole that is a finished novel. I can�t tell
you how to make up jokes- we may have incompatible senses of humour. But I will
say this: the humour must spring from the action; there must be conflict and
twists a-plenty, you must write in your own voice, and you must not bore your
reader. Readers are patient, but they will never forgive you if you bore them,
or insult their intelligence. I find this last one the most difficult, because
you never know how clever they are. I suppose it�s marginally better to come across as being a bit silly, rather than boring. Just make sure what you�re writing is interesting, or, better still, outspoken. Well, you know, this is the greatest problem of them all: what shall I write?
I
don�t know. You can get shot on some writers� boards for even asking this
question. If you don�t know what to write, they�ll flame: call yourself a writer! But, really, it is the hardest thing. My advice is write about something you feel emotionally drawn to. With me it
was self-identity and parenthood issues, in my novel, Tempus Fugit. Plug-plug. Whatever
you write, it�s got to be appealing. Comedy appeals to the intellect, because a
lot of it is word play, but it is also about real human behaviour. The jokes won't work unless the reader recognises the psychology of the characters, and
cares about what they�re going through. Hey, we�re back to old Sigmund!
I'll be posting some articles in the Writing section of the site over the next few months, in which I will attempt to give advice of a more practical nature on comedy writing. With special reference, of course, to my own work. That's if I can find anything funny in it. (That was a joke.)