Sad and scary things are universal. Evolution and Emotion have teamed up to make the dark-and-unknown scary and death-and-dying sad. Things that make us laugh is more nuanced and varies more from culture to culture, person to person . . . and political party to political party. (Memes featuring cats and ducks with guns wearing MAGA hats is currently making some conservatives chuckle and many liberals roll their eyes.)
In the quote below, Scott Dikkers poses the question that The Onion and the Babylon Bee take a stab at daily: “What if you want to make Readers laugh?”
I’ve been reading–and attempting to write–funny. The former is easier than the latter, though it is surprisingly rare to find a book that makes you laugh out loud. It takes more time to set-up the joke in literature than it does using quick visuals or physical humor seen in film and television. Scott Dikker’s book How to Write Funny attempts to offer a recipe. (Dikkers is the founder of The Onion.) In his book, Dikkers’ mentions a quote from E/B. White: “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process.” Dikkers is correct, his book isn’t funny, but there were a few interesting tips I’ll share. You can learn more about Dikkers and his writing in GoodReads. And if you know of any books that made you laugh out loud, let me know!
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