  Comedy
This week: That's a Verb? Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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"I had thought - I had been told - that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery... and a sharing... against pain and sorrow and defeat."
- Valentine Michael Smith
(Robert Heinlein,
Stranger in a Strange Land) |
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Verbing Weirds Language
As writers, it's important for us to know the structure of language, how words fit together to form sentences, how sentences form paragraphs, and how to avoid making paragraphs suck. You know, the rules.
As comedy writers, it's important for us to break those rules.
After all, comedy is all about the unexpected.
Today, I'm going to talk about one of the most egregious misuses of language you can inflict upon an unsuspecting audience - which can make it all the more funny.
Incidentally, "Verbing Weirds Language" is a quote from this Calvin and Hobbes comic. "Remember when 'access' was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed."
You say you don't do that? Yes, you do. You have a facebook page? Have you ever 'friended' someone on it? Then you verbed a noun!
Since people are going to keep doing that no matter what language purists do, we comedy writers might as well make fun of it. Comedy it, that is. We can car down to the grocery store to get some food, then dinner it. Or we could shirt and pants ourselves before restauranting. We can even airplane over to another country and language ourselves into big trouble... oh, wait, we're doing that right now.
And the fact is, whatever purists might mouth, nouns have been verbed for a long time. We shoe a horse, we cart our luggage, and we jet (though not airplane) across the country. Language changes. And as writers, we're either on the cutting edge of change, or we're dusted.
Which brings me to one oddity of verbing nouns. The other day, someone suggested I should clean my house, now that I'm living alone. I looked at her oddly. "What?" I replied. "Why do you use 'clean' as a verb?"
She laughed. But I was being totally serious. |
Some fun with words:
From The Inbox:
jpreilly1 writes: Love the newsletter. See what you think of this.
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  writes: I really enjoy Comedy. In fact, I've writen a few comedy stories. Here is one of them. It's a Spoof on the old Tak Your Son to Work day thing.
and: Here is another one of my comedies. Done in the spirit of John Wayne and Mel Brooks, and making a mokery of censorship in movies and telivision, this is a funny spoof of a scene in John Wayne's True Grit.
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Last time, in "Comedy Newsletter (July 28, 2010)" , I talked about how FREAKING hot it was.
OldRoses  :
Thanks for including my Exploding Cats story in your overheated July newsletter! It was my response to everyone who has asked me how my poor cats have been faring in the heat.
Sometimes you just get fed up with the same question asked over and over so you come up with a smart-ass response. Be sure not to use it on the next unsuspecting, well-meaning person, though... they don't know you're fed up with the same question. Exception: One time I went up to a tall person and asked him, "How's the weather up there?" He spat on me and said, "Raining. What's it like down there?" I totally deserved it.
saxitlurg:
Robert, I grew up in a place where you get 2nd degree burns from your seat belts on summer afternoons. Me and my bandaged hands salute you in your quest to beat the heat with the healing power of laughter. (Seriously though, not exaggerating, I really have gotten burns from seat belt buckles)
Well, that's probably better than what could happen if you don't wear your seat belt. Seriously, though... buy one of them sunshades for your car, and keep the windows cracked 
LJPC - the tortoise :
Hi Robert!
Great newsletter as always. I find it harder to laugh when the sweat is trickling down my back and into my undies (I live in Egypt where it's 110o in the shade - if I could find any), but your NL did the trick. Your discussion of similes to eject humor into descriptions was excellent and really helps with something I'm working on now.
I'm curious. Do you think it's easier to write comedy in first person POV or third person? Are there different styles needed for it?
Thanks again!  -- Laura
It really depends on the situation, and what you're trying to do with it. Hell, I've seen great comedy written in second person, which is probably the hardest of all to pull off. Third person in comedy tends to be more impersonal and universal, which works for many, many things... but first person makes you sympathize with the storyteller. Stand-up comedians almost always use first person, and most of what they say happened never really happened to them; it's just plain funnier when you think it did. For example: Above, I said I went up to a tall person... well, that didn't happen to me. I saw it on the internet. I just switched to first person for comedy effect (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)
And that's it for this time - next time you see me here, it'll be fall and we're going to start gearing up for Halloween - something the stores started to do in freaking JUNE. Until then,
LAUGH ON!!! |
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Comedy: August 25, 2010 Issue [#3931]
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