 Comedy: August 19, 2015 Issue [#7169] |
  Comedy
This week: Inappropriate Laughter Edited by: Sara♥Jean  
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Inappropriate Laughter
If you think about it carefully, most of what we laugh at should not actually be funny. So why do we do it?
So, laughter is truly contagious. I think that people are certainly more likely to laugh when they hear other people laughing, even if the things being laughed at aren't particularly funny. If you doubt me, try this youtube video of newscasters who break into random laughter (or not so random, sometimes it is quite evident what they are chuckling at):
Contagious, wasn't it? Laughter is that way. (I happen to also think crying is contagious, but luckily, I don't have to worry about that.)
One evidence of this, especially in daytime television, is a "laugh track". Remove that laugh track from many shows, and they become significantly less funny.
In books and stories, we don't have this advantage. We don't have an audience that we can flash with an "applause" or "laughter" sign, and we can't insert a laugh track in our story. We can, however, have characters who are amused by happenings. We need to be careful about how we apply this power.
If the character is rude or mean about what they are amused by, it will nearly immediately make a villain in the eyes of the reader. For some characters, we want that. We want them to be hated, and so adding in the mean type of inappropriate humor works well. However, it does not encourage people to laugh along. It makes them rather disgusted, normally.
For characters that are loved, we really need to be careful how they react to the funny situations. When someone falls, this type of character can still be amused, but they would be the type who is amused and still extends a hand to help the person up. THIS is the type of character that your readers will laugh WITH. They tease along with someone, rather than picking at sore emotional wounds.
Another good way to make your readers laugh is through slapstick. If someone is clumsy, or silly, or ditzy, or just outright abnormal and can completely not mind being that way, then they can be a great source of laughter for your readers, especially if these types of characters are prone to laugh at themselves, brush themselves off, and move forward. |
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