This month, Crys is joined by Janet, Marianne, and J Thorn for another book club, this time reading How To Write Funny Characters by Scott Dikkers. They discuss hot takes, useful advice, and how they will incorporate this book’s lessons into their writing craft.
Question of the week: What were your hot takes from How To Write Funny Characters by Scott Dikkers? Share your answer here!
Show Notes
How To Write Funny Characters by Scott Dikkers
Transcript
Crys: Hello friends. Welcome to the Write Away Podcast. We are here with our January book club discussion, where we are discussing How to Write Funny Characters. And fun fact, I accidentally read half of How to Write Funny, the first book of the series, because I had both of them on my Kindle and just grabbed the first one I saw, and halfway through I’m like, when is he going to get to the archetypes? And then realized I was in the wrong book.
But we don’t have JP this week because his job is evil and assigned him to work on California hours this week. So he’s not able to make it. But we do have two of our regular guests.
Janet: Hi, I’m Janet Kitto.
Marianne: Marianne Hansen.
Crys: And our special guest this week is our friend J Thorn.
J: Hello, hello.
Crys: All right. So this book was actually brought to our attention by you, sir. This is a book you read several months ago, maybe not quite a year, I think. Is that correct?
J: About that, yeah.
Crys: Did you read How to Write funny before you read How to Write Funny Characters?
J: I don’t remember the order, but I read every book in the series.
Crys: I’m curious, Janet, because I found the fact that I had read a good bit of How to Write Funny before I read this book super helpful with a lot of the terminology he uses later on in the book, did you feel lost at any point from having read them out of order?
Janet: Yeah, I know. He says it’s a prerequisite to read How to Write Funny for the funny filters, but like I had no issue with any of the content.
Crys: Alright, cool. I was just curious. But before we get into our full discussion I’ll give a little description of the book. And so this whole series is a book on how to write funny. He’s talking specifically to writers because writing relies so much more heavily on technique, in his words, then when you are acting in front of people, because when you’re acting in front of people, you can use personality, you can use physicality, you can use timing and gestures to cover over and to create a different level of humor that you don’t have access to when you are using only words.
So I found that this was a really good approach for those of us who want to increase humor in our books, who like to write funny, and might want to know, okay, what am I actually doing instinctively and what are the words for it, and maybe more ways of setting up our stories to be more humorous. Does that description feel like it covers the gist of it to everybody?
I’m curious, and Marianne, you’ve said some things about wondering if it’s possible to learn to be funny. So I’m going to put you on the stand. Give us your questions/rant.
Marianne: I think sometimes I think of funny as kind of like, you know what, some people are born tone deaf. Like they can practice as much as they possibly want and they’ll be able to get close, but they won’t be able to get quite the right sound. And I think there are times when I will hear people and I’ll think, oh, you’re trying so hard and I know exactly what you’re trying to do, but you do not have that. And by saying this, it makes me sound like I know what funny is.
When you can say whether or not a person is tone deaf, it’s more objective rather than subjective. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe some people who are tone deaf think everybody else is. And so I just think some people you just can’t teach and I think that’s okay. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I just think that needs to be a possibility in case there’s somebody out there that’s trying and trying, and people are still saying, no, you just don’t got it.
Crys: I really liked your reference of tone deaf as a comparison, because I think I read somewhere, once upon a time, that with Mandarin first language speakers there’s only a three or four and that’s a tone of language, so it requires that you can hit the tones.
There’s only like a 3% or 4% of that population that actually is tone deaf, that even growing up in that population. So I agree with you that there’s always going to be a percentage of people who just are never going to be able to be funny on purpose. They’re probably the people who are the funniest not on purpose, which would fit into some of the archetypes for sure and could be funny. But I think that the audience of this book is generally going to be people who have at least some capacity to be funny and want to learn how to do it on purpose, possibly. What are your guys’ thoughts?
Janet: I just want to put some hope out there because I think that with practice, you can still learn comedy.
J: I like that. I’m not disagreeing with Marianne, I think I’m seeing a little different way, in that I don’t know if Dicker’s goal is to make writers funny, as opposed to making them funnier.
So I think that’s what’s tricky is like with the tone-deaf example, like people with perfect pitch, like that’s very scientific. Either you have perfect pitch or you don’t. You don’t like sort of have perfect pitch or you don’t have close to perfect pitch. Like you have it or you don’t.
I don’t think funny’s that way. Like I think it’s a spectrum, right? And some people are funnier than others. Marianne is way funnier than me, but I do some stupid stuff that’s funny. So I’m not not funny. So I think for me, that’s what’s really empowering about this book is that it’s basically saying wherever you are on the funny spectrum, you can move yourself forward. Like you can be a little bit funnier. And if you already have a natural affinity for humor, then maybe you can be explosively funny. But even if you don’t feel like you have a great sense of humor, you can make some progress with these techniques.
Marianne: In this book too, I thought was great in how they have the archetypes there and how he talks about it. I loved everything until probably chapter 10 when it started talking about writing out your outline and those types of things. But everything else, I thought this is perfect to be able to take these characters and to look at them and how you’re using them and how to develop them.
And I was listening to a podcast and a director was on it, which is all very specific, and he had some sort of a thing in Men in Black, and Tommy Lee Jones was really upset because he thought that he was not going to get any of the laughs and that Will Smith would get every single one of them. And the director said, “No, you have to play it straight because that is the funniest bit is having you be straight versus Will Smith. You will get the jokes, like you will get the laughs and he won’t.” And I think it’s interesting, the more you study it, the more you can see how that nuance is and where the funny, for lack of a better phrase truly is. And it may not be where you think it is or automatically guess where it would be.
Crys: I would say at least a good half of the book is about the archetypes and that’s where he spends most of his time. And when you were talking about this book originally, J, like that also was the thing that I think you took away most from this book. And you’re the only one who’s actually had time to put this in practice. So I don’t want to distract you from the thought thread that you’re on, but after that, would you to give us a description of what the archetypes are for people who haven’t read the book. And then maybe talk about what you’ve been doing with them.
J: Yeah, that’s a good setup. And it’s exactly what I was going to mention. Excellent. So here’s the podcast takeaway, like here’s the soundbite that’s gonna encapsulate the whole conversation. This was the revelation to me. When you’re writing comedy, not performing, but when you’re writing it, the funny is not in the gag or the joke. The funny is in the archetype and the context in which the archetype exists. That’s what creates the humor. So like in the book he talks about Melissa McCarthy’s character in Bridesmaids.
Crys: Her architects where the Lothario and the Slob, right?
J: Right, right. So it was, you take two architecture that don’t necessarily go together, like the lothario and the slob, you then put them in a non-traditional gender recognition, because usually those are attributed to a man in most of those kinds of stories. And then you put that character in a straight situation, and that’s the humor. Cause he’s like, you’ll run out of jokes, you’ll run outta gags, and so that’s where the comedy comes from.
So I’m such a nerd. I took all three books, I know you guys can’t see this on the podcast, but I did my Kindle highlights, I then printed them out and put them into a spiral binder and went through and highlighted. So this is like my guide when I’m writing. And so my approach, and I’m using this right now, my work in progress right now is a serial that I’m going to release in July. And it’s a satire, it’s dark comedy. And I intentionally wanted to write this because I take myself way too seriously. So even if no one else thinks it’s funny, I’m laughing at it. And I get my wife to laugh at it. And for all of you, there’s nothing better than getting your spouse to laugh. At least for me, I love that. So like mission accomplished already.
But what I love about this is that those forty archetypes, first of all forty is a lot. Like you have a nice palette to work from. It’s not like three. But what Scott talks about in the book is that you create hybrids out of these archetypes and that’s where they become really interesting. So you can take, like we were talking about, Lothario, like the sexual overdrive, the Casanova, and you mix that with a slob, and those two normally don’t go together. Now you’ve created a really interesting character. Comedy aside, that’s just an interesting character.
So when I was starting to write this series that I’m on and I’m creating these characters, I intentionally went in and spent time creating these hybrid archetypes, that I knew when I put that character into a very straight situation it was just going to be funny. That character was just going to do what they do. Like I didn’t have to write the gag or create a joke. They were just being themselves and then that’s what made it funny. So that’s how I’ve been using it.
Crys: I think one of the best things I took away from this book was what he said, and this was just putting something I know in a different way of phrasing it that kind of just hammered it stronger in my head, is that the humor and the strength of the character comes from knowing what they’re going to do AKA expecting what they’re going to do.
And I think a lot of writers we’ll be like, well, if they do the same thing every time that’s boring. But that’s not the case. When I think about and thinking most extremely about like the comedy comedies I’ve watched, when I am anticipating that the character is going to do the thing the character does, when it happens, I get that joy, I get that laugh. And of course, like the best part is like when they do what’s expected, but it’s twisted, it’s unique. That’s the special sparkle a lot of times.
And I’m trying to think of an example, and my mind’s going blank. So if anybody has any examples off the top of their head. But I was mentioning Friends earlier and Joey for example. I really like Joey scenes cause he’s the dummy, right? He’s the dummy in that friend group. And when he is especially dummy, that always cracks me up. Like we’re expecting it, we know he’s going to be the dummy, but it never stops being enjoyable.
J: Yeah. I can share an example from my manuscript. I have a character by the name of Tammy Griffin and she goes by Grifter, and she’s a lesbian, and I made her the Lothario/Slob. And I made her a couples’ therapist. So she’s a divorced lesbian who is a couple’s therapist.
And the other thing about her is that she’s not a true Lothario, in that she tells these stories about her sexual exploits and they’re not true. So every time, like she brings up a story, all the other characters kind of eye-roll and they listen to her and they know she’s just totally making this up because she feels like it gains her some sort of status within the group.
Just by placing her in a scene and having her say what she would say, I think it creates humor. Now readers will decide that. I think it’s funny, but readers will decide that. But I think that’s how you can use those archetypes. And as you said, Crys, they’re going to do what they do. Even if they do it repeatedly, it’s still going to be funny. So she’s always got a story about a place where she was with a hook up at a certain time, but she brings it up every time in a different story. And I think that’s the recurring gag.
Crys: Yeah. And the situation changed, the other characters around her change, and that changes the feeling of the humor, even though the expectation for the character is going to be the same all the time.
Before we started recording, Janet, you said that you were testing this out in mapping characters from different things to see if it fit. What were your thoughts as you were doing that?
Janet: Yeah, I used the movie Don’t Look Up, and this one is great because it’s possible and true, and so the contrast in that. And I was thinking, does it work because they’re so cliche? You’ve got a president who she’s a psycho leader, it’s not hard for us to think about how this could play out. And her leadership, everyone takes it very seriously, even though she’s got obvious weaknesses.
So it was really fun for me to look at it. And the one that I wasn’t sure about and you guys can, if you’ve seen it, you can let me know. I was thinking about Dr. Randall Mindy. That’s a character that Leo DiCaprio plays, and he’s obviously like a loser. He’s the nerd. But I think the one that works in this with the contrast with the other character, Bri, Kate Blanchette character, is he’s the Naif.
He’s so inexperienced and that’s what creates all the conflict in the movie. I’ve found it really useful to use this book to look at the 40 character archetypes, they’re listed here, to think about the combinations and just take this movie and pick it apart. It was really fun.
J: That’s a great idea, Janet. Just doing an analysis of something. I love that movie. I watched it twice. And I think the other thing that makes Dr. Mindy funny is that he’s cast, as you said, this academic, this nerd, this Naif, and yet when he gets put into the spotlight, he’s seen as sexy.
And so you have that dynamic between who he thinks he is in his perception, and then that plays into the plot as well. I won’t spoil anything, but like he gets this persona that’s not really what he is. And that kind of makes it funny too, because the way he reacts to things.
Janet: Yeah. Yeah. And I love the reveal. I don’t want to reveal too much, but the reveal that we get about Bri too, because she’s someone that actually was a serious journalist and you see the contrast in what she does now as like a talk show host, and how she’s involved and in opposition to the forces that are against this team. They’re trying to let everyone know we’ve got six months to live. And so I love how that plays against Jonah Hill’s character. That he’s the toady, like I’d never heard that term before and now I’ve got this great example because he flaunts the roles and he’s sucking up to the power.
Marianne: I haven’t seen that show, but coming from someone who hasn’t seen it, dealing with when he talks about archetype make-over techniques, where you take something and change their age or change their ethnicity in order to make a character that’s been around for a long time new. The minute I heard that, and this happens a lot with films, but the minute I heard that Leonardo DiCaprio was the nerdy scientist, I was just like, uh huh, okay, yeah. I knew that there would be a twist with that because Leonardo DiCaprio is not going to be playing the nerdy scientist, unless it’s part of a gag.
And just knowing the vice president’s son, and now I can’t think of his name right now. Jonah Hill. Like knowing that’s who that was underneath Meryl Streep, I’m like, okay. Like you can already see the dynamic building with that. And I think that a lot of times with writing too, I don’t know if anybody else does this, but I’ll have the person who I’m thinking of in my head when I’m writing the character. And then sometimes it will actually look like a real person. And sometimes there’ll be this fuzzy being in my head. And I think that will also affect the comedic characters as well, how we are picturing them in our head and changing it slightly so that it’s an archetype that’s new again.
Janet: So how did you feel, Marianne, then when he talks about never being on the nose and he suggests don’t use celebrities, don’t reference current sports heroes, or movie stars, because something is going to get lost in your archetype by using those.
Marianne: Oh no, I’m just saying like in my head as I’m writing it.
So I don’t generally put anything current in what I’m writing, or name brand, or anything like that. Is that what you mean? Or is it the fact that using that idea in the back of my head? Cause more of it is just, it’s just a way for me, especially when I’m doing the description, of me being able to describe the person more accurately if I have a picture of them in my head.
And then one of my characters who looks like Ricky Martin may or may not refer to shaking a bom. But I feel like that’s timeless and universal, so I’m okay with that. I think everyone at some point will need to and will have had shaken a bon.
J: I think Janet was referring to in the book, Scott said, if you base your characters solely on fictional characters, it’s like a copy of a copy. Like when I first started writing, I would cast characters and I would find pictures of celebrities on the internet, and maybe in the role of a movie, and I would use them.
And I stopped doing that because I’ve realized, oh, cause they’re a character playing a character, so it’s a bit odd. So what I started doing, and I will never reveal, is I start using people from my real life. If you think about the people who you interact with, they’re all comedic archetypes. All of them, right? So I started using real people, and for me, it totally clicked into place. And I was like, oh, what would Bill say in this situation? This is how Bill would react. And it’s really true and spot on.
Crys: So my question for you, Marianne, as a more intuitive comedic writer, is you seem to have enjoyed like this discussion of archetypes. How do you think it’s going to play into how you write it all now that you’ve read this and have this knowledge?
Marianne: I think it will in that, in actuality, it’s actually been a lot what J just said. I take experiences that I’ve had or situations that I’ve watched, and I use those. I will manipulate them a little bit and change things a little bit, but the thing that I liked about this, about reading this now, is before I just knew what was funny and what wasn’t, but now I can label it a little bit more and put in a little bit more characteristics or descriptions that go with that type. And to make sure that it’s not cliche or it’s not stereotype.
I really enjoyed the phrasing he used about make sure that you use archetypes, not stereotypes. That really just kind of was like a “pow” moment in my head. I haven’t thought about it quite that way before. And how you can stay away from dangerous areas, if I can state it that way.
But I think I am going to read his other three books about this because sometimes people will ask me, is this funnier? Is this not? And I can usually say yes or no, but he helps me to be able to say why.
J: Yeah. If you guys want, it might be cool, I’ll read a very short excerpt of one of these archetypes that people get a sense of what we’re talking about. This I think is relevant because Janet mentioned Jonah Hill’s character in Don’t Look Up.I think could be also this archetype, it’s number five, the bumbling authority.
So the bumbling authority is a character that has some position of authority in society. Usually a relatively low rank and who fancies themselves powerful and influential. The bumbling authority often has some kind of insignia that they’re compelled to show everyone, a badge or ID or certificate of some kind, that proves they have authority. Audiences love to see authority figures lampoon, which is the sole function of this character.
And then he goes on to give examples like: Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ralph Kamden on The Honeymooners, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Buzz Lightyear, Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, Chief Wiggum on The Simpsons. So these are examples of the bumbling authority. And it’s a real succinct way of creating. That’s one of the archetypes and there’s forty of those. So it’s a really great resource.
Marianne: And I will say too, I, once again, listened to this book and I highly recommend the audio book because he puts in the movie clips. It’s not him reading the script, it’s the scene from the film. And that was incredibly helpful and funnier.
Crys: So there’s one thing that I instinctually rebelled against later on in the book. And I’m curious what you all feel about it. So I’m going to read a couple of excerpts from the book, and this is where he’s talking about the difference between dramatic characters, or dramatic stories and comedic characters.
And he’s classifying the two modern types of stories as comedy and drama. And comedies are the stories to make us laugh and drama or the stories to make us cry. Dramas encompass tragic and epic stories and comedies encompass everything else, including most horror, science fiction, and fantasy, anything that could be fun.
And so he says dramatic characters are meant to be complex, nuanced, and contradictory. Audiences want living, breathing, flesh and blood characters in drama. But comedy on the other hand doesn’t need any of that. Comedy is any work of entertainment the audience is meant to treat not like real life, but like life through a fun house mirror. It’s an artist, crazy interpretation of real life where one central thing is off kilter and things don’t work the same way as they do in the real world. Audiences don’t expect the characters in a comedy to be believable flesh and blood people. They expect them to be mere symbols or two-dimensional representations of people. They’re us, but through the fun house mirror.
And he goes on to discuss a bit of like when people try to blend them. But he still sticks to this point and he emphasizes it several times that anything that’s not drama, the characters need to be limited to these two-dimensional representations. And I really didn’t like that. But I haven’t had enough time to sit down with some of my favorite, like character, books, shows, and see if I feel like how he described it is an accurate representation of what I see in fiction and media.
Do y’all have any thoughts on that?
J: No, honestly, didn’t even hit my radar.
Crys: You were too excited. You were running off to write the archetypes right then.
J: I didn’t even pause to think about that. For me, yeah, the archetypes are the golden. I don’t remember if it was in this book or other books, but he has whole sections on the industry and like breaking in and the writers’ room. And as a novelist, like none of that was really relevant to me. And so those parts, I just glossed over. I probably did that for that part too.
Crys: He does have, I will say like at the end of this book, he has like some insights on the business of being a writer. That was very like entrepreneurial, indie publishing focused. Even if he didn’t say it that way, he’s like, yeah, like you should be merchandising your stuff. It’s a view I agree with and love that, but this particular thing, I just had this urge of like, I need to examine this and see if I feel like he is accurate when I look at things closely. Like when I put it under a microscope, are these just 2D characters that have just enough depth to make me perceive them as 3D characters, or not?
Janet: Yeah. And I took that when I was reading that thinking about comedy is it’s something that we want to have. We want to understand quickly. And so that’s why they’re two dimensional. As writers, we don’t want to write somebody that we know, we want to write somebody that everyone can relate to.
Crys: I agree with that. Like when it’s like, this is a comedy, like it is an actual comedy genre. Like that, I’m like, yeah, that makes sense. We’re not going to get into the full depth of a character when we’re leaning on the laughter most of the time. But he pushes everything that’s not drama, like most sci-fi and fantasy, into the comedy bucket. And that’s the particular part where I was like, I don’t know if I agree.
Marianne: Well, isn’t comedy the way that we’re able to understand the drama of our lives without going completely and totally insane. I can understand where maybe a comedic character doesn’t need all of the background and all of that, but I think a lot of it has to do with what your theme of the book is. I mean, I would think that if every book has to have a theme, all of your characters could not possibly be two dimensional and accomplish a theme. Maybe I think the word theme is deeper than what I think it is, but I think that even the comedic characters have wants and needs, and ups and downs, and good and bad things happen to them.
He also says, don’t just go for the gag. So I would think that each of your characters is going to be complex. Unless it’s some guy just standing on the street corner, but then why do you even include that person?
J: So this may or may not be related to what you’re talking about, Crys, but one of the other revelations I had with this book, and I think that you folks here and the folks listening to us, there is serious potential here because there’s a lot of stuff that I read and watch that’s funny and it’s a terrible story. It’s terrible storytelling, but it’s just funny, it’s entertaining. And I don’t think I necessarily want to call out anything specific to that, but I feel like those of us who are story nerds, who really care about story, if you can layer some comedy on top of a story, to me that just feels like that’s the golden ticket. Like that’s it. Like it’s not just about being funny, maybe you bring people in with the wisecracks, but they stay for the story.
And I think that’s an opportunity that we all have. And I think that’s what I was so excited about finding this resource is I spent so long being serious about story, and I felt like, oh wow, if I could tell some jokes but put a really solid story underneath it, it would hopefully be really appealing to a lot of people.
Crys: Yeah. And there’s this whole section after the archetypes that I really appreciated. I’m going to pull up the table of contents just so I can look at it. And I think a lot of it was in the why should we care, how to make the audience care, which is chapter seven. So like this little bit about like how he describes comedy and like this two-dimensional character. It was like this bit at the end I was just like, I have loved almost everything you’ve said until this.
And the, how do we make audiences care, it expands on something that Matt Bird references or talks about in The secrets of Story, which is one of my favorite craft books. But he goes even further into it and that’s the irony And the contrast because that’s so important to comedy.
And I think that’s so important to storytelling, but comedy falls flat without it. So he goes so much deeper into it and how to make the audience care long enough to stick around for the characters to grow. And I thought that was, probably even more than the archetypes for me, that little section was the part where I was like, ah, yes, if everybody could just grasp this, we’d have so many good, strong stories.
J: Yeah. I don’t know, Crys, if you got to this part, and I think this is in the first book, but the seven funny filters.
Crys: I just started reading them and hadn’t finished through them.
J: Yeah. Yeah. So characters. Everything we’ve been talking about so far, that’s one of the seven funny filters. All forty archetypes is one of them. The other ones are, and this is what you were talking about is like irony, shock, hyperbole, wordplay, reference, a mad cap, parody, analogy, and misplaced focus. I think those are some of them. I’m looking at my notes here.
These are all techniques that you can use to create that contrast or that dynamic that you talked about previously. It’s this idea of putting two things in the same place that don’t necessarily go together, and just by doing that makes it funny.
Janet: This book talks about dialogue too. And I love that he’s taken this approach to say, you can’t just write funny lines, that doesn’t make the comedy, and the dialogue should come in last. And we all know the dialogue doctor, we all love Jeff Elkins. And so we know what he’s talked about, the importance of dialogue.
But I love the idea in this book, how he talks about having a really strong outline, basically. Having the strong story beats, making sure your archetypes are doing the work that they should be doing. And then like, J, you said this earlier, then the dialogue just comes. It just flows because they’re saying what they should be saying, and it’s funny.
Marianne: Yeah. See, that’s where I started to divide off because when I sit down and I start writing my first draft, it’s 80% dialogue. I can hear voice. I don’t know maybe if it says more about me personally, that I can hear voices easily in my head, but that’s what comes first are those voices.
And then after that, I’m like, okay, where are they saying this? And why are they saying that? And that’s also what my therapist asked me too.
J: I think too, it’s also the difference in that you, you have pretty perfect comedy pitch. Like, you know what’s funny. And I think you, Marianne, could sit down and just write pure dialogue and it would be funny. I think this is more for schleps like me trying to figure it out and it’s given me a framework to do it.
So I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing that you can sit down and riff that dialogue. And I’ve said this to you privately, I hope I’m not embarrassing you, but I think that’s one of your superpowers is you have this really great sense of humor, this timing and word choice that is just natural to you.
Marianne: Yeah, the harder your childhood is, the funnier you are. Oh my gosh. It’s a good thing. My mom doesn’t know how to use podcasts. We’re fine.
Crys: And I can see also with all the work that you’ve done this year or in the last two years, really, like pursuing different deep dives. You did the deep dive with Jeff and did a dialogue only manuscript. I think you could still do that really well. But like knowing who your archetypes were before you got to that manuscript would make figuring out what those character voices are so much easier for that dialogue only manuscript.
J: Absolutely.
Crys: Anybody have any other thoughts they wanted to hit up before we wrap up?
J: I would just encourage folks to give this a chance. I know that when I see resources like this, my just-in-time learning mentality kicks in and I go, I don’t care about comedy, I’m not writing comedy. But I think that’s kind of like saying like, well, I don’t care about relationships. I’m doing an epic fantasy, I’m not writing about relationships. Relationships are kind of part of every story. And I think comedy is kind of part of every story. Like even your darkest scariest horror has to have moments of levity, otherwise it’s really depressing.
So resist the temptation and write this off and saying that you’re not a humorist because I think it can be really applied to many more things than just people writing funny stuff.
Crys: Yeah, I would agree because while his focus is comedy, because that is his realm of expertise, so many of the tactics that he uses, like you could say, this is how you create an emotional response through these contrasts. And the awkwardness, specifically, is more comedy related. But all of the contrasts and kind of the depth between what one character expects and what one character happens, could be the cause of so many different emotions and not just laughter and humor.
Marianne: I want to read the first book though. Part of me does wish I had read the first book before reading this, because I would love to see what he has to say about irony. Especially because I printed off, when you buy this he gives you a free cheat sheet, and I printed it off, I put it down, and then my dog ate it.
And I looked at it and I thought, there’s something here. There’s some sort of comedic gods looking down at this right now with my dog eating the how to help you write comedy paper, homework
Crys: Yeah. I plan on reading them all as well. For sure. I really enjoyed this.
Marianne: I think I’m going to listen to them in hopes that it has different voices.
J: Just like the ones in your head.
Janet: I was going to,
J: sorry, Janet. We’ll let you have that one.
Crys: Thank you guys so much for joining us on this discussion. This book was one that’s going to stick with me and I know I’m going to be examining a lot of what I read and watch right now, trying to figure out these different archetypes. And sitting here with the book open, at least the table of contents, being like, are they a space nut or are they a Naif? But I’m like, okay, I gotta pull this apart so that I can like really understand it. But I’m excited about doing that.
I assigned myself homework, Marianne. So maybe that can fit into the dog eating your self-assigned homework somewhere.
We will be posting up our choices for voting for next month’s book very soon. So please check out Patreon if you want to help us decide what we’re going to read for February. And I hope you all have a lovely evening.
Marianne: Thanks, bye.
Leave a Reply