Advice For Build-Up
- Thread starter Bunnymarn
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Paper, rock, nuke.
I guess people don't like the technicalities of humour here? I think there's a Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) which has a great breakdown of humour. There are categories (meanness, cuteness, rudeness, weirdness, wit, recognition) and most human is two of these used together well. For example Catbert is Cute and Mean, therefore funny.
Bam, I hit 2,000.
I guess people don't like the technicalities of humour here? I think there's a Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) which has a great breakdown of humour. There are categories (meanness, cuteness, rudeness, weirdness, wit, recognition) and most human is two of these used together well. For example Catbert is Cute and Mean, therefore funny.
Bam, I hit 2,000.
You haven't given us much to go on, Bunnyman, so I'll keep it general: humour comes from broken expectations, so either establish an expectation in the audience or find an existing expectation, then break it.
Example: men are expected to wear men's clothing, so a man in a dress = hilarious!
Better example: you remember Alyson Hannigan in American Pie? The "band camp" girl? The reason that famous line towards the end was funny was because the whole movie had built this expectation of what sort of person she was, and it was suddenly turned on its head. (No spoilers here, even for old films!) If you had known what she was really talking about in her band camp stories since the start, the punchline wouldn't have been funny.
It works for rossatdi's example above, too: people don't expect cute things to be mean, so it's funny.
You're asking the right question. Generally, the more you build something up the funnier it will be - as long as you build something up to be different to how it turns out to be.
Which is why if you ever talk about how funny a joke is before telling it, it's not as funny.
Example: men are expected to wear men's clothing, so a man in a dress = hilarious!
Better example: you remember Alyson Hannigan in American Pie? The "band camp" girl? The reason that famous line towards the end was funny was because the whole movie had built this expectation of what sort of person she was, and it was suddenly turned on its head. (No spoilers here, even for old films!) If you had known what she was really talking about in her band camp stories since the start, the punchline wouldn't have been funny.
It works for rossatdi's example above, too: people don't expect cute things to be mean, so it's funny.
You're asking the right question. Generally, the more you build something up the funnier it will be - as long as you build something up to be different to how it turns out to be.
Which is why if you ever talk about how funny a joke is before telling it, it's not as funny.