Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Sophia Bishop. Welcome to my class on
humor for fiction writers. Of all the things I teach human seems to be what scares
people the most. There's a feeling that they
don't know where to start. I think that learning
to write humorously as a bit like learning
to write poetry. No one's going to
be able to give you the rules and you'll need to spend some time developing
your own sensibilities for it. But there are
absolutely things you can be taught that will help you to start seeing
humorous situations and how you could
tease them out. And we're going to look at
one of those in this course. The concept I'm
gonna be using is a theory of humor that says, things are funny when we have two opposing scripts and I'll unpack what that
means in a moment. The class project, it will
be writing a portfolio of funny scenes from globally known and
beloved tale, Cinderella. Let's look at this idea
of opposing to scripts. This is a version of
the incongruence, the theory of humor, which says that things are funny when they violate
our expectations. And his particular version is associated with the researchers
Raskin under today. It says that when
you take the script for one scenario and
by script I mean just loosely the things we say and expect to happen
and oppose it to the script from another scenario than humor is the result. I take this example from beloved classic Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy. In the beginning the
universe was created. This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely
regarded as a bad move. This begins in a
biblical script, but it abruptly
switches out of it. The switch and script here is
the script of register from biblical to a sort of
journalistic commentary. Let's look at that one more time and you can see what I mean. There are lots of other kinds
of switch we could explore. This one happens in
the narrative voice, but some can happen
in the scene. We'll look at that
in the next class. Be useful to write
as a theory of human needs to not
just be correct. I mean, we can set to
joke until it's dead. It doesn't mean we
can create a new one. It needs to also
be generative and needs to help us
come up with ideas. Throughout this
course, I'm gonna be giving you five prompts that you can ask yourself at the beginning of a scene
that you want to make funny. And they're all based on this idea of two
opposing scripts. But they should offer
you possible setups. And within those five, there's a wide range
of possible setups you could use that will feel very fresh and different
to each other. They aren't exhaustive. I will leave the task
of an exhaustive theory of humor to philosophers, but they are something
to get you started. Here are the five
I'll be looking at. Undermining, overstating
loggerheads, robots, racism, and register switch. Before we get there
in the first-class, I'm going to quickly go through some tips for using chemo. Well, I'm going to look at
controlling the length, whether it's a line
of passage are seen. And also controlling where
the humerus located. Is it your narrative
voice or in the action? And then we'll get
on with our prompts. Throughout. I'm going to be using a couple of main books from my examples. Douglas Adams, The
Hitchhiker's Guide series, Louise Rennaissance,
Georgia Nicholson stories, specifically the first
book under songs, I'm full frontal snug and I authored the occasional,
we need to pay you. It doesn't matter if
you haven't read them, although for your own happiness, you should go and read them. But all you will
need for this course is something to write with. I'll see you there.
2. General guidelines: Hi, welcome back.
Okay, so before we get started with
our prompts for humor, I wanted to go over a couple of tips to help you write
your humor well. The first is going
to be deciding where to locate your humor. The three choices will consider, will often at your narrator
who's being serious. We're laughing at your
narrator who is being humorous or were laughing at the dialogue
and the situation. Let's see an example of each. So in the Georgia Nicolson books and they're being
told as a diary. And we are often laughing at the narrator who is
ostensibly being serious. Take this passage. No
time for yoga or make up. Oh, well, I'll start tomorrow. Got a low note, either
die ulama coats on a daily basis, he
must get up at dawn. Actually, I read somewhere
that he does GAAP adorn her grandiose
comparison of herself to the Dalai Lama and her wild underestimate of what the Dalai
Lama's life is like, create the Chaco, but we are laughing at her, not with her. You can also put humor
in the narrative voice, but the narrator is on our site. So take this from Douglas Adams, author product the mattress nervously and then
settlement himself. But in fact, he had
very little to be nervous about because
all mattresses grown in the swamps of score
until a seat or a very thoroughly killed and dried
before being put to service. Very few have ever
come to life again. If you were just
watching the scene, there'd be nothing to laugh
at because all of this is additional commentary
from Douglas Adams. So it's not the situation, it's the narrative voice. This happens in the
Jordan Nicholson books too, with lines like, I've decided that
my eyebrows have recovered enough to venture out, obviously not on their own. But sometimes the humor is in the character's dialogue
or in a situation. So although actually the scale of telling it well,
it's very important. We feel as if we're laughing
out what is happening. Here's an example
of comic action. It could have been more
boring than what did my dad trying to make his new
electric toothbrush work. However, there was a
bright moment when he got it tangled
up in his mustache. And some comic dialogue
Ofstead round and wildly. I didn't want to die. Now he held, I've still got a headache. I don't want to go to
heaven with a headache or Bill Krause and
wouldn't enjoy it. The first two ways
of writing humor, putting it in the
narrative voice, the territory of a
story that is humorous. A bubble allows, I
don't expect to feel really upset for or scared for the characters in these books because the narrative voice is effectively constantly
waving the flag of a joke that says it's okay, you don't have to
take this seriously. If you want readers to invest in your characters and feel
emotional for them, you're probably going to
want to restrict the humor to dialogue and situations. This is a sliding scale, but the more humor in
your narrative voice, the less seriously we
take the whole book. The other important
thing, of course, is to be consistent. You don't want to suddenly
start telling jokes and a narrative voice that until then has been fairly invisible. But you can certainly put characters in a funny
situation who up until now, I've not been in a funny
situation because that happens stuff life and a lot of serious books could
benefit from doing that. That's looking at where
to locate your human. Let's talk now about how to control humor that lasts
longer than a line. How can we extend it to be a scene or just a
passage within a scene, or to belong to one character
every time they return. An improvement sketch comedy. That's the idea of a game. A game is anything that
happens more than once. I think talking about playing
games rather than making jokes is a very useful way to
think about writing humor. You don't want to
suddenly tell knock, knock joke in the middle
of your products. You're looking to find something funny that
you can keep doing. And you can think of that as a game that has a single rule. Let's say you've got
one character who is trying to make a serious speech. It was simple rule could be
that another character keeps trying to clean up around them no matter
what else happens. That's what's easier to start generating ideas and to think, well, I've got to
think of a wiki line. What you then do
with that is think how many different ways
can I play this game? Maybe they can start
hoovering or they can dust something and it makes
everyone have a sneezing fit, or they spill something on
the speech maker and have to start cleaning them up while they carry on
with the speech. The kind of gave me juice and how your player will depend on your personal taste and
personal kind of humor. But the underlying structure is useful wherever your
humerus tastes. Let's take a look
at some rules of thumb for how to do this. Obviously nothing's
rule in comedy. But once you have been
told these guidelines, you will start spotting
them naturally happening all over the place when people are being humorous. The first is once
thrice or ad infinitum. If you do something once
fine, you can leave it there. If you do it again, there is an expectation that you'll
do it a third time. It just feels necessary once you've done it
more than three times. That's a sort of chaos clocks and it can happen as
many times as you like. Often the third instance will
be different in some way, or sometimes this is
the fourth instance. If the first feels
like a sort of setup, we'll see an example of each later and it will be clearer. If you are going on
to the ad infinitum, you're going to need to look for new ways to play the game. So I didn't know, say your game was a kitten playing
with a ball of wool that somebody needs and they've already
got tangled up in it. Will again, they're going to
need to start trying to eat it or bad it into the
fire or whatever it is. Also, once you're in this
ad infinitum section, you're going to be looking
to escalate whatever it is. That is funny about this game should be
ramping up and up and up. It's getting more observed
or people are getting more distressed about it or whatever is underlying the comic tension. And finally, as you go into
the ad infinitum section, you can condense the iteration. You can tell it faster
and faster and faster. Worry these rules are in your results and also we'll
keep coming back to them. Let's look at a couple of
examples to make them clearer. So this one's from the
Hitchhiker's Guide. But the plants were on display. On display. I eventually had to go down
to the seller to find them without displays
department, with a torch. Well, the lights have
probably gotten the stairs, but look, you've found the
notice, didn't you? Yes. Yes, I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked
filing cabinets, dark and Odysseus
laboratory with a soil on the door saying
beware of the leopard. If you break that down, we've got a game of it being impossible to find this
sign that he's looking for. Our first play is that
they are in the cellar. Second play is that the, he needed a torch. The third play, the
removal of the stairs, takes us into new territory
before it was just difficult. Now it's slightly
absurdly hazardous. And then we go into
the Adam for the item, very phosphoric
escalating territory, where he gives us a string of ridiculous information about
this sign all in one go. Here's another one. This passage is from
Winnie the Pooh. Hush, said Christopher Robin
turning around to ***, we're just coming to
a dangerous place. Hush, said ***, turning
around quickly to piglet. Piglet to kinda harsh
said can get to owl. While Ruth said Hush several times to himself very quietly. Hush set out ill city or in a terrible
voice to all rabbits, friends and relations and hush. They said hastily to
each other all down the line until it got to
the last one of all and the last and smallest
friend in relation with so upset to find that
the whole expedition was saying to him that he buried himself
head downwards in a crack in the ground
and stayed there for two days until the
dangerous over, and then went home
in a great hurry and lived quietly with his
art ever afterwards. His name, it was
Alexander petal. Let's go over that again
with our guidelines. This is an example where the first play was sort
of treated with a setup. It's actually all before that we get something different as
if that was number three, hush their ***, hush
to pick up the Congo. And then we get Reus, a cost to himself several
times very quietly. Then went into ad
infinitum territory, which is taken on
by old of rabbits, friends and relations down to the absurd conclusion of
poor little Alexander veto. You will start spotting
instructor everywhere. Of course, don't impose it. If it doesn't feel right,
it's not a formula. But it is so often a natural
and pleasing rhythm. If you're wanting to
expand it into a scene, you'll just be putting
more information between these points. Let's see those rules
of thumb again. So between the first, second, third, play other
things by happen. And then the ad
infinitum happens around all the main action. That structure will
still be there. There's still that kind
of natural craving for that shape to a jug. You'll final option is to
attach a game to a character. Here I'm showing Marvin from
the Hitchhiker's Guide, Marvin's guidance to be sad. This means that anytime
he comes into the scene, his extreme sadness might be an inappropriate script
for what is happening. Like there's a dangerous situation they really
need to solve. You've automatically
got to a postscript. The same thing happens with the main character author who will be understated and British, no matter what happens, we get this lovely
line where they're looking brand new planet
for the first time. People think it's sort of mythological like
Atlantis, but here it is. Author doesn't know as much
as the others about it, but he knows that it's awesome. They're all looking at it. Off. I blinked at the
screens and felt he was missing
something important. Suddenly he realized
what it was. Is there any TO this
spaceship passed off as Character Script coming into play against the
script of the scene, which ought to be this
sort of inspired moment. You'll see that kind of
humor gotten sitcoms. Every character is sitcom
has a game or two or three. And they get used in various
different situations. If you start trying to spot it, you can't kill all your
favorite sitcoms for yourself. Okay, so that's it for
this class to recap. Decide if your human's
going to be in the narrative voice or only in the action and the
dialogue of your characters. And familiarize yourself with those rules of thumb
for extending a joke. Because all the scenes
we'll be writing for this class will
be extended jugs. That's it. Come back next time
and we'll discuss offers prompt, see that.
3. Undermining: Hi, welcome back. This time we're looking at
our first humerus prompt. Undermining. This
prompt can be used anytime one or more characters is going to raise serious scene. So maybe they're endanger or
there's a series of motion. It doesn't have to be sad. But something with gravitas. The prompt then is
you ask yourself, how could I undermine
the gravitas? And you're looking to
answer that question with a one-line rule that
describes your game. So with our speech
maker earlier, we had the one-line rule. Somebody else keeps cleaning. The result is a scene
that's partly serious and partly something else
banal or observed. Something that contrasts
with what we would expect people to say and
do in that situation. Let's see a few examples of Douglas Adams is
very fun to this, particularly undermining danger, and I could do this all
day, but here are a few. My left arms come off to a frightening
thought struck him, ****, he said, How am I going to operate my digital watch now? Faithful instead at
them in astonishment, hey, this is terrific. He said someone down there
is trying to kill us. Terrific set author. But then you see
what this means. Yes, we're going to die. Yes. But apart from that,
apart from that, it means we must be onto
something warehousing. Can we get off it? All? It could be seen at them now was
the warheads head-on. That's a matter of
interested trillion. And what are we going to do
in all of these situations? Somebody is not taking the danger as seriously
as we would expect. The result is humor.
Louise reticent does this a lot with emotions. Here's a few. I'll have to have
a word with mom in order to save the family. 12 or five PM copy
bothered her father saying goodbye to her and her little sister Libby
before going to New Zealand, tag all sort of wet
round the eyes. Honestly, I thought
it was going to cry, which would've been horrific. He picked her up and
Hunter really hard. Libby was furious. She called him bad, big AGI bad and stuck
a finger in his. I always made him cry properly. So here, emotional
goodbye scene is being set against standard
toddler behavior. This is why toddlers are so often hilarious and real life, they didn't know what the
script is meant to be. There are endless
varieties of this. It can sometimes be done with a really quick turn of phrase. So here she is describing
the in real-life series, abusive my cat, who
happens to be a vicious, feral cat that attacks
next door's dog. He's talking that poodle. I'll have to intervene to have
a massacre. Oh, it's okay. Missus next door is
write a bracket him. Or she undermines her own
sense of gravitas, as in here. She's just plucked
her eyebrows to then through my cottons I can
see a big yellow moon. I'm thinking of
all the people in the world who will be
looking at that same moon, I wonder how many of them
haven't got eyebrows. Now you'll have noticed
that some of this is in the narrative voice and
some of it is in the scene. It can work either way. And it can be done with anything from a really quick,
oh, it's okay, or nevermind through
to a witticisms like Douglas Adams's digital
watch situation through two things actually
happening in the scene, like the toddler poking
her dad in the eye. For all version, we're going to do an extended version through a scene to really get
the hang of this. So I'm going to ask
you guys to write about the scene in which the print of the class
his love for Cinderella. But one thing is going
to undermine it. Here's an example using
the rules of thumb for gameplay from earlier to give you an idea what I mean. He took a step forward
looking almost paint. Cinderella took an
evasive step backwards, but this took her
directly into a rosebush, which was strategically
unfortunate. You are the most beautiful
woman I've ever seen. He said out,
explained Cinderella. I've never felt like
this before tonight. He said, I have never been alive before tonight. Vulgar Croce. Oh wow. The prince was not
to be deterred. Now he announced,
I shall kiss you. He leaned in, but thanks for an impressive invasive head
flick on Cinderella part, he found himself
getting the rosebush that resulted in a lot of very unprincipled swabs
and quite a long effort to disentangle himself
from the thorns which are tucked
under his mustache. In the end, Cinderella,
how to cut him free? If the last one with some
abandoned pink and cheers, bye, then the
moment was spoiled. So here I chose a game. People get hurt by the rosebush. You'll notice the third
play was different. The prints gets
her at that time. And then that results in a
quick escalation of absurdity. As you could write a
passage like this, or you could break it
up to create a scene. But you need to pick your own
role to answer the prompt. How are we going to
undermine gravitas? Enjoy it, and I'll
see you next time.
4. Overstatement: Hi, welcome back. Last time we looked at how
you could undermine a very serious gripped by opposing it with something
much more banal. This time we're just
going to do the opposite. How can you make
up a null event? Very funny, by opposing it with something overly grandiose. And this is overstatement and exaggeration in
its various forms. So here again, you'll prompt, how could I take this banal
event very seriously. Let us look at some
examples we saw earlier. A typical Jordan equals
an overstatement. Now time TO grow makeup. Oh well, I'll start tomorrow. Go to low knows how
the Dalai Lama cops on a daily basis, he
must get up at dawn. Actually, I read somewhere
that he does get off a dorm. She has plenty more. James wants to do something electronic, whatever that means. I didn't encourage him to explain because I felt
a coma coming on. Now, all the comic white care is being done by the
word coma because it is not something
you feel coming on. And it is a wild overreaction
to boring cousin James that is doing all
the gravitas work that opposes to everything else. Or again, not though, because I know that firelight
emphasizes my nose. I could wear a hat, I suppose, is that my life then going
around wearing a hat. Here it's the grandiosely
tragic phrase is like my life that's
doing all the work because we're just talking
about wearing a hat. The two of them are one of these situations where it's
the narrator overreacting. But we could also
describe people overreacting In what actually
happens in our scenes. Here's one from
Douglas Adams during the recitation by the
poet master grump. This the flatulent of his poem, ode to a small lump of Green
Party I found in my armpit one midsummer mourning for his audience died of
internal hemorrhaging. And the president of the mid galactic art
snowballing council survived by ignoring one
of his own legs off. The graphic survival
emergencies gripped, not what we expect
to a poetry reading. And the result is the humor. For all practice project. We're going to be putting the
human in the scene as well. So here is my exercise
for you, right? The scene in which
an official comes to the door to announce the
invitation to the ball. He should be treating it as a humdrum with and he's
just doing his job. And your prompt again
is how could I take this but not relevant
very seriously. There's loads of guide you
could come up with for this. Maybe the stepmother keeps
interrupting to make long formal speeches of acceptance every time he
says any small thing, or maybe the step sisters acting hysterically in some way.
I'll leave that to you. You're looking to
answer the question, how can I take this banal
event very seriously? Don't forget your rules
of thumb for gameplay, and I will see you next time. Enjoy it.
5. Loggerheads: Hi, welcome back. In this class we're
going to look at scenes where the two characters have different scripts from each other and I called
it loggerheads. This could be for a
variety of reasons. Maybe they both have a
different understanding of what is happening
at the moment. Maybe one of them has missed the other person's
social intention may be what are the
modes, what's going on? And the other one doesn't. As an audience, we
might know what both characters are thinking
or only be with one of them. There's a variety of
ways to play this, but the crucial thing
is that your prompt is, what does character a
think is happening? What does character B
think is happening? This will be clearer when
I show a few examples. Let's start with the
Hitchhiker's Guide. So in this passage, authors like in Frankfurt
bulldoze are trying to stop knocking down his
house and forth. Knows that the whole Earth
is about to be bulldozed. He needs author to come
and have a drink to prepare themselves for
jump into hyper space. Author doesn't know
what coordinates, but for comment effect, Adams made the decision
to have ford be so distracted that he does
not comprehend offers go. This is a scene where
both characters do not understand each other
and drink set forward. It's vitally important
that we talk and drink. Now we'll go to the
pub in the village. He looked into the sky
again, nervous, expected. Look, don't you understand? Shouted APA. He pointed at process. This man wants to
not my house down. Food. Glanced at him, puzzled. Well, I can do it while
you're away, Connie. Yes. But I don't want him to. The funny hits at
the moment where their scripts cross where
Ford remarked shows that he have missed the logic that Arthur is operating on. This is a gentle form of mist social intention and Douglas Adams studied
all the time. Here's another one moments later when they are in the pub. Alright, said forward,
how would you react if I said that I'm not from
Guilford after all, but from a small
planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, office drugs in a
so-so sort of way. I didn't know he said
technical appear. Why do you think it's the sort of thing you'll likely to say. Forward is operating on the
script of amazing revelation. And in our case, the audience
or width him because we already know at this stage in
the book that this is true. And authors on the script of shooting the breeze in the
park with his weird friend. The moment where those two openly across is the
moment where we laugh. More extreme version
is one where one of the characters doesn't have some information that
the other one has, and that can result in
passages like this. The mice were furious. The mice were furious? Yes. Said the old bad mildly, Yes. Well, so I expect with the dogs and cats and duck-billed
platypus is, but they haven't paid for it. You see that they look, Siddhartha wouldn't
save you a lot of time if I just gave up
and went mad now. Or hearing Winnie the Pooh, who is totally lost at
ears, mock tragic script. And so he carried on with his own just having a
nice day script. I'll point out the
gameplay as we go. We'll do this one at length because it's a
more extended version. Good morning. Er said ***, good morning, Pooh, bear study or glomeruli. If it is a good
morning, he said, which I doubt said he
why, What's the matter? Nothing, buh-bye. Nothing.
We call them Toulon. Some of us dope. That's
all there is to it. Conto, watt said ***
rubbing his nose. So that's our first
instance of pu does not understand ear gaiety. So a dance Here we go
around the mulberry bush. Said who? He thought for a
long time and then asked, well, mulberry bushes, that second play, born
only went on IO glomeruli, French word meaning born homey. He explained, not complaining, but the R2's who sat down on a large stone
and tried to think this out. It sounded to him like a veto and he was never much
good at riddles, being a bear, very little brain. So he sang called
Allston pi instead. Okay, so here we are
in our third play. Something different
has to happen. Also, it's a recurring
character game of Winnie the Pooh that
he's singing zones, CO2s and got his blanket, just empire, like aren't
bad but a bad can fly. Oscar me a rental
and I reply cutoffs. Colin Carlson, Carlson pie. That was the first first
when he had finished at IO, didn't actually say
that he didn't like it. So pu very kindly saying
the second best to him. Now we're into cross grips. We, as the audience
get the IOR is waiting and miserable silence warp who has a little
singing to himself. But we've also got postscript that in the
words very kindly, cutoff staccato,
staccato is done. Pi fish can't whistle
and neither could I ask me a rental and I reply, Karsten, Karsten, Karsten Pi. He also said nothing at all. People hump the third
verse quietly, Tim, South, Austin cutoffs and cotton pi. Why does it check in? I don't know why. Asked
me a riddle and I reply, cut Allston cut Austin,
cut-off stem Pi. That's right, city or sing. Totally open to do. He would go gathering melts
and me, enjoy yourself. I am. In this scene throughout
the characters were on different scripts and
we can see both at once. And the humor comes from
knowing how an appropriate one-person descriptors to
another person in script. So we're gonna try that
for our class project. I'm going to start with
the clearest example, where both characters just have very different pieces
of information, a fundamentally different understanding of
what's happening. But as we've seen here, is sort of a sliding scale up to situations where they just miss whether the
other ones being serious or whether the
other ones being sad. Here's your total information
mismatch exercise. The scene in which the fairy
godmother has arrived, but Cinderella thinks she
has a new domestic help. Her stepmother attired, who is expected to arrive that evening. If we remember our
general prompt, what does he think is happening? What does be things happening? I would answer those. The fairy godmother thinks she is arriving as a
fairy godmother. Cinderella thinks she
is arriving to be made. If you can think of a
different idea of what Cinderella thinks is happening,
the inspires you more. Thank go ahead, but
you need to be able to answer what both characters
think is happening. And that's it. Whatever you choose,
each character we operate to go to
a different script and the font for
the audience is in being able to see both
at the same time. That's all. I hope you enjoyed this one
and I will see you next time.
6. Roboticism: Hi, welcome back. In this class we're going
to look at Roboto racism. And this is when one character persists with an old
inappropriate script, even though it has
become useless. For this, you will prompt
is which character could refuse to change as
the scene progresses. This is standard for
a character game. When the game recurs every time the character
comes back in, we saw earlier that's
very common in sitcoms. It's also a staple
for things like Hitchhiker's Guide,
I'm Winnie the Pooh. But you can also have a
character who starts doing something just at
the beginning of that scene and then
just doesn't drop it. Let's take a look at
a couple of examples. So take the scene in
Hitchhiker's Guide, where the philosophers
burst into the room shouting their demands. The comedy of therapy to
moms lands at this moment. We demand that you can't keep us out board the
younger one, though, he was now firmly
inside the room and no further attempts were
being made to stop him. He then throughout the
rest of the scene keeps demanding things that are unnecessary and nobody else is engaged in a confrontational
seen at that point. Or take this one.
Resistance is useless. Shouted the Vogue on
guard back at him. It was the first
phrase he learned when he joined the
Vogue on guard core. Now for the rest of that scene forward and author
trying to make it polite chitchat
about his career and they're acting like they're all just getting together fatigue. But every now and then he
just goes back to shouting, resistance is useless
and even though it becomes increasingly
and appropriate. So we're gonna
have a go at this, writing a scene in which the prince has come to
find his missing bright, and Cinderella is
going to go about doing whatever she was
doing when he arrived. So it's up to you what that is. But despite the marriage
proposal scene, she is going to refuse
to stop doing it. And that will be our
answer to the question. Which character can refuse to change as the scene progresses? So pick what
activities Cinderella is gonna start with
that as your game, he was going to keep doing it. Have fun with this one, and
I'll see you next time.
7. Register: Hi, welcome to our final front. This time we're going to look at using the wrong register. The register is anything
about your style that implies what kind of writing
or speech this aids. So you might have a
bureaucratic register or the register of two teenagers chatting to each other or a biblical register.
Here's your prompt. What register would I not
expect for this moment? This can happen within
the narrative voice or within a
character's dialogue. Let us look at a
narrative voice example from Hitchhiker's Guide. Most leading
theologians claim that this argument is a load
of dingoes, kidneys, but that didn't stop
along polluted, making a small fortune
when he used it as a central theme of
his best-selling book. Well, that about
wraps it up for God. This gets a laugh
because that is not the kind of title that we would give a way to
philosophical treaties on the existence of God. It's out of place. It's a sudden register switch. Let's see another
one. This one's in dialogue and it's coming from an ancient alien character who's extensively in the role of
a wise old guardian figure. And he says We're
about to pass through a gateway into a vast
tract of hyper space, it may disturb you, automate not as noises talked about fast
touch the button and added not entirely reassuringly is good as a Willis
Tower, me, hold tight. So here scares the Willie's is a brisk colloquialism which
we are not expecting. Also, not entirely reassuringly, is a lovely little
bit of understatement with pisa is purely comic
like Douglas Adams, There's often layering of these different
approaches to humor. Let's see another, this is
where we're assigning the wrong register it to a
character for the whole scene. The humor of it's
not that evident by itself, but I'll
talk you through it. The Vogel terror
about to demolish planet Earth and all
of its lifeforms. But the tone of the theme
is Mach bureaucratic. So you get announcements
like this. There's no point in acting
all surprised about it. All the planning
charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning
department and Alpha Centauri for 50 of
you were at the years, you've had plenty
of time to lodge any formal complaint
and it's far too late to stop making
a fuss about it. Now, this incorrect register can be assigned to a character
for an entire scene. That way you get an
extended joke out of it. And that's what we're going
to try for our last prompt. You're going to write a scene in which a Taylor is showing the stepsister some possible
dresses for the bolt. Choose an unexpected
register for them to use either entirely or
an occasional slips. Remember the other characters and the narrative
voice should be trying to stick to a correct
register for this scene. You need that contrast for
it to be really humorous. The old usual waste, your rules of thumb apply. Adherence to the
wrong register should escalate and just the same
way as any other jokes. So they, they offer you again, this is your last piece of
writing on this course. So have fun. I will see you next time, has some thoughts on extending
your comic repertoire. Before we go See you there.
8. Final thoughts: Hi, welcome back. I hope you've enjoyed those five
comment prompts. That is the last of
them for this course, let's have a quick review. We've looked at how could I
undermine the graph, a task? How could I take this banal
event very seriously? What does he think is happening? What does B thinkers happening? Which character could refuse to change as a scene progresses? And what register would I
not expect for this moment? All of these prompts work
because they invite you to see two different scripts that could happen
at the same time. These are not the only ways to get to two opposing scripts. I wanted to encourage you
guys after this course is over two when you
see something funny, try and tease apart what the two opposing scripts
going on in it, R, and turn it into
a general prompt like the ones I've given
you in this course. So here's an example that we
saw at the very beginning, which I have not covered
with any of my five prompts. Arthur product the mattress nervously and then
settlement himself. In fact, he had very
little to be nervous about because all
mattresses grown in the swamps of scorn
jealousy data are very thoroughly killed and dried
before being put to service. Very few of ever
come to life again. We can feel that something has tripped us up here for context, we weren't expecting
mattresses to be alive at all at this point in the book
that is new information. In some way. There's two opposing
scripts here, but could you tease
apart what they are and what form
they take like, what would the prompt be, the equivalent of
how can I undermine this gravitas or what
designer, what does bainite? The more you can tease out these general structures from
things that make you laugh, the more your comic
repertoire will expand. And you can use this list
of prompts anytime you just want to bring a bit of pet into historian, make
it a bit Badia. You'll also sharpening
your subconscious reflexes so that it will
become more and more natural to you to just see
what could be humorous in a situation without
even thinking about it. I really hope you've enjoyed
this and that they start opening up new possibilities
for your writing. I would love to see
what you've written, so please do share your scenes and thank
you for joining me. Bye for now.
Sylvia Bishop, Author
