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By John Branning

How am I qualified to advise anyone on how to write funny? Well, I’ve published three collections of humorous essays and another three compilations of whimsical light verse, so I feel I can speak with some authority here when I say that adds up to six books.

Now that we’ve established my bona fides (which, when printed in italics, must be pronounced “BONE-ah FEE-days,” from the original Latin, and in this context translates to, “I’m a pretentious git.”), I’d like to share some lessons I’ve learned along the way:

Start with a funny idea. I cannot oversell the importance of this step: starting out with a few funny sentences goes a long way toward ensuring the entirety of your composition will be viewed humorously. Particularly if you limit the length of your writing to just those few sentences.

Use exclamation points. A sentence ending in a period is stolid, obtuse and phlegmatic. The period is the greatest buzzkill in all of punctuation, especially when found at the close of a sentence containing the words stolid, obtuse and/or phlegmatic. By contrast, a sentence ending in an exclamation point is imbued with a playfulness, a whimsy, a certain joie de vivre (from the French, so who knows what it means?) to indicate its intention to elicit a chortle or guffaw. Let’s illustrate this difference with one of the most famous opening lines in literature (as translated into English from the original, inscrutable French) — from Albert Camus’s famed novel, The Stranger: 

• “Mother died today.” Stolid, obtuse, etc.; as the French would say, “Quel bummer.”

Compare that sentence with this one:

• “Mother died today — whoo hoo!” Ha! So funny! The use of an exclamation point changes an otherwise dreary sentiment into a regular hoot. Even in French — if Camus had written, “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte — ç'est bon!” it surely would have generated at least a snicker while scotching the book’s literary reputation.

[SIDEBAR: Any humor writing incorporating exclamation points and translated into Spanish is automatically twice as funny: “¡Madre murió hoy - es bueno!”]

Record your thoughts on the go. I personally find I come up with many of my funniest ideas when I am “on the go.” Therefore, I keep a pen and memo pad within reach in the bathroom.

Great comedy comes from pain. Not yours, but someone else’s. Thanks to how people tend to overshare on social media, you can always find some juicy trauma lurking online to exploit for hilarity.

Take everyday events on unexpected detours. Start with a concept or activity familiar to everyone, but instead of its “normal” conclusion, incorporate a surprising twist to elicit laughter. Here’s an example: 

• “As I entered the grocery store the other day, an elderly woman and I reached for a shopping cart at the same time. I smiled and gave her an apologetic look before wrenching it out of her hands while knocking her to the floor!” 

Note how I combined the surprising twist along with our old friend, the exclamation point. I know at least I got a pretty good chuckle out of the whole experience.

Avoid clichés like the plague. This one is self-explanatory, so let me explain it to your fine self: it should have read, “Avoid clichés like the plague!” Were you not paying attention to the prior recommendation re: exclamation points? It’s like I’m talking to a brick wall here!

There’s a difference between “silly” and “funny.” Silly writing is immature and scattershot; funny writing is the same but someone is willing to pay money for it. 

The insights I’ve offered here, while blinding in their brilliance, aren’t necessarily going to be easy for you to adopt lickety-split; you may have to split a host of licketies before getting the hang of things. But that’s O.K. — in fact, I myself had to toil at the craft of humor writing for many years before the Pulitzer, Thurber and Nobel Prize committees collectively rejected every single one of my submissions to them.

(I’ll change the “.” at the end of that last sentence to a “!” as soon as my tears stop flowing. Ha! Funny!)

— John Branning

John Branning lives in Winthrop, Maine, and tries so hard to be funny that it’s sad. Several of his books have won awards, which are currently hidden somewhere on his desk amidst piles of solicitations for extended car warranties and tax-dunning notices. His badly-in-need-of-an-overhaul website can be found at JohnBranning.com. He was the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop “Humor Writer of the Month” for November 2022 and has been resting on that laurel ever since.