On writing humor

Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, shares his technique in The Wall Street Journal. Here are some snippets.

The topic is the thing. Eighty percent of successful humor writing is picking a topic that is funny by its very nature.

Humor likes danger. If you are cautious by nature, writing humor probably isn't for you. Humor works best when you sense that the writer is putting himself in jeopardy. In the early days of my cartooning career, as the creator of "Dilbert," part of the strip's appeal was that I was holding a day job while mocking the very sort of company I worked for. If you knew my backstory, and many people did, you could sense my personal danger in every strip. (My manager eventually asked me to leave. He said it was a budget thing.)

Humor is about people. It's impossible to write humor about a concept or an object. All humor involves how people think and act. Sometimes you can finesse that limitation by having your characters think and act in selfish, stupid or potentially harmful ways around the concept or object that you want your reader to focus on.

Exaggerate wisely. If you anchor your story in the familiar, your readers will follow you on a humorous exaggeration, especially if you build up to it.

Let the reader do some work. Humor works best when the reader has to connect some dots.

Use funny words. With humor, you never say "pull" when you can say "yank." Some words are simply funnier than others, and you know the funny ones when you see them. (Pop Quiz: Which word is funnier, observe or stalk?)

Endings. A simple and classic way to end humorous writing is with a call-back. That means making a clever association to something especially humorous and notable from the body of your work.