Humor is an interesting topic because so many, I work with a lot of new writers through my work in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. And everybody wants to write humor because there are things we know about kids, one is they like to be scared and two is they like to laugh. So if you can write funny, you have a very good, you have a much better chance at being published. And I actually have always had the opposite impulse, I always wanted to write tragic, deep, psychological stories and everything comes out funny.
So it’s, I think there’s, there is a way that you approach the world and the way that I learned to approach it was with humor. I had an older sister who was a very stern older sister and bossy, you know the real big bossy older sister. And I think the way that I learned to navigate was I could be the funny one, you know she could be the commanding one and I could have a wisecrack, I was like the sidekick so I think I kind of learned that early on.
Plus things strike me funny, you know writing humor isn’t just about creating something funny, it’s about appreciating what’s funny. So I see things all day long that I think are hilarious, that really make me laugh, so I try to incorporate that. So, so when I was in college and wanting to be a writer, I had the image that I was going to be a deep, dark, depressed, struggling writer who wore all black and no makeup and starving in France.
And instead I won a comedy writing prize, and worked on television shows writing comedy. So I think it’s kind of, part of it is in your nature and I’ve come to, I’ve come to embrace it now. But I think I write a very particular kind of humor because I think one thing that makes you an effective comedy writer is to know what makes you laugh and write that and not try and write what makes other people laugh.
So here’s an example. I don’t particularly like physical humor, you know, I’m the only person in the world that I’m going to say this on camera, who does not like Charlie Chaplin, doesn’t, I find it annoying, you know I don’t think it’s funny to watch him eat shoe leather it does, I mean, good for him, but it doesn’t make me laugh. But I love Jerry Seinfeld because I like observational humor, I like humor that comes out of a real thing.
I love character humor, I love Monty Python because it’s character humor. So I don’t really write, and also I don’t like jokes, in fact I’m allergic to jokes, when someone says oh have you heard a new joke and they tell it I get squirmy because I’m always afraid I’m going to miss the punchline. I don’t like it when people do dialects around me and it makes me feel like I’m on trial, like is my sense of humor going to live up to this joke that they’re telling.
And it also is manipulative, it’s demanding, it’s like saying I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to laugh. So I don’t, I don’t write jokes. And I don’t write physical humor particularly, what I write is characters who are flawed and say funny things out of embarrassment or out of discomfort or awkwardness, because that’s what makes me laugh.
So the kind of humor that I write, for instance in the Hank books, Hank is a very funny kid but his humor comes out of a feeling of inadequacy because he’s bad in school. And every child who’s bad in school knows that that feels terrible, even if you say you don’t care, it feels terrible to be bad at the thing that you have to go to every day. So his humor is, is a defense against that.
So what I hope is that when I write something funny it also has a little tear in it, it also, it’s funny because everyone can empathize, everyone can say oh, I know what that feels like and so now it helps you laugh at yourself rather than feel bad about yourself. So, the kind of humor I write is what makes me laugh, and I think the kind of humor each person should write is what makes them laugh.
The best thing in the world is to laugh out loud when you’re writing, you make yourself laugh. And that’s one reason why it’s great to have a collaborator too, when Henry Winkler and I write together we laugh all day long.
Because, and if we don’t laugh, it doesn’t go in the book. So that’s, I think that’s, there’s no trick to writing humor except that one, that’s the only one I know which is write what’s funny to you. Not what you think is going to be funny to other people because everybody laughs at different things.
I think the primary skill of writing for children is to really be around kids, or be around yourself as a kid and know what you feel. Not write to what you think is going to be entertaining for kids because every, every child, every person is different, every child is different. And there is no one thing that’s going to be funny to all kids.
Because there’s a notion that children require something different, they’re mysterious beings who have to be amused in a certain way or spoken to in a certain way. And I’ve never found that to be true.