This is a tip I give to a lot of — both adults and kids. They say how do you write funny? And I say, okay you’re at a party with a bunch of your friends and somebody says something funny and your other friend says something funny and then you go to comment. Do you do this in your head? I will now make a comment on that other comment and I think it’ll be a little ironic, but to this part of the room it will mean something a little bit different.
You don’t do any of those things. You go like that — so when you write and you’re trying to write funny, you go like that — with the same urgency, like when you’re a kid and you wrote a note to make your friend laugh about the teacher, right? That little, that. Do that. Write a note to your classmate. Tell a joke to your friend. That’s what you should be doing when you write.
Something really weird takes over when you do it and even today when I write anything, the strip or the books, it’s the dominant voice. It’s this weird voice that tries to make you please this big, wide audience. And it doesn’t — you shoot big, you’re going to miss everybody. You shoot very small to make you laugh, the person next to you laugh, passing the note. You go big, does that make sense? Yeah.
Sparky said that, Schulz said that in a way that was much more eloquent, but yeah. The most personal is the most universal. So stop trying to make that laugh, whatever that is. Scott Adams writes to his brother. I asked him that, how do you write your books. I write them for my brother to laugh. How do I write Timmy? I write them to – because I can see Thomas, my son, laughing or not laughing.