I want to make funny jokes but fail at it

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I want to make funny jokes but fail at it Nodev 01/26/16 (Tue) 01:06:50 c2982e No.25012

How do I get to make funny jokes?

I want to make jokes that make people laugh and happy but I suck at it.

I am a boring person and want to change that, I don't want to just rip off stuff from other people but to be able to make originals jokes myself.

are there books or something to learn to be funny?

any tips?

Also if you feel like posting funny stuff that would be cool too

Nodev 01/26/16 (Tue) 15:55:56 a4f22b No.25019

Humor is subjective, anon. There's no real science to making people laugh.

You have to understand your demographic, first off.

I assume, since you're posting here, that you want to make a funny game, yes?

Well, who are you marketing it to?

Reddit? Bazinga.

/pol/? Niggers aren't people.

You see? Everyone finds different shit funny.

There's no objectivity to it, unfortunately.

Best way, I suppose, is to hang out/around the audience you're aiming for and interact with them. Most humor is not jokes, but, rather, stories. Listen to what they talk about, and learn what they like and dislike. Go from there.

For games, write unique characters with developed backstories and have them get into various scenarios.

Think: If I was this character, how would I react?

The interaction between characters, or a character and the world around is sure to bring out a few fun scenarios.

Unless your game is dark, in which case, humor is very delicate and shouldn't be used much.

Best I could do, really, as I'm not the funniest guy out there.

I can do decent work with a script, but not really impromptu.

I once wrote a character that was pretty much this website. She sadly was cut, as she was too lighthearted and stupid, but I might do something with her one day.

Nodev 01/26/16 (Tue) 16:39:51 a42ad6 No.25022

I don't know about you OP but I pretty much watched all the decent enough sitcoms, like the simpsons, futurama, seinfeld, american dad, south park, etc. and stand up shows from the best comedians on youtube.

I also listen to Bill Burr's monday morning podcast every week. It won't make you funny unless you keep writing jokes every day, but it will make you able to recognize good humor and it will help you.

So basically my advice is, watch comedians, make jokes every day, and you'll improve in a year or two.

Nodev 01/27/16 (Wed) 16:13:53 1d2119 No.25035

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>>25019

Can't remember his exact quote, but Jim Davis once said that if something is funny, it's usually because it's true.

You take your "truth" and spin your own unique ways of seeing it, on it. This makes your viewer go "Haha, oh yeah, that's totally true!".

Of course, you can't go too far when making fun of something, or it'll feel forced and stop being funny.

Hope that makes sense.

Nodev 01/27/16 (Wed) 23:31:49 61a12c No.25043

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Alright faggot, listen up, writterfag (not english native though) here, I'm gonna give you the great secret to humor and fun in general.

Here goes how it works, human brains dedicate their entire life to IDENTIFY reality and what's around it. Basically they adapt to their place, learn by example and what you receive from your senses, and apply that to your everyday life for survival.

When it discovers something new that is USEFUL, it gives you that sensation of accomplishment, when it discovers something that can HARM you, it will give you a sensation of fear, and so on. It works like that with everything. Now then, what does the brain need to find something funny. Hold your tits now...

The brain needs to make a DISCOVERY of something that is USELESS to find it funny

I know, I know, this doesn't make too much sense, but I'm gonna explain myself.

(cont)

Nodev 01/27/16 (Wed) 23:32:32 61a12c No.25044

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>>25043

Think of it as different points (ideas) that get together in your brain with a line, ok? Your brain identify different things, and transform those things into ideas. These ideas let's say that are like floating in your mind, it's information you have there you can use, and when it's convenient, you basically tie together those ideas to get an answer. Let's say you have to start a fire, and you know that lighters give fire, so you look for a lighter and use it to start the fire. Simple enough right? If you didn't have any lighter, but could think by yourself that you can use a glass and the sun to create fire, then you would be using three ideas in your mind for a purpose. Everything at the end has a purposes so it can be satisfactory. You study, learn, pass your tests, feel good. You fail, you feel bad.

Now, what happens when different ideas get together for not real purpose? HUMOR, that's what happens.

Your brain manages to pick a few different ideas from your brain and get a result, but that result is stupid, it's something that you wouldn't want for yourself, something that goes beyond what's expected but is not harmful neither fearful, neither serious, or important, or anything. That creates comedy.

Now think of any show or any comedy you have seen in your life, and you will realize this is true.

>Any sitcom is always about a few characters with really clear personalities, let's say like the womanizer, or the intelligent, or the nerd, or whatever, and basically puts them in situations TOTALLY OPPOSITE to them. The nerd with cute girls, the womanizer with huge dudes, the intelligent working in a farm. Whatever, it will be funny, because it puts together ideas that have no correlation in a way that somehow match. You see how they get into those situations, so it's plausible, but even then it's not ideas that your brain would normally put together.

>Classic cartoons like the roadrunner and coyote were also like that. You get a basic idea like the carnivorous and dangerous coyote trying to eat his pray, then it fails EVERYTIME. The situations usually fails also in the most unexpected ways, to the points physics sometimes won't even work as expected. Like the coyote destroys the rocks in a cliff and the ENTIRE MOUNTAINS FALLS OFF THE CLIFF while just a few rocks remain there floating. It puts together a few ideas then develop them in ways unexpected. Your brain understand them but find that process to understand stupid and useless, so it laughs.

>REFERENCES. An usual kind of humor that works with normies are references. People imitating some other characters, or mentioning references to other movies or popular things. This is the same, it picks different ideas from different contexts, and introduces them in a new context that you don't expect. It's useless information, but your brain process that information, understand it, pick it from to different sources, and say, oh yeah I understasnd this! But it's useless information, but it creates that satisfaction when finding up that reference. This humor of course is really basic, and when the brain gets used to find those references or is not really fond of those references, would find it quite offensive instead

>PUNS! Puns are like the most basic example of this. Pick words that can mean two things or are realted in a sematic way to another, and use them. People will get it because they are normal everyday words, but they are out of their contexts, so your brain once again has to pick ideas from different places, put them together, and say, alright I understand this, but it is so lame, then you laugh. Of course puns sometimes can be the connection between ideas so simple that your brain won't really react as finding something new at all, so it won't laugh.

>Finally... SEX. Sex is the EASIEST way to do comedy. Realize how EVERYONE can make sex jokes. Why? Because as studies say, your brain is thinking about sex like... all the fucking time. So it's REALLY easy for the brain to get ideas together about sex. It's also that everyone thinks about, so it's universal humor, everyone will get it, everyone will laugh, unless they are really puritan or find something too much for their tastes, but that's like personal preferences.

(cont)

Nodev 01/27/16 (Wed) 23:33:22 61a12c No.25045

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>>25044

And etc, etc, etc... There's however one special exception, and that's memories. You will notice how doing humor based in nostalgia is REALLY easy, because what you say can be not even funny, but people will find it funny. It's not so much funny, as it is your brain having those memories in a high standard, then by synaesthesia it will be like going back to those memories. Nostalgia is a really powerful weapon, but just like references it can hurt you back, because it will only work in people that feel that kind of nostalgia, or catch that kind of references.

At the end, the best humor is the one that builds on itself, that one is timeless and universal. Create a plot where a lot of points get together, and develop your characters against all those odds. The more points you get together at the same time that are useless, the more funny it will be, stuff like the famous cabin scene of the Marx brothers are really funny because it's one thing after another, a lot of useless information all together, filling a room, all of them independent of each other but that for some reason get together in such a small place like a cabin, all with a great pace that won't let your brain assimilate what's going on, and then you laugh, you laugh because your brain understands what is going on, but doesn't know WHY, it find that information useless, unreal, it's making a great job at something that has no value whatsoever, not negative and positive, so it laughs.

Of course someone could say that there's ton of comedians that talk about politics and stuff like that, but at the end it's also the same, because maybe I'm talking about something really serious but in a totally out of the way tone, people don't expect to talk about something deep in certain circunstances, so your brain is like "I can't take this seriously, because this is not the place neither authoritarian figure where I can take this information for, so it MUST be useless". Of course it is not, you are like "hey, this is true, he's actually right!", but it's ridiculous for the truth to be found in a place like that, so it creates comedy. In this case, the comedy is not in the text, but in the context, so it's pretty hard to pull it off.

Hope that helps OP, comedy is one of the hardests things to get right when writting, really really hard, because to make comedy, you need to be in the mood of comedy, and of course no one is always in that mood.

Nodev 01/28/16 (Thu) 09:19:43 c1da5e No.25048

>>25019

Humor IS objective. Just because you havent been able to identify what makes funny doesnt mean it isnt objective.

You are right about the audience part, partially. While it's true that one group will find something funny that another group doesnt, it doesnt mean there isnt a common, objective component underneath it. Most jokes, independent of setting, follow one of a series of setups.

Much like how most drama can be broken down into tropes, so can jokes.

If you watch comedians, watch from an analysis perspective rather than trying to waste some time and you'll start to note the tropes.

Nodev 01/28/16 (Thu) 11:40:53 d61a01 No.25051

Play with expectations. There isn't really a rigid formula for it, but like >>25043 has said, just take something people are used to / expect to behave in a certain way and make it behave differently.

Read, watch, and play. Read, watch, and play as much as you can. Fiction, non-fiction, humor, whatever. Learn how narrative flows and how things behave, as well as how people think things work. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of your medium when dealing with humor (Pacing is difficult when the player is in control, for example, and pacing is very important with a joke). The more you know about people and how they think the easier it will be to play with their expectations, and the better you will be at it. If you are doing visual comedy watch everything ever made by Buster Keaton. You will learn the importance of camera placement as well as how to have a well set up joke pay off.

Remember that a joke has a lifespan, and usually a very short one. If a joke overstays it's welcome it won't be funny any more and will just make the audience frustrated. Best not to center a game around some funny mechanics that aren't funny for that long. (Cough Cough Goat Simulator Cough Cough)

On top of consuming well made books, movies,and video-games You should also experience bad humor. Find out what people don't find funny and try to figure out why people don't find it funny. This helps you know what to avoid. Usually it's because the joke has gotten old or it didn't really play with expectations well enough.

Set limits for yourself and work within those. In stand up people have a set of stories that must flow together and must contain the jokes, as well as a character and general theme everything fits into. In a movie and book you have a world and plot you have to work around. In Loony Toons there were very strict rules for many of the characters (Buggs never started a fight, Wiley Coyote always met his demise from his own traps, stuff like that). Play within these limits and not only will it be easier to create better jokes, but they will be easier to follow and understand, and therefore funnier to more people.

Good Luck!

Nodev 01/29/16 (Fri) 18:56:10 a200c2 No.25078

Linda Aronson in her "21st Century Screenplay" mentions that a funny thing is composed from something normal&grounded and something absurd&unusual.

Almost every funny joke I read so far after learning it was clearly made from those two elements. I think what makes jokes subjective is that things which are normal and absurd differ between people.

Nodev 02/18/16 (Thu) 19:56:40 0ca127 No.25415

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>>25035

Some of the old Garfields were stupidly hilarious.

cumdude 03/01/16 (Tue) 02:59:11 170dac No.25775

Board's bretty dead, but as one of the funniest memers around I'll give you some tips.

If you're not funny naturally, you're fucked.

No comedy book is going to fix you.

If you can make people laugh, you're less fucked.

Trying to write funny alone is really tough, so if you can, grab a friend and write with them around. You can bounce ideas off of each other and figure out what works.

DO NOT listen to >>25022

Watching a lot of comedy does not make you funnier, it just gives you a larger pool of jokes to retell. also known as stealing

Nodev 03/01/16 (Tue) 17:47:57 80d5af No.25787

>Funny

>strange, peculiar, odd, queer, weird, bizarre, curious, freakish, freak, quirky; mysterious, mystifying, puzzling, perplexing; unusual, uncommon, anomalous, irregular, abnormal, exceptional, singular, rare, unique, out of the ordinary, extraordinary, outlandish; out of the common

>Punchline...has one synonym

Point

Let's deconstruct a popular joke.

>Why is it called an XBOX 360?

This is the introduction. We're led to believe someone is telling us a joke. Since we've heard jokes before, in anticipation we *expect* a punchline which *points* out why the name is funny in one of the ways listed above.

>Because when you see it, you turn 360° and walk away!

This is the punchline. We were expecting to hear "the punchline of a joke", but instead we're confronted with a complete and utter failure to deliver a legitimate punchline, which is of course completely unexpected and therefore funny.

Nodev 03/07/16 (Mon) 10:22:51 251f1c No.25903

Try reading MA3 comic: http://www.ma3comic.com/strips-ma3/room_for_two_more_%28vol1%29 It's author posted over a thousand strips, and every one serves to say a joke. Some are better, some are worse, but analysing this massive amount of material should get you further in understanding how humour is constructed.

Nodev 03/10/16 (Thu) 23:49:10 27b0c3 No.25957

Funny jokes either make light of recent events, cater to the lowest common denominator, Catch people completely offguard, or make people laugh at the joke teller for their percieved ineptitude.

Nodev 03/12/16 (Sat) 15:52:17 ae3483 No.25981

Jokes point out flaws that most people tend to ignore.

Nodev 03/14/16 (Mon) 00:44:23 f8e4e4 No.26001

>>25045

>>25044

>>25043

I have read on the subject and I have a much simpler suggestion,

When your brain thinks it is in danger, you get tense.

You read something that makes you tense. You find out there's no danger. You laugh,

When you laugh about something, notice how you were tense before laughing.

Why some people laughed A LOT at a joke, but you did not?

The buildup did not get you into a state of tension. Without tension, you can't laugh at the punchline.

1) Why is it that when you explain a joke to someone, it AUTOMATICALLY becomes unfunny to the person you are explaining it to? Because there is no tension buildup on you when the joke is being explained.

2) If one goes to the subreddit /r/jokes or the subreddit /r/4chan, one can see that all succesful jokes build up a sense of "danger", a "tension" before the punchline.

3) When someone tickles you, why do you laugh? On an unconscious level, your brain thinks it is a predator trying to grab you (it makes you tense) . . . but on a conscious level you know it is not (relieves tension). I know this sounds retarded, but the more you think about it (and about the other things I said) -- the more sense it makes.

4) when your friend falls, why do you laugh? in matter of seconds, your brain gets tense but tension is relieved when you see he is fine

It should be said I have a lot of karma on reddit for making funny OC. Everytime my post did not build tension, it flopped. Everytime it built tension, it got ~3000-4000 upvotes.

>>25051

Agree

Nodev 03/22/16 (Tue) 02:49:27 ad6148 No.26128

>>25019

>Humor is subjective, anon

Jokes all have something in common, whether it be truth (to the person) or the fact that it has a point behind it. No one will genuinely laugh at the air. Even a mad man wouldn't just laugh at it. He would laugh at it because he thinks it's telling him a joke, or that he was seeing something in it. You can go on about your subjectivity, But if you do that you'll never find the key to making jokes.