How to Make Humor Funny...Continued from page 1

 

I said, “Let me feel it.”

 

 

She said, “I can’t. I’m tied to the door.”

 

 

So I went over to where she was, felt her tooth, and said, “It’s not loose.”

 

 

She said, “It will be.”

 

 

I said, “Quit it.”

 

 

She said, “Leave me alone. I need money.”

 

 

2.      It contains an element of surprise. Almost all jokes depend on surprise. One of the best books on comedy and humor is Comedy Writing Secrets (by Melvin Helitzer, Writer’s Digest Books, 1992). (It was not written by Christians, so don’t expect to read through it without seeing a bad word or two.)

 

 

3.      It uses exaggeration. One of my favorite comedians is Steven Wright, who has the dryest delivery I’ve ever heard. I watched him live one night and couldn’t even stand up afterwards.

 

 

He said: “I used to make birds levitate. Nobody cared.

 

 

“I had to take my dog to the mental hospital. Something happened to him. We named him Stay. ‘Come, Stay. Stay, come.’

 

 

“I spilled spot remover on my dog. He’s gone.

 

 

“I bought a humidifier and a dehumidifier, put them in the same room, and let them fight it out.”

 

 

Steven Wright’s humor is intelligent humor. It’s not slapstick, nor at anyone’s expense except his own. The kind of joke I love best is the one that makes me laugh for five minutes and think for five days.

 

 

Start with low risk humor. Low risk humor is telling what your daughter did last night. Low risk humor is telling about the little boy in the foyer of our church. His mom took him back there. He was just a little child, could barely talk, and had messed his britches. Everybody in the room knew he had messed his britches. When Mom unpinned him and pulled down his little britches, the little boy looked down and said, “Oh, who did that?”

 

 

If you were to use that in an appropriate situation to point out that we live in a nation of victims, that we are never willing to take responsibility for our messes ? if people don’t laugh, have you died? No. It still works as an illustration ? the truthful kind of illustration. Work with that.

 

(from PreachingToday.com)