Humorous scene

[Corvus]

Hello everybody!

The main plot in my WIP is a secret organisation trying to assassinate the MC. I want to make one of those attempts end up being humorous, but I'm having trouble thinking up something that isn't to juvenile.
Currently there's an explosion whit some chemicals and he ends up whit a purple face. For the MC it's humiliating in the "my pride got wounded" sort of way and it also connects to a similar (intentional) incident that happened before the story starts but is mentioned as it is an important part of the back-story.

The organisation appears really incompetent at the beginning (so everybody underestimates them) and they are terrible at being subtle. So the attempt has to be subtle, injure the MC enough to not be able to compete in a battle tournament but not enough to make anyone worry and of course funny.
Oh and it happens in a boarding school.

Any ideas? Is the current scenario funny or can someone think of something better?

 

[The Unseemly]

I actually try and write in a Terry Pratchett style way (mind you, try), so allow me to help a bit:

The amusement usually doesn't come from the scene and explanation, as of such, but rather comes from the way it's written. It's the content that matters, more so than the idea. Therefore, my suggestion would be to post an extract of your story in Showcase, and I'll happily have a look at it. (or PM me, if you so desire).

 

[advait98]

I can't think of an appropriate scene right now, but I would say that The Unseemly is right. The way you've written the scene contributes more to the humour than the scene or idea. Anyway, keep brainstorming for new ones; they can come up in the most unusual places.
I have a method I use to brainstorm, which could work in this situation for you, maybe, it's not guaranteed or reliable, considering it's something I thought of, or maybe, unconsciously, gleaned from somewhere... but it's worked.

I assume you don't really have a perpetrator for the scene, so (just for the sake of the brainstorming, and not to be used in the story), you could make one, and try to construct the scene from his perspective. Sweep the boarding school for ideas (lots of stuff there), have him slinking about, and fooling around, setting up traps. Make a character for the perpetrator, and that could help in the forming of the plan.
It's just an idea, but it's worked (sometimes) for me. Best of luck.

 

[Corvus]

Thanks so far.
Unseemly: I would post it in showcase but it isn't typed yet. I usually write everything by hand first but I'll try posting in the next couple of days to see what people think.
Concentrating more on the delivery rather then on the actual event sounds like a good place to start.

advait98: You are right about ideas coming from unusual places. I was thinking about something completely different after already posting these thread and came up whit a new idea. Which is basically get him drunk.
To elaborate: The MC is an elf (don't care if it is cliché) so his body reacts differently to herbs/potions/poison then the human like race making up the majority of the population. So the organization not liking elves all that much don't know that or forget so they try to poison him but it just makes him drunk. Since hi is always in control of himself it could be pretty amusing. Having him do stupid things people do when they are drunk. It's something the readers can relate to (those old enough to drink at least).

I'll try to post both ideas see what people like better and how to improve them.

 

[Guru Coyote]

As has been said already, humor is not so much what happens, but how it is told.
It is a matter of narrative structure, and here is the basic formula for a joke:
1: a situation (who, where)
2: a crisis (something goes wrong, a problem)
3: a solution, that is a) logical but b) completely unexpected

3b is the killer here. It's the "oh! Yes! Never would have thought of that, but yeah, makes sense."

One very short and very bad example is this: "Two guys walk into a bar. With two of them, you'd have expected at least one of them to see it coming."
(Can you see the three parts?)

The rest - and the really important rest - is context. What will be funny really depends on what the reader would expect to happen, the consequences that are obviously unavoidable. And then replacing them with consequences that make just as much sense, but come out of the blue.

And let me stress one thing about the 'unexpected' - this means that the reader *could* have seen it coming, but didn't. All the clues were there, but we expected another outcome. Now that we see the actual outcome, we go "Oh! Yes, why didn't I think of THAT"

 

[wordwalker]

Great ideas, Coyote-- although I trust you're not saying all humor comes exactly from "unexpected but possible" (I don't think anyone's ever been able to lock that one down). It's certainly a great rule of thumb, and predictable and impossible are both very hard to build humor on.

Corvus, I think you're on the right track. A lot of humor just matches the rules for dramatic tension too (Coyote's list certainly does), and in many ways a funny scene is just a serious one complete with its proper sense of what's changing and why that matters... except that for various reasons it comes out as funny instead. It might be exaggeration, it might be that for all the energy nobody really seems to get get hurt.

BUT, I think you might have a bigger problem:

The main plot in my WIP is a secret organisation trying to assassinate the MC. ... The organisation appears really incompetent at the beginning (so everybody underestimates them) and they are terrible at being subtle.

It sounds like you then want the story to turn into something besides comedy. And one of the hardest things to do in writing is to turn a story based on silly villains into serious conflict. The one needs that sense that no matter what happens things stay harmless, the other (unless the conflict actually isn't about the "villains") needs real menace. Incompatible.

So I hope what you've got is more like Harry Potter: establishing early on that there's real danger in the world, then letting the "hijinks" fill part of the pages but making it clear that the incompetence comes only from some characters. It's harder if both kinds of villains are with the same group, but you could build on the idea that there are real threats among them and some day they're not going to let the fools keep running it-- or, that some day they're going to stop making clumsy attempts to throw people off guard, and get down to business.

It's possible, but it's much trickier than it looks.

 

[Guru Coyote]

I guess the reason why no one has ever nailed down what makes something funny... is because our tastes chafe over time.
In medieval times people found an image of piglets suckling on Death's tits extremely funny. It's what is known as a 'grotesque' - and today hardly anyone finds that so funny anymore. Today, we like 'intelligent humor' and I guess the jokes we make today would have earned us maybe a raised eyebrow if anything back then.

And, yes, the parallel between jokes and drama is intentional in what I posted before. There is an essay by some writer who claims that a short story and a joke share the exact same basic structure.

 

[Guru Coyote]

Here is one definition I found that reflects what I was talking abut:
"Many of the theories of joke structure focus on the notion of what Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation (1964), called “bisociation,” which refers to the juxtaposition of two different frames of reference that either oscillate back and forth or collide with each other in a puzzling or revelatory way.* Jokes often set us up to expect one thing and then surprise us by giving us another."

Anyway. Humor is no fun to write ;P

 

[Penpilot]

I guess the reason why no one has ever nailed down what makes something funny... is because our tastes chafe over time.

I also think it depends on the individual. What's funny to one person isn't for another based on who they are and their experiences and their culture. There are also baseline "jokes" that tend to be universal and maybe even timeless. EG. punch to the groin jokes. Running parallel to what's been said above, here's a post I put up on a different forum a while back about how I work humor.

The kind of humor that I try, and I stress the word TRY, to put into my writing tends to lean towards the inside joke between friends type. What I mean by this is that I let the past events of a character or between characters dictate what a wise crack will be or what's amusing. Yes, humor is subjective, so what I think one has to do is create a common context for the reader so that they can "get it" and that common context are the events in the story. 99% of the time, I don't set anything up. It just spontaneously happens. I get to a certain point, and I remember a bit of the story past and I call back to it in a humorous way. At least, I hope I do.

A blunt and possibly crappy example.

The context.
There's a character, Fred who keeps a change jar. Every one has a change jar, but this one's different, it's huge like the size of a small garbage can. It's so big that he uses it as decoration in the middle of his neat and tidy living room. Every day when Fred gets home, he automatically empties the change from his pockets into the giant jar. His friends give him a hard time about it all the time, and when he's not looking they deliberately fill his pockets full of pennies.

The funny??
One day, a friend drops a fist full of pennies into Fred’s pants. Fred goes home and drops the pennies into his massive change jar. A few days later Fred's friend calls him asking about the pennies. It turns out that, in rushing to get the pennies into Fred's pocket, his friend also dropped a piece of paper with a important phone number on it into Fred's pants. Crap, it's now mixed in with the massive pile of coins. The friend comes over to sift through the change jar, but can't find the number among the top layer. Fred's friend then begins to dig through the pile, lifting fist after fist of heavy coins out.

Fred's friend gets to the bottom, but there's no paper with the phone number. He's exhausted and dirty from lifting and sifting the grimy change. He looks up and sees Fred holding the piece of paper he was looking for. Fred says, "Bet you wish you didn't give me all those pennies now huh."

I don't know, mildly amusing, but I think it's how humor bascially works. Again, it's all about the context. Take away the context and it's not funny. You how when you say to people, "you had to be there"? Well, I believe, in humor, the writer's job is to put the reader there in some form or another then hit them with the punchline.

 

[Guru Coyote]

I think that's a very relevant example, penpilot. Esp in regards to the OP's intention of writing a humorous scene... context is everything. Then you have an assumption, based on the context (the paper is in the bin), and turn it around (Fred has the paper in his hand).

 

[Nobby]

The word "chafe" is funny.

Everything else is Benny Hill.

Timing.


Did you see that helicopter with Catholic priests in it?



No.



Ah well.

 

[Guru Coyote]

The word "chafe" is funny.

Heh. Sometimes, NOT editing your typos is key ;P (for those who wondered, the word I aimed for was "change")

 

[Nobby]

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist

 

[Corvus]

Sorry for the delay in responding. I got hijacked by reality. See I got a strange sens of humor.
Thank you all for the grate advice. It's true different people find different thing funny. Personally I don't like comedies but enjoy some humor thrown in to a serious situation. That is something I'm trying to achieve.

The "villains" are not incompetent. They are just lousy at being subtle and are restricted by the environment. Plus they are still trying to remain inconspicuous. The amusement (if I do things right) is supposed to came from an assassination attempt turning in to a bizarre accident do to circumstances, putting the MC in an uncomfortable situation making it seam finny/amusing because he has no idea how to deal. Not knowing how to deal is in direct contrast to his character.

I was editing paragraph whit the accident and realized there is a high percent chance I am going to fail miserably. Ah well.
The paragraph is in the showcase if anyone cares to nitpick at it. It's only cca. 500 words but it has the actual event. I am still trying to improve it.