How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Chapter 6: Fame, Fortune, Golf, and Television

In “Future Reality Shows,” Radner departs a bit from what had, before now, become her standard approach to developing her book’s humor. Instead of using an opening paragraph to establish a basic situation as an excuse to introduce absurd examples, gags, and jokes concerning an aspect of her book’s central concept, or theme, of aging, the author summarizes the premises of several non-existent television game shows. The descriptions of the shows’ premises poke fun at the absurdities of actual television shows of this genre. Each of the imaginary shows requires participants to do something ridiculous and, usually, dangerous to have a chance to win “a million” (or, in one case, “a schmillion”) dollars. One premise indicates the approach:

Who Wants to Marry a Serial Killer?

Serial killers fall in love, too. Six lucky women get to spend time with a hardened criminal on death row . . . but only one of them gets to marry him, have sex with him, and be present for his execution. You win a million dollars.

This chapter ends with a television show’s title, which takes the form of a rhetorical question, to which Radner provides her narrator’s answer:

Who Wants to Smash Their High-Definition Flat-Screen Television Set?

I do. Keep your million dollars.

The implication is that it is worth a million dollars to Radner to smash her own television set if doing so rids her of such fare as the premises to her imaginary game shows suggest fill the airwaves.

The use of oddball logic structures Radner’s chapter concerning golf (“A Hole in Eight”). In this chapter, after contributing a stunningly funny comparison (“the thought of me holding a golf club was as likely as Eleanor Roosevelt wiring a bikini”), the author shares her ideas as to how to enjoy a game of golf. Her logic is as impeccable, in its own way, as it is unconventional. Her strategy consists of four interrelated practices (or non-practices): don’t entertain high expectations; don’t purchase expensive, quality equipment; don’t practice the sport; and don’t take lessons. By adopting these approaches to playing golf, one eliminates stress and, in fact, enhances the enjoyment of the sport, she argues, for one is “thrilled” if play goes better than anticipated and, at the same time, one has is under no pressure to perform to a high standard--or, indeed, to any standard at all. As Radner’s narrator puts it, “If I hit a good shot, I’m thrilled, and if I don’t . . . well, what do I care? It’s not like I practiced.” She offers similar wrongheaded, but surprisingly sagacious, advice concerning the taking of golf lessons:

Never take a lesson. Just position yourself next to someone who is taking a lesson. This way, if you become worse, you can forget what you overheard, and if you become better, you have had free instruction.

In the “conclusion” to her chapter, Radner’s narrator suggests a theme, or a message, as it were, in the madness of her oddball logic. Her madcap procedures work for her, because, although she may be “out of touch with reality,” she is, nevertheless, “having a good time,” and having a “good time,” she implies, is more important than playing a golf game well.

Occasionally, a comedian or a comedienne can get away with an essentially serious monologue, spoken more from his or her own mouth, as it were, than from that of his or her book’s narrator. Radner accomplishes this--and well--in “At What Price?,” a chapter concerning the instant celebrity to which Andy Warhol referred when he predicted that, given the media’s incessant need for material, “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes,” exemplifying the hidden personal costs, including invasions of privacy and actual physical danger, that being famous entails and the way in which almost anyone can become “famous”--for a while and for a time, at least--in contemporary America, as Paris Hilton did when her infamous sex tape was leaked over the Internet or as can those “who can stand on a post for hours while holding a dead fish in their mouths.” The theme of this chapter seems to be the lesson that Radner intends to teach her daughter, Molly: “Fame should be a by-product (and not necessarily a good one) of achieving something extraordinary.” She concludes the chapter with a twist on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous saying, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”: “The only thing we have to fear is fame for fame’s sake.”

Radner gets away with being serious for a moment as a comedienne because she herself is famous (and, as such, may have a thing or two to teach others about the “cost” of celebrity) and because she writes well. However, in a humorous book, even a talented professional jokester can’t expect to get away with being serious very often, and Radner, of course, reverts to form--sort of-- in her next chapter, “CNNNMSNBCCNBCFOXNEWSNETWORKHEADLINENEWSLOCALANDNATIONALNEWS.” Its premise? “There are too many news outlets and not enough news to go around.” As a result, she contends, she hears the same news repeated at night that she has already heard the same morning, with the only real difference that it is now “stretched over twenty-two minutes plus commercials.” She offers an amusing, perhaps telling, observation concerning a parallel between the news itself and one of the products that sponsors it: “I’ve . . . noticed that the commercials on the evening newscasts are predominantly stomach-related. The news is so upsetting, drug companies have figured out a way to profit from it.” The claim that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between disparate incidents or situations is a favorite technique for prompting laughs, and one which tends to be funny whether the relationship is implied, as it is here, or directly stated, as it would have been if Radner had written, ““I’ve . . . noticed that the commercials on the evening newscasts are predominantly stomach-related because the news is so upsetting that it turns viewers’ stomachs, and drug companies have figured out a way to profit from it.”

Radner--or her narrator--offers a couple of brief examples of how news anchors are reduced to creating, rather than reporting, news stories and responds to Katie Couric’s plea to her audience to “send me a story you’d like to see on the news,” assuring viewers she’d “like to hear it,” with, “Well, I wouldn’t. Maybe that’s just me, but I like my news to be newsworthy.”

Having set up her chapter’s topic, television news, Radner follows up by offering an example of the mundane “news” that would result if she were to take Couric at her word and send in an item that her narrator felt was newsworthy; explains why she finds news crawlers (“the additional information located at the bottom of the screen”) helpful, because they add something new, if not actual news, to the newscasts; explains why she enjoys watching televised murder trials (they extend her treadmill exercise time); critiques the appearance of female newscasters (they all resemble fashion models); and criticizes the inundation of newscasts with flash, colorful graphics--all annoyances with which ordinary members of America’s television audience can relate.

In the process, Radner includes several techniques for producing laughter that are common to professional comedians and comediennes, some of which have been mentioned already, such as:

• Run-on text: the title of this chapter runs together the acronyms and titles of several network news shows and the two categories of news programs, local and national, suggesting that these shows and categories have merged into one, more-or-less continuous and identical body of programmed material
• Absurd, but amusing, anecdotes or examples that illustrate her sometimes-serious, sometimes-humorous claims and observations
• A seemingly absurd, but nevertheless appropriate, comparison between disparate items: repeatedly reciting the same news while making it seem as if it is being read for the first time and Madonna’s attempt to affect virginity (“Reporting the exact same stories over and over and trying to keep them sounding as if it is the first time they’re being read has to be harder than Madonna trying to pretend she’s a virgin”) and the appearance of female newscasters as an effect of a cause which she associates with an historical event (“I love Judy Woodruff and Lesley Stahl, but I think the last time they ate something the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan”)
• The use of something for an unintended, but practical, purpose: watching the news is an adjunct to her exercise routine
• Humorous rhetorical questions: do judges’ refusals to televise certain criminal trials suggest that “they do not care about the state of my inner thighs? Have they no conception of the benefits to my buttocks?”
• Absurd solutions to unusual problems: One such solution is suggested by a hypothetical action on her narrator’s part: “If I sent pictures of me before the O. J. trial and then after,” the judges who refuse to televise trials “might reconsider” their decisions, she suggests, and, thereby, allow the broadcast of these programs, which she uses as adjuncts to her exercise routines. She also has an idea as to how to remedy the broadcasts of made-up news: instead of overusing the “Breaking News” graphic, “how about a ‘Made-Up News’ graphic?”
• Cause-and-effect relationships of a spurious, but amusing, nature: “The more attractive a woman reporter is on CNN, the more time she gets to spend indoors. If you’re forty and have a double chin, chances are you’re filming your report wearing a parka and freezing on the White House lawn or wearing a flak jacket down in a spider hole in Iraq”
• Exaggeration: “‘Breaking News’ is a graphic that is currently being overused on television to command our attention. The last time I saw it flashed on my TV screen it turned out that someone in a kitchen in Iowa had broken something”
• Absurd counterexamples (headlines, in this case, that would suggest actual, rather than made-up news--if they were, indeed, true--and would, therefore, command attention): “‘Hi, this is Katherine McKennedy and here are today’s headlines. . . . Tony Danza announces he is running for president of the United States . . . . Bill gates goes bankrupt . . . and Osama Bin laden marries Jennifer Lopez in a drive-through chapel in Vegas.”

Conclusion

Over a period of three chapters, Radner demonstrates how a topic can be given extended treatment when the material that supports it is broad enough. Television provides sufficient fodder, and Radner, employing a variety of humorous techniques, criticizes game show premises and television news, breaking up the topic with the inclusion, between the chapter concerning game shows and news programs, a chapter that deals with golf, a sport that enjoys widespread popularity, and fame which, whether it is deserved or undeserved, comes with a “cost.” In each case, her targets are, as usual, both familiar and popular, but are also sources of aggravation and annoyance for both those who participate in them or those who merely observe others who participate in them. In these chapters, Radner has employed many of the same techniques that she has already used to effect humor, but she also demonstrates the use of several as-yet-unseen methods for amusing readers, including run-on text; unintended (but practical) uses of products or services; absurd solutions to problems, real or imagined; dubious cause-and-effect relationships between disparate incidents or situations; and absurd counterexamples. The chapter concerning the cost of fame shows that a comedian or a comedienne can occasionally get away with being serious (for a moment), provided that, the rest of the time, he or she is funny and provided that, in being serious for a moment, he or she writes well.

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Chapter 4: “Kiss ‘Em, Kick ‘Em, and Kiss ‘Em,” Climactic Sequences, and Tone

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

If, as a humorist, you’re going to trash someone--a friend (or future former friend) or a family member (before he or she has disowned you forever), perhaps--you don’t want to look, to your reader, like the shark that you are. You want to look like a nice guy or gal. How do you accomplish this miraculous feat?

In trashing her deceased mother, in the “Oh, Mother!” chapter of her book, Radner faced this very problem. Her solution? Prior to the trashing, say some nice things about her target. Use the “kiss ‘em, kick ‘em, kiss ‘em” strategy, wherein one lauds the soon-to-be butt of one’s jokes, then savages him or her, and then again praises the poor soul. Radner devotes two, albeit admittedly short, paragraphs to praising her mother:

It’s my contention that the things you remember about your childhood govern the way you raise your own children. Even though my other died when I was thirteen, I find myself constantly remembering the little things she did for me as I spend time with my daughter.

Kindness was my mother’s finest attribute; cooking was her downfall. Luckily, I was not a picky eater. Most of the things she cooked for me I found delicious.

Her chapter’s title, “Oh, Mother!,” by the way, is a play on words, recalling the exasperated cry, “Oh, brother!,” and sets the tone of the chapter--the narrator’s expression, mild and humorous, though it may be, of her exasperation with her mother’s lack of cooking “talent.”

Now that Radner has set up the chapter’s basic situation, she, through her narrator, presents the standard humorous examples to support and develop the chapter’s topic (her mother’s abominable cooking):

. . . Her most successful culinary creation (and my all-time favorite) was spaghetti mixed with ketchup and a semi-melted lump of butter. My second favorite was what I called Campbelled rice. This paired instant rice with Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable soup. Not only was it delicious, it was also educational (if not entirely sanitary), as I would spell out different words on the kitchen table with the gummy letters.

A technique for creating humor, seen in this paragraph, as previously in Radner’s book, is to mix categories, such as cuisine and education. The unlikely pairing is not only surprising, but amusing, for it brings together a ludicrous association that, despite its absurdity, nevertheless, in some way, seems to make sense. Radner’s use of this technique also taps into the familiar, because many adults are likely to remember playing with alphabet-shaped rice or pasta letters in their soup, just as Radner describes herself, as a girl, of having done. Absurdity mixes with familiarity to get a laugh. She then extends the humor by describing how her mother extended any leftovers from this meal to create another dish, employing, once again, a strange mixture of two disparate items, “soup,” a serving of food, and “Spackle,” a sealing compound used in construction:

If there was any Campbelled rice left the next day, the mixture would be poured into tomato soup, thus creating yet another unique variation: Campbelled tomato rice paste. It was midway between soup and Spackle.

Radner’s next paragraph begins with a list of items in a series which have no apparent relationship to one another. However, a link between these disparate items is formed by Radner’s identification of them as her “mother’s three most spectacular failures”: “My mother’s three most spectacular failures involved a can or corn, a duck, and matzo balls.” Having created a Lucy Ricardo-like caricature of her mother as an inept cook and having cited a couple of previous examples of her mother’s culinary incompetence, Radner has interested her readers in learning more about the poor woman’s “culinary failures.” Because of the nature of comedy, in which humorous anecdotes or jokes move steadily toward a crescendo, or climax, of mirth, readers also expect that the quips and gags will be funnier than the previous ones were, although these newer ones will be topped, in turn, by even funnier ones, until, at last, the climax of the series is reached.

Sure enough, Radner’s mother doesn’t disappoint, for she next turns a can of corn into a bomb; cooks inedible, rubbery matzo balls; and reduces the duck, which she seeks to cook as if it is chicken, to an unrecognizable, gelatinous mass that even the daughter, who is “not a picky eater,” refuses to sample, in any form (whether as a roast duck, a salad ingredient, or a sandwich filler). In detailing these “culinary failures,” Radner spices her descriptions with more than a dash of hyperbole:

I don’t know what prompted her to put a closed can of Niblets into the searing oven; I just remember the explosion. . . . I was in charge of picking bits of corn off the floor while she climbed the ladder and tackled the ceiling.

[Trying to consume the matzo balls] was like eating dried Silly Putty. We were fearful of breaking the garbage disposal, so the leaden bits of dough were finally tossed in the trash. . . .

I remember her taking the duck [that the narrator’s mother had prepared as she’d supposed a chicken should be cooked] out of the oven and encountering a sea of grease that in my brief life I had never seen emanate from a chicken. It was so slimy that as my mother served it, the poor bird almost slid off the plate.

Having “kicked” her mother--or a caricature of her mother--Radner now has her narrator “kiss” her again, as the chapter comes to a close, in a paragraph which, for humorous books, is unusually long, and which is followed by a shorter, final paragraph that rounds out the chapter. The longer paragraph begins, “Along with my mother’s lack of cooking talent, I also remember her remarkable personality. I remember the light in her eyes whenever she saw me. I remember her kind voice and her forgiving, patient nature. . . .”

Conclusion

Sometimes, a humorist may savage a friend or family member--or, actually, a caricature of such a person. To prevent alienating him- or herself from the reader, the humorist should adopt the “kick ‘em, kiss ‘em, kiss ‘em” strategy of first praising the victim-to-be, before verbally assaulting him or her with outlandish exaggerations of a defect, real or imagined, and then, once again, lauding the savaged party before concluding the chapter with a short, often single-sentence expression of appreciation for his or her overwhelmingly positive personality traits and behavior patterns, such as Radner does in the closure to her “Oh, Mother!” chapter: “Cooking aside, I only hope I’m half as good a mother to my daughter as my mother was to me.” This concluding comment will leave readers with an “awwwwwww” reaction, rather than a feeling of disdain for someone who would savage a friend or family member (even a caricaturized version) simply to get a laugh. In this chapter, Radner uses several devices she’s used before, including exaggeration, or hyperbole; ludicrous examples; conflated, absurd comparisons; and climactic sequences in which lesser jokes and gags are followed by greater jokes and gags. Her title, “Oh, Mother!,” is a play on words, recalling the exasperated cry, “Oh, brother!,” and sets the tone of the chapter--the narrator’s expression, mild and humorous, though it may be, of her exasperation with her mother’s lack of cooking “talent.”

Next: Chapter 5: Juvenalian Satire

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Chapter 3: Metaphor, Hyperbole, Situational Humor

Like many chapters (and, sometimes, entire books), the chapter called “Catalogue Addiction” is based upon a metaphor which, as the title suggests, equates catalogue shopping with an addiction of some kind, probably one related to drugs or alcohol. The metaphor is extended with references to “treatment centers,” “a group of women with similar problems,” interventions, stashing catalogues as an addict stashes caches of drugs or alcohol, and “recovery.” However, as the need arises, for the sake of humor, the metaphor is occasionally abandoned in favor of the use of humorous techniques that are not related to or dependent upon the trope. For example, a shopping catalogue is personified as a stalker: “the company’s first final clearance catalogue made its way into my clutches three houses ago. It doesn’t matter how often I move; the catalogue knows where I’m living.” Likewise, a Victoria’s Secret catalogue is compared not to drugs but to “pornography,” as the addiction to the former becomes, as it were, an addiction to the latter. Exaggeration is used as well: the models in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue are endowed with such large breasts that their “bosoms” prevent the narrator from closing the publication: “The bosoms on the otherwise skinny women appear to be inflated. The last issue was so chock-full of overly endowed ladies, I couldn’t even keep the magazine closed.” Likewise, Radner employs hyperbole when she describes the mailman as having developed a hernia from delivering the many weighty catalogues that the narrator, like the other women in her neighborhood, receives on a regular basis.

In “Do It Again,” Radner’s humor comes not so much from a series of setups and punch lines or extended metaphors as from a familiar situation carried to extremes. The situation is continuous, from the beginning to the end of the chapter and is, as such, also the chapter’s main source of unity. As always, the opening paragraph establishes the situation in a few short sentences:

Because I was a child such a very long time ago and my contact with children until I had my own was so limited, I was entirely unaware of a child’s capacity for repetition.

Examples of the child, Molly’s, “capacity for repetition” follow, each of which will be likely to strike a familiar chord in reader‘s own experiences. First, a couple of shorter examples are supplied: the game of hide-and-seek, in which Molly continues to hide in the same place each time the game is played--or replayed--and her begging her mother to be carried upside down to the bathroom for her bath, just “one more time,” Then, a third, extended example fills out the rest of the chapter, humanizing the narrator as a mother who loves her daughter. At play at the beach, Molly finds a new way to hide. When the narrator fetches a seashell for her daughter, Molly hides behind her, turning as the narrator turns, so that the mother cannot see her. As a result, the mother is distraught, imagining that Molly might have wandered into the sea or been spirited away by an abductor. When the narrator finally discovers her daughter, the girl asks her mother whether she was “really scared,” and, when her mother confesses that, having imagined her daughter to be lost, she “really” was frightened, Molly, delighted, begs, “Let’s do it again,” her request providing the words of the chapter’s title and thereby bringing the chapter to a full circle.

Conclusion

A chapter’s humor can largely derive from the use of an extended metaphor or a familiar situation. However, as the need arises, either structural device is apt to alternate with other, secondary techniques for producing humor, such as personification, exaggeration, or repetition, with a line or a phrase of dialogue at the end of the chapter repeating the chapter’s title so as to bring the chapter full circle as the section of the book comes to a fitting close.

How To Write Hilarious Humor: An Analysis of Professional Comedians' (and Comediennes') Techniques to Tickle the Funny Bone

Chapter 1: Choosing Your Theme

Copyright 2011 by Gary Pullman 

Most humor books are based upon a theme, or central topic, as the following sample of titles indicates:

• Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys
• Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need
• Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far)
• Dennis Miller’s Rants
• Dennis Miller’s Still Ranting After All These Years
• Dennis Miller’s The Rant Zone: An All-Out Blitz Against Soul-Sucking Jobs, Twisted Child Stars, Holistic Loons, and People Who Eat Their Dogs!
• Dennis Miller’s I Rant, Therefore I Am
• Dennis Miller’s Rants Redux
• Art Buchwald’s You Can Fool All of the People All of the Time
• . . . And Then I Told the President: The Secret Papers of Art Buchwald
• Erma Bombeck’s At Wit’s End
• Erma Bombeck’s Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own
• Erma Bombeck’s If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits
• Eat Less Cottage Cheese and More Ice Cream: Thoughts on Life By Erma Bombeck
• Erma Bombeck’s I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression
• Erma Bombeck’s Family: The Ties That Bind. . . And Gag!
• Gilda Radner’s It’s Always Something
• Bunny, Bunny: Gilda Radner, A Sort of Romantic Comedy
• Gilda Radner’s I Still Have It . . . I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It
• Gilda Radner’s Turning the Tables
• Gilda Radner’s Naked Beneath My Clothes
• Gilda Radner’s Tickled Pink
• Gilda Radner’s Guide to Men

That’s just a short list, of course, but it suggests several points that are useful to the aspiring humorist. Some of these points might not seem all that significant. However, notice that all the author’s names on this list have something in common. They’re professional comedians (or, in some cases, comediennes). They also have something else in common: they’re all hilarious! Therefore, if you can learn anything from any of them, whatever it is, it’s not insignificant.

 

Having made that point clear, let me list some of the significant points you can learn from considering the list:

• Many of the titles use alliteration. Although alliteration is not necessarily humorous in itself, it is pleasing both to the ear and the eye. In other words it’s attractive. No, make that aesthetically attractive. That’s alliterative.
• Several of the titles are long. More specifically, the subtitles are long (the titles themselves tend to be rather short, the better to fir the limited space available to book reviewers). Theirs is something funny about long subtitles. Why? You might as well ask why the sky is high or the snail is slow. They’re just funny: that’s why. (Keep that ion mind when you write your book’s title.)
• Puns and other plays on words (such as Post-Natal Depression, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits, and Ties That Bind. . . And Gag!) are funny, even when they’re painful. Bombeck uses them, and, if they’re funny enough for Erma, they’re funny enough for you.
• By making a list and talking about it twice (or more), it’s possible to get off the track and stay off the track for some time without your reader realizing it, wasting a lot of his or her time without him or her realizing it, and filling a page or more with irrelevant digressions without your editor or publisher realizing it, as I have done here.

Sooner or later (later is usually better), even as a humorist, you have to come back to the point, which is, if the title of this chapter is any guide (which, of course, it isn’t), is “Choosing Your Theme.” As I mentioned at the outset of this chapter, a theme is the central topic that a humorist writes about throughout his or her whole book and the tie that binds (and gags!--Thanks, Erma) the book together, giving it unity. (It never hurts to repeat yourself in writing a humorous book, either, to stretch things out, as long as the reader, the editor, or the publisher doesn’t catch on.)

 

So, anyway, let’s talk theme.

 

A theme should be universal, appealing to as many people as possible, because you want to sell as many books as possible and make as much money for yourself (and your publisher, too, of course, who will be reading your manuscript if he or she isn’t too lazy to do so, in which case he or she will assign someone else to read the damned thing and report back to him or her).

 

The titles of the humorous books by Barry, Miller, Buchwald, Bombeck, and Radner suggest (at times, at least) their respective themes: Barry is into guys, travel, and history; Miller rants, rants again, and rants some more; Buchwald is obsessed with politics; Bombeck is up to her neck in family issues; and Radner is concerned with romance and aging.

 

Other good topics: animals (especially pets), babies and babysitters, camping, children, college, dating, friends, marriage, neighbors, sex, shopping, teenagers, vacation, weddings, women, and work.. Experiences that make people uncomfortable or anxious are, paradoxically, also good fodder for humorous treatments. That’s why there are chapters in some books concerning visiting doctors, dentists, and lawyers. That’s also the treason that there are whole books on marriage.

 

After you’ve chosen your theme (or, in some cases, it has chosen you), break it into topics. These will become the subject matter for your book’s chapters (except for the first chapter, which will introduce the theme for the whole book, rather than for its own chapter.) For example, let’s say you choose the theme of aging, as Radner does for her book, I Still Have It . . . I Just Don’t Know Where I Put It. Her first chapter, “I Can’t Believe I’m Filthy,” introduces it as the theme of the entire book. Other chapters consider various (usually only slightly, or loosely) related aspects of this topic, such as old-fashioned shopping by shopoholic (“Catalogue Addiction”); contrasts between children’s youthful behavior and Radner’s older perspective (“Do It Again”); a mother’s lasting influence on even her adult children (“Oh, Mother!”); the difficulty of opening packages that older people sometimes experience (“Go Ahead, Open This Bag”); and so forth. Notice, the chapter topics tend to be lighthearted; address relatively trivial, everyday situations; and pertain to familiar experiences. These characteristics endear these topics to millions of readers (one hopes) by offering humorous, knowing depictions of common annoyances and frustrations that make experiencing them (or remembering experiences concerning them) seem more tolerable and less exasperating than they actually are or were.

 

One other point. The titles of the chapters should be worded so as to disguise the fact that the chapters are really about just another of the aspects of the book’s overall theme. Each title should suggest that its chapter is about a brand-new, never-before-seen (or read) topic. Alternatively, at the very least, the chapter titles should be so vague, yet, somehow familiar-sounding, that they mean absolutely nothing (but still, somehow, seem to relate to the chapter’s contents). Check out some of the chapter titles from Radner’s book: “Catalogue Addiction,” “Do It Again,” “Oh, Mother!,” “Go Ahead, Open This Bag.” Although one chapter title does indicate its topic (“Catalogue Addiction” is obviously about obsessive catalogue shopping), another chapter title (“Do It Again”) seems to be about something other than what it is, in fact, about--sex, maybe--whereas the other chapter titles (“Oh, Mother!“ and “Go Ahead, Open This Bag”) are so vague that they could be about anything, from motherhood to collecting corpses in body bags.

 

So, what have you learned--or what have I taught, at any rate--in this chapter? It’s time to highlight the key points (because conclusions eat up even more space, enabling you, as a writer, to achieve your contracted word count).

 

Conclusion

 

Like the book’s title, which may contain either alliteration or a pun (or both) and will probably include a long subtitle, the first chapter introduces the theme, or central topic, that unifies the book’s contents, laying the groundwork for the topics that subsequent chapters will explore. The titles of the chapters should disguise the fact that the chapters are merely addressing yet another aspect of the central topic, or theme, by seeming to be about something--anything--else than what they really introduce. The book’s theme and the chapter’s topics are often about an annoying, frustrating, familiar, and universal experience with which readers can identify and appreciate. In writing the book, occasional digressions are welcome, as are needless repetitions (but not too many), lists, and end-of-chapter conclusions to round out (and, more importantly, lengthen) the book’s page count. That about sums it up 


Next:  Chapter 2: Introductions, Set-Ups and Punch lines, Transitions as Loose Associations, Metaphors, Similes, Allusions, Malapropisms, and Other Techniques