Belief 07

Humor

Comedy is structure wearing a funny hat — and the jokes worth keeping are the ones that pay off something.

Writing Beliefs · members' unit

Humor is behind a locked door

The Writing Beliefs page and Study are open to everyone. The other 9 units are enrolment-only.

What's in this unit · 13 min read

  1. Keystones and confetti
  2. Trivial tragedy
  3. Curve the language
  4. Seven premises that keep working
  5. Inappropriate enthusiasm
  6. Balance, and the roller coaster

6 quick checksstepper

1 Sign in

With your school Google account. This is how your work reaches the gradebook — it doesn't open the unit by itself.

2 Get in

Open the class link your teacher posted — that's the usual way, and it enrols you on the spot. Or paste an access key if you were handed one.

A key unlocks this browser and keeps your progress here; signing in keeps it with you across devices. Either way the key itself is only ever checked as a hash. Manage all of this on your account, read what signing in stores, or go back to Writing Beliefs.

Sources

  • James Scott Bell — The Art of War for Writers
  • R.L. Stine — MasterClass — mixing horror and humor
  • Roy Peter Clark — Writing Tools
  • Henri Bergson — Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
  • Del Close & Charna Halpern — Truth in Comedy
  • Matt Bird — The Secrets of Story