Help with jokes/cheerful characters

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Warlocal_TMSGDC
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Help with jokes/cheerful characters

#1 Post by Warlocal_TMSGDC »

So, one of my current characters is that character that is always making jokes, however I (sadly) am terrible with jokes, both coming up and when to use them. so I am kind of lost. if anyone could give me a couple of pointers it would help a great deal!

The game it is for is a short 10 minutes game, that I am using as a demo to recruit members for my school`s game dev club. the game is basically the club mascot Ludus(from latin meaning play/game)-chan. going around giving a tour of the school. however Ludus-chan is a cheerful and playful girl, and I am really having trouble giving her that feeling. any hints?

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Re: Help with jokes/cheerful characters

#2 Post by SundownKid »

Humor usually comes from subverting people's expectations. In other words, when the brain expects one thing and gets something completely different, that's humor in a nutshell.

Someone can be cheerful without being funny. But to make someone cheerful *and* funny they have to go against people's expectations of what a normal person would say.

For example, substituting something 'normal' for something unusual:

This is the cafeteria! Their paella is amazing!
This is the schoolyard! I love playing "Get hit by the ball!" Wait, what do you mean that isn't a real game?

Or, a way that subverts their personality and/or breaks the fourth wall:

I go to science class here! That professor's a real jerk... wait, is this thing still on?

Or slapstick humor:

Here's the gy-- OOF! Gym... sorry, I tripped over a jump rope.

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Re: Help with jokes/cheerful characters

#3 Post by Enigma »

Warlocal_TMSGDC wrote:So, one of my current characters is that character that is always making jokes, however I (sadly) am terrible with jokes, both coming up and when to use them. so I am kind of lost. if anyone could give me a couple of pointers it would help a great deal!

The game it is for is a short 10 minutes game, that I am using as a demo to recruit members for my school`s game dev club. the game is basically the club mascot Ludus(from latin meaning play/game)-chan. going around giving a tour of the school. however Ludus-chan is a cheerful and playful girl, and I am really having trouble giving her that feeling. any hints?
Have the characters react as if the character is unfunny. If the joke is unfunny at least the game doesn't seem to think they're humor masterminds, and if the joke is funny then people will think the characters are just slightly annoyed that they never stop making jokes

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Re: Help with jokes/cheerful characters

#4 Post by akemicchi »

SundownKid has it pretty much down. The character has to surprise your audience. That's basically it when it comes to humor.

For example: Bob and Ann need to put books away on a bookshelf. Bob carries 30 books every trip, while Ann carries 20 books per trip. It takes 4 minutes to make a round trip to the bookshelf and back to the books. How long does it take Bob and Ann to fill up a bookshelf when they have 200 books to put away?

2) One person replies, "That's easy. 20 books+30 books=50 books per trip. 200 books total / 50 books per trip = 4 trips. 4 trips x 4 minutes per trip =16 minutes. So 16 minutes!"
3.) The joker replies, "4 minutes if you bring the bookshelf to the books."

Another thing to note about humor is that there's a beat to it. Good ones are usually quick, fast, and in the moment. The biggest problem I see with people making jokes is that they usually drag the punchline out too long. You hardly ever see a joke that's too short or underexplained. It's usually best to just make the punchline, and if you really want someone to react, only have one reaction, and then continue on with the writing.

Of course, beating people with a joke or having the joke run on too long is alright if you're trying to make your character out as an unfunny pest. Just... don't drag in the rest of the cast to perpuate the joke. Everyone will start looking annoying. Hold back, especially if you as an author really like the joke. You could also make an unfunny joke funny by having everyone attack that character's sense of humor. I personally enjoy extremely aggressive, over-the-top reactions to unfunny jokes. The audience's reaction stops being, "That's not funny," and turns to, "It's okay, calm down, that joke wasn't that bad!"

More on the pacing of humor: jokes work best when they're in succession. The first one brings people's guards down, then the second one follows up with another strike to the funny bone. Keep in mind that there shouldn't be any time between the jokes. If you spend too much time between the jokes, it might be too late to ride on the humor of the first joke.

A: I know this is really odd, but the question will come up sooner or later. Can I have your pet dragon?
B: If you give me a city, I'll do it.
A: That's not entirely impossible... [First joke. Unconventional answer.]
B: I was joking! I'll never give him up! You'll have to pry him out of my cold dead hands!
A: You'll be taking him to the grave? [Second joke.]
B: You know what I mean! [Reaction. Any more commentary, especially from other characters, might not be the best idea.]
A: Oh well. At least I tried. My king would really like your dragon. [Continuation of the event. Stop this exchange and get on with the story.]

Another thing about jokes is that if you're making a recurring joke, it shouldn't really happen any more than three times. There's just something about jokes that can be funny hearing it two or three times, but any more than that and it just becomes stale. First time'll illicit a mental chuckle, second time will come the laugh, and the third can either be outrageously funny or just illicit another mental chuckle, since the novelty of the joke is dying down.

A: We should kill him.
B: Come on, we can't do that.
C: What should we do? If we do nothing, he'll continue to dock our pay!
A: Unless we kill him.
B: I told you, that's illegal!

Reactions can be jokes too. They can be funny if they're completely unexpected in terms of the character (but not Out of Character!), or if they mirror the audience's sentiments. Over-the-top reactions work well too, especially for a cheerful, bouncy character. However, keep in mind that not all reactions are funny.

A: We should kill him.
B: Uhh, okay, let's just ignore the crazy person. So anyway--

B's answer might mirror a normal person's reaction, but you don't want to mirror a normal person's reaction. It's boring. Besides, a reaction that tells people to ignore someone basically tells the audience, "This joke is not funny. Don't laugh. Just ignore it." Don't do this, especially not around an unfunny character. Pointing out they're not funny in an uncomedic fashion is NOT funny. It'd be better if the character reacted in a more exaggerated way, or if you did away with a reaction completely.

A: We should kill him.
B: Haha, yeah, sure... *quietly* Hello, police? I'd like to report a crazy person here...

This kind of reaction resonates with the audience's sentiments ("A is crazy"), and it also keeps up with flow ("This is a joke.").

Anyway, that's everything I can think up of. People find things funny when it's unconventional or surprising. Jokes require a good set up and a lightning fast delivery. Reactions can be funny if the character has a novel reaction or it resonates with the audience. Keep in mind the pacing-- pacing is very important in humor and predicts whether it'll flop or not. Three is the magic number for recurring jokes. Things like that.

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Re: Help with jokes/cheerful characters

#5 Post by YossarianIII »

Personally, the two characters that I think are the epitome of the "cheerful and funny" archetype are Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks and Aang from Avatar. Neither character really realizes that they're funny, but they get so happy about things that the viewer gets vicariously happy too. No jokes required.

For example, here's a video of a man who is irrationally happy with his coffee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxwcQ1dapw8.

While comedy is often about subverting expectations, sometimes a character does something that's so expected and in-character that it becomes funny, too.

That's just one option out of many, of course.

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Re: Help with jokes/cheerful characters

#6 Post by Warlocal_TMSGDC »

Thank you, I think I have more or less an idea of what to do now, so glad this forum is so active, I have like to finish it all in a week so I was getting nervous... but yeah, you guys rock!

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Re: Help with jokes/cheerful characters

#7 Post by Kuiper »

Here are some humor tips that I've mostly stolen from Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) and Dave Barry:

The Six Elements of Humor:

Scott Adams came up with this list. The six critical elements of humor are:

Clever
Cute
Bizarre
Cruel
Naughty
Recognizable

In order for something to be funny, it must achieve two of these. Include three or more for even greater effect.

If you want to give a character a shortcut to being funny, assign them one of these attributes. For example, if you have a cute character, you're already halfway there; just show a cute character doing something bizarre or cruel, and you have all the ingredients you need. Calvin and Hobbes is a great example of this. Both Calvin and Hobbes are cute characters (Calvin because he's a precocious child, and Hobbes because he's an adorable tiger). And Hobbes is inherently bizarre (he's a talking animal). So before Watterson even tells us the joke, he's already primed us to laugh. Show Calvin being mean (cruel) to his parents or classmates, or doing something naughty, and we're hitting three or more elements out of six.

One of the biggest takeaways for me is that humor doesn't have to be clever. When I was a kid, I always observed my parents swapping parenting stories with other parents, and all of the grown-ups seemed to think that stories about childhood shenanigans were the most hilarious thing ever. Those parents found parenting stories funny because they were cute (due to their subject matter) and relatable (shared experiences of parenting). I, lacking the experience of being a parent, didn't find these stories relatable, and as a consequence they weren't funny, except when the stories involved an element of cruelty or the bizarre.

Picking inherently funny words:

Some words are just funnier than others. When you're revising a piece to make it funnier, sometimes a simple word substitution can make the passage more fun to read. Note that "funny words" are not intended to substitute for jokes; they style, not substance.

As an exercise, consider the words "pull" and "yank." Which is funnier? I think that almost unanimously, people would tell you that "yank" is funnier than "pull." So if you have the chance to substitute the word "yank" for "pull" without changing the meaning (or even better, enhancing the meaning), you should do that. You can even change the events of your story to accommodate the use of unusual words. Instead of having a character wear a green sweater, have them where a chartreuse sweater.

What makes a funny word? Generally speaking, a word is funny when it is recognizable (everyone knows the meaning), but uncommon (not often heard in everyday conversation). This is why yanking is funnier than pulling, and why a chartreuse sweater is funnier than a green sweater. Bonus points if the word has an unusual syllable that sticks out. For example, "bazooka" is a word that people are familiar with, but we don't see it very often, and the fact that it's a three-syllable word with the stress on the middle syllable makes it extra weird to pronounce. Other examples of words that are inherently funny to me include festering, girdle, regurgitate, and corpulent.

Things that almost make sense

This is one of the hardest things to pull off, and it's hardly universal, but when people like these, they love them. Sometimes, you can have a statement that just has a perfect logical break, where it almost makes sense, but then your brain notices something is off and you have to do a double-take. Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) was great at these. For example:
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
That's an anti-metaphor. It's like a normal metaphor, but it's just barely outside of what your brain normally expects, and it triggers a reflex in your brain that makes you laugh. Here's a feeble attempt to try and construct a "near logic" passage:
"Richard, you'll notice the copious red ink on your report. I took the liberty of marking your various errors. This should have an apostrophe since it's a contraction, this word is misspelled, and so is the one below it. And this word, it isn't misspelled, but it's pronounced wrong."
Correcting someone's pronunciation while reprimanding their report almost makes sense, until you realize the absurdity of correcting the pronunciation of a written word.
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