Humor.

Before I take two steps into this topic, I want to be clear:  I have no intention of instructing anyone on the nature of humor.  Not only could the discussion easily range into a library's worth of data without hardly trying, the thought of pinpointing the concept or craft of humor at all is much like trying to draw lines around the notion of true love.

Your humor, my humor and a toad's humor are all going to be unique, so any attempt at exhaustive analysis is just plain silly.  After all, some people find Tosh.0 hilarious.  That said, there is merit in the simple discussion of how to approach, where to insert and how best to replicate in written fiction, humor.

...And I won't even be covering that.

The truth is that if we knew what other people found funny, we would all be effortlessly popular.  Those of us who experience a modicum of success in garner a regular giggle or two might occasionally come under the delusion that we should "do comedy," but the truth is that many such jokes (among friends, family, coworkers or cellmates) are so ruthlessly mired in obscure situational factors that they have less than no merit in any other context.

Consider the classic example:  a friend hurries to tell you the story of a wonderful joke they coined, extemporaneously, just that afternoon.  They fly through the setup like a caffeine-addle howler monkey before arriving (like the Hindenburg) at the punchline of which they were so proud.

On the off-chance they've managed to set the scene with any grace or completeness, you too often find yourself sadly underwhelmed at the retelling.  This, of course, leads the age-old excuse:  "You just had to be there."

Situational humor makes up fully 99% of all amateur comedy.  When making the mistake of trying to move from your group of friends (with whom you have your own unique cultural collective to draw from) to the world at large (stand-up and its iteratives being the most common form), this is a major issue, and tends to be something of a rude awakening for those who make the hapless venture.

Thankfully, in writing, situational humor is something of a natural transition.  The trick is that you have to write both the setup and the punchline.  You're not just you:  you are now your friends, the scene and the world that oh-so-naturally creates the perfect gem out of random chaotic happenstance (which you must now meticulously design).

As with most things in writing, I find it easiest to work backwards.

If you're specifically looking for a punchline, or at least a good line, it can help to start with the line, or at least a line prototype.  If you know the sort of joke you're going for, start with the line, the moment, the frozen instant of time around which all the giggle is based, and then graft it onto an otherwise natural, unassuming scene.

Mechanically speaking, take a line like "I think I'll have the soup" and try to weave it into a scene.

The setting is fairly obvious:  a restaurant, or some food-giving occasion.  Since we're going for humor, it's safe to assume that "I think I'll have the soup" is a grand understatement, hinting at either something spectacular about the soup, or something awful about the alternative.

The negative is generally the safer bet, since it affords us the chance to describe how horrible the salad (or other non-soup alternative) is.  All comedy comes at someone's expense:  in this case, the other patron, who may or may not be a main character.

Now we've worked ourselves to the meat of the scene:  a character other than the one saying the line orders the salad.  Something then goes horribly (and loudly) wrong with said salad, which alerts all the other patrons of the same area to the issue.  As the original violent event is tapering off, another patron off to the scene of the center attraction glibly tells their waiter:  "I think I'll have the soup."

For added effect, make the reaction to the salad have nothing at all to do with the salad itself (which is fairly logical anyway, since salad's are the least villainous of all foods, with the possible exception of the Caesar).

Our character orders the salad, and then something entirely unrelated happens:  someone "spikes" the salad with concentrated pepper oil; a large, green spider hitches a ride on a prominent bit of lettuce; the ghost of the character's lover who has been dogging them for three scenes finally decides to play poltergeist to get the hero's attention, whatever it may be.

The outside effect is the same:  other patrons see a salad arrive, and then the patron at the same table reacts frightfully as if in response to the leafy greens themselves.  The assumption is obvious, and only we the audience know the truth.

Enter dramatic irony.

It's not unknown that irony is the heart of comedy.  If your high school English class didn't teach you that, then here is the dime tour.  Irony is the essence of the unexpected, the unintended or the unspoken.  It is, at its core, two paradoxical things:  one stated, one known.

Here, the patron jumping out of their seat and flailing about in a panic is stated, leaving the other patrons to assume something is amiss with the salad.  The audience knows, however, that the patron just swallowed a mouthful of hotsauce the likes of which God himself has never seen.  The result, for whatever reason, is generally accepted as "funny."

True to its dualistic nature, of course, irony can be used for some of the greatest and best examples of humor, and the greatest and best examples of tragedy and soul-crushing failure.  Funny, that.

Back to humor, not ever joke needs a punchline, but punchlines do serve their purpose.  For one, they're repeatable, which any fan of Joss Whedon can tell you is its own marketing device.  When you hear three friends all guffawing over the same five-word phrase and feel on the outs, it's all the more incentive to get yourself "in the know" as quickly as possible.

But that dark motive aside, punchlines are a signal to an audience well trained by years of the same that the scene is over and ready to transition to something else.  They become a sort of punctuation on the segment itself, which in literature (where scene changes do not come with strong visual cues) can be invaluable, or at least comforting to your reader.

That said, don't feel limited to a line.  Plenty of hilarious scenes can't be isolated to a sound byte.  At times, the situation itself is humorous, if not in the laugh-out-loud manner we too often isolate ourselves to.  The awkwardness of a first romance, for instance.  The little dance an otherwise strong, stoic character might do the second the door is closed on the eve of their first date is source for endless warm-feeling humor.

Even better is setting up the illusion all along that the main character is the one eager for a romance that works, and then segueing directly from their private victory dance to their counterpart, a love interest till now only viewed from the outside and seeming altogether "with it" and suave, until we catch them shimmying all the way to their car, revealing just how human an otherwise iconic character truly is.

Often the trick with humor in your writing is keeping track of two worlds:  the world your audience knows, and the world the other characters see.  Sometimes the audience knows more, sometimes less, but it's in the disparity between that you can sneak in the humorously unexpected.  The greater the gap and the more sudden the reveal, the higher impact the comedic moment will be.

Sometimes the best place to start is in making human that which we otherwise confuse for supernatural or divine.  Showing a world leader as an uncertain, clumsy (but well-intentioned) bumbler, or revealing the tough, stoic thug to be a caring and loving father (by having him carry his daughter's My Little Pony backpack in public) is a gateway to somewhat more terrestrial forms of subtle humor between what the reader expects (or what the characters assume) and what the truth actually is.

In literature especially, dispelling or otherwise interrupting the notion of well-formed intellectualism or the high-fantasy world of florid prose is another key way to break and otherwise serious scene into unexpected humor at the meta-level.  When the person defying audience expectations is not the characters, but the narrator, the chances of anyone finding the humor rote and overdone are far less likely.

For an example, rent yourself a copy of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.  Within the first ten minutes, you'll see about five examples of the disparity of information between characters and audience, between characters and characters, and between audience and narrator.

Take notes.

If nothing else, don't be ashamed of simply being light-hearted and/or goofy if the situation calls for it (or even if it rather explicitly doesn't, depending on how much of a shock factor you're going for).  Generations pass, and we still get very attached to the notion of a stupid cute thing that makes funny noises.  Throwing the same critters (for no other moniker can be as aptly applied) into stark opposition to the seriousness of your other characters can create a comedy all its own without too much effort.

Just avoid going full-on Jar-Jar.  The less actual words being used, the better.  Dialects (especially intentionally hampered dialects) risk being annoying and offensive more than cute and humorous.  Gibberish, on the other hand, we never seem to get tired of.

Naturally, I wanted to end today's post on a pithy punchline of its own, but the ironic thing is that an article about humor is actually a terrible lead-in for any kind of one-liner you can imagine, since you've just finished tearing down the curtain to reveal the little man and his microphone.  The most you can hope to accomplish is the literary equivalent of breaking into random vaudeville.

So instead let me leave you with this:  you will undoubtedly, unerring, inescapably fail to make people laugh at every joke.  Humor is as subjective as love (if not more so) and there's only so much width you can hope to span across the various schools of thought before you give yourself an intellectual hernia.

For that reason, never put all your eggs in one joke, don't beat yourself up if a line falls flat and, most of all, don't try to make it perfect.  Imagery, climactic tension, pivotal character moments, all these merit a fine attention to detail and a tenacious quest for flawlessness.

Humor needs spontaneity, variety and a little effortless chaos.  Best of all, humor needs to ignore itself.  The worst thing you can do with a joke is wait for applause.  Sprinkle them like candy across the page in small doses and cap things off with a zinger, but do not stop:  trudge right on into the next line, scene or moment in time so quickly that your readers do an actual double-take when they realized what they just read.

Even if you fail to have people holding their sides and rolling on the floor, the endless flow of light-hearted positive energy is enough to get most people chomping at the bit for more.  Return to the notion of ewoks:  there is no single moment in Wicket's existence that makes us cackle outright, but the more he and his compatriots babble incoherently, the more we want to watch.

Falling short on humor still leaves you at "happy," and happy is a hell of a fallback plan.

Failing never felt so good.