HOW did you spend your Thanksgiving?” It’s a straightforward question, and a straightforward respondent might answer something like, “Oh, the old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I napped for two hours.”
Yawn.
What did Jon Stewart write? “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
Stewart’s barb works because it ends with an uncomfortable truth—in this case, a truth that far too many Americans ignore as they enjoy their holiday feasts. He punches up, targeting those who used their power for corrupt and immoral purposes. Using humor in this way can challenge abusive authority and effect social change.
But before any of that can be achieved, a joke first has to be funny. Stewart’s biting wit shines in that skillfully constructed sentence, manipulating its syntax to maximize its surprise. How can writers interested in writing funnier—whether using humor as a tool for social critique or simply to give joy to the reader—understand and manipulate pacing? To answer that we need to look at what happens in the brain when a joke makes us laugh.
Imagine you’ve been given three unrelated words. Though these words are unrelated, each of the three is associated with a fourth word. You’ve been asked to guess this fourth word.
For example: cottage, Swiss, and cake. What is the fourth word they all separately relate to?
The answer is cheese. Cottage cheese, Swiss cheese, cheesecake.
Now that you understand how the game is played, let’s try a harder one. The three, , and . Go ahead, try to figure it out.
