OK, a bit of a bait-and-switch with the headline. This is a post about where IDEAS come from. Hey, if you’re a writer, ideas ARE babies.

Earlier this week a friend asked about the process in my head when I create humor. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I spend very little time thinking about the source of funny.

On her most-excellent blog, Jane Espenson recently posted about two kinds of comedy writers, people who say funny things naturally and then write them down, and people who analyze the shapes and patterns that make jokes and recreate them as they write.

I don’t think I’m an either-or. My brain works enough like an engineer’s that analyzing humor is very appealing. But I also have sufficient experience with improvisational acting to know that the magic of the moment can create humor that an outline and some graph paper simply will not produce.

I had two different experiences with housemates this week that very much demonstrated there is value in being able to think both ways:

I was talking with one of my housemates, Karl, about going to a Renaissance fair this weekend in order to research the nerds-in-a -van movie I’m trying to finish. There is a significant set piece that happens at a Ren Fair, and I’ve never been to one. Karl was interested in coming along, and I wanted to make sure he understood my intentions. He might wish to attend with less of a sense of irony than me. See, Karl spends almost all of his free time playing video games. And his day job? Testing video games. I’ll leave it to you to fill in the blanks about Karl.

In my movie, the nerdy characters are dragging a less nerdy friend to the Ren Fair with them. Interestingly, Karl and I started taking on those roles, something like this:

Voila. Because we had each taken on the perspectives of characters in the story, our born-of-the-moment dialogue came out being something that I’ll probably actually put into the finished script. Bonus.

Then again, I had a great moment with another housemate, Jenn. She was explaining her frustration with her mother, who had just signed up for her very first e-mail account. She was asking Jenn to guide her through the process, over the phone, cross-country. It struck me what a universal experience this is, and suddenly I knew I wanted to write a tongue-in-cheek short video about the human tragedy of our age, adult children having to explain internet use to their parents.

But as I worked with the idea, I realized it would be funnier if I could spin it to look more like a public service announcement. The juxtaposition of this core idea with a familiar media form would make the piece much funnier. So I reframed the joke; the script would start out like a commercial telling parents to make time to talk to their kids about drugs. But though drugs are implied, the script would reveal the topic they REALLY need to talk to their kids about is how to e-mail. Suddenly it shifts to annoyed adult children teaching their clueless senior parents about the web. The inspiration that came from my conversation with Jenn was a decent joke, but shaping the sketch through analysis and knowledge of form allowed it to get much funnier.

I guess it all means I’m whole-brained when it comes to comedy writing. Cool by me. I don’t care much where the funny comes from, as long as it keeps coming.

P.S. I’m going to the Renaissance fair with Karl today. He plans to wear a cloak. That he happens to have in his room. I’ll leave it to you to fill in the blanks about Karl.