Where babies come from
April 28th, 2007 by screenwriterguy
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:
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This week, one of the students I tutor fed me some amazing comedy. During one of our sessions, he asked me about the planet Uranus–in complete innocence and sincerity–”Why do some people call it YŎŎR-ə-nəs, and other people call it yŏŏ-RĀ-nəs?” As a general philosophy, short of breaking the where-babies-come-from story before mom and dad get the chance, I believe that if a kid asks, a teacher needs to answer. And what student-mentor relationship WOULDN’T be strengthened by more frequent use of the word “butthole?” I explained to my tutee that it was partly a more European pronunciation but also just a way that teachers avoid listening to students snicker. Naturally, he snickered.
Grey’s Anatomy has been picking up steam for me. Perhaps it’s not as brilliant as last year’s Super Bowl cliffhanger, but a lot of dopey distraction has been cleared aside, and some more genuine character conflicts lately show promise for interesting stories to come.However, did you notice that in last night’s episode, Izzie had a couple of speeches in which she had to deliver a whoooooole lot of parallel sentence structure? During her last little diatribe, she started about nine sentences with “I believe…” Am I the only one who desperately hoped she would break out with “I believe the children are the future?”