And every funny image has a surprisingly incongruous combination of ideas. The “kick of the discovery” is a phrase used by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Have you noticed that comedy almost always involves misleading the audience and then surprising them?Ī few years ago, ScreenCraft hosted a panel called Professionally Funny: Comedy Screenwriting featuring some of the industry's top comedy screenwriting professionals. If you think about it, every joke has a crucial element of surprise. So again - what makes you laugh? If you imagine a few jokes or scenarios that always make you smile, what do they have in common? White famously said: “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” Or maybe you'd rather not analyze the underlying components of what makes something funny.Īs a young intern I began my career working with Lizz Winstead (co-creator of The Daily Show) and her group of comedy writers (including Emmy Award-winning comedy writer Jo Miller) - and I was consistently surprised how unfunny the analytical process of comedy writing sometimes can be. What makes you laugh? The question has intrigued scientists and comedy-lovers alike.
