The Art of Comedy Writing

Book excerpt: In The Art of Comedy Writing, Arthur Asa Berger argues that there are a relatively limited number of techniques - forty-five in all - that humorists employ. Elaborating upon his prior, in-depth study of humor, An Anatomy of Humor, in which Berger provides a content analysis of humor in all forms - joke books, plays, comic books, novels, short stories, comic verse, and essays - The Art of Comedy Writing goes further. Berger groups each technique into four basic categories: humor involving identity such as burlesque, caricature, mimicry, and stereotype; humor involving logic such as analogy, comparison, and reversal; humor involving language such as puns, wordplay, sarcasm, and satire; and finally, chase, slapstick, and speed, or humor involving action. Berger holds that the approaches which a comic selects and the way in which they are applied define a comic's hallmark style.