How to Be Funny If You're Not

No subtitle necessary.

Elissa Bassist

Aug 23, 2023

People always ask me, “Will you marry me?” and “How can I be funny if I’m not funny?”

I’m not accepting marriage proposals at this time, and there infinite ways to be funny. Here’s an incomplete list:

Stop telling yourself you’re not funny. Stop thinking it. Stop right now.
Do something just because it would make a funny story. Go to a semi-nude beach, date an actor, give birth, etc.
Hang out with funny people, and just, like, copy them.
It’s fair game to copy/paste funny snippets of your emails/texts/posts into a piece of “real writing.”
Train your taste to elevate your ability. Watch TV. Read humor and satire every day for the rest of your life. This is research. What makes you laugh, and why? Answer that hundreds of times. Now emulate.
Use funnier words. Begin a running list of new words/phrases/lines/riffs/bits/quotations based on what you watch, read, and overhear in life. Return to the list(s) when writing (to spice it up) and when stuck (for inspiration).
To be freer and goofier with your wording, read Poetry magazine, then binge Abbott Elementary—take notes.
In conversation, when someone laughs at something you say or do, be weird and write it down. To paraphrase Joan D., “The difference between a writer and a non-writer is writing things down.”
Pay attention to your life harder. Funny stuff is everywhere, all the time. Everything that annoys you is funny. Everything that embarrasses you is funny. If you have any 3 a.m. thought-spirals–good. Write those down. They are funny.
Listen to children talk.
Have a child?
Experience tragedy. Give it time. That’s comedy.
Expand your definition of “writing.” Know what Ray Bradbury knew, that “the subliminal eye is shrewd,” that we’re writing even when we’re not writing.
Exaggerate like your life depends on it. Samantha Irby writes in her collection Wow, No Thank You, “I don’t drink water and my blood type is pizza.” bell hooks nails why this works: “As I wrote, I felt that I was not as concerned with accuracy of detail as I was with evoking in writing the state of mind, the spirit of a particular moment.”
Don’t rely on clichés. A man who doesn’t wash the dishes is a stereotype (and a monster), but a partner who inhales their farts so no one will smell them is a fresh thought and fine idea.
Rely on contrast. Put two things together that don’t belong together. Combine Virginia Woolf and Hannah Montana. Other funny contrasts:
- Internal monologue vs. external circumstances
- What you think will happen vs. what actually happens
- What I said vs. what I meant to say
Do math. Mia Mercado writes in her collection She's Nice Though, “The hottest age to be is your age cut in half, minus an additional seven years.”
Write and practice enough on the page that being funny starts to happen there. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen naturally. Unfortunately, it’s work. It’s practice. It’s perseverance. It’s studying. It’s practice. It’s writing like an idiot. It’s practice. It isn’t handed to you. It’s practice.

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ICYMI: I’m Elissa Bassist, and I teach short conceptual humor/satire writing, funny personal essays, tragicomic memoir, emotional emails, and that’s it. I teach in person and online at The New School, 92NY, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Writing Workshops, and elsewhere. I founded and edit the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus, and I wrote the award-deserving book Hysterical. I am probably my therapist’s favorite.