Writing Right with Dmitri: How to Let People Know You Are Witty
Created | Updated Apr 28, 2013
Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.
Writing Right with Dmitri: How to Let People Know You Are Witty
I have nothing to declare but my genius. – Oscar Wilde.
Yeah, right. Don't you just love it when people blow their own horn like that? Let you know up-front how wonderful, witty, clever, etc, they are? Do you remember that 'comedian' who trumpeted, 'I'm [Name forgotten], and you aren't?' Or the professional 'wits' who never go anywhere without their entourage of professional yes-men who laugh at all their jokes?
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Don't you DARE go around telling people how witty and clever you are. If it's true, you can show them. If it's not, well…Just because people don't start flame wars with you doesn't mean they agreed with your inflated self-assessment. It might merely mean that they couldn't be bothered.
That being said: how DO you convince your readers that you're witty? You guessed it – I've got a few examples lined up.
The Subtle Method
Subtlety is not for everyone. For one thing, it requires a deft touch on the part of the writer. For another, it requires a higher grade of reader than you are likely to find these days. However, persevere: you might seek the intuitive among the audience of the Colbert Report (Facebook psychologists claim there's a positive correlation with that and IQ) or those who read the after-show analyses of Mad Men. ('The empty elevator underlines the metaphysical subtext that has been evident all season…') Or you could just pad your SEO with polysyllabic titles and hope for the best. One way to weed out your readers, though, it to be understatedly arch.
Certain of the events chronicled in these books were objected to, as being impossible.
They were impossible.
The only defence that the Author can offer is that, although perfectly impossible, they actually happened.
In reviewing The Wages of Virtue, for example, a very distinguished literary critic remarked that the incident of a girl being found in the French Foreign Legion was absurd, and merely added an impossibility to a number of improbabilities.
The Author admitted the justice of the criticism, and then, as now, put forth the same feeble defence that, although perfectly impossible, it was the simple truth.[...]
Truth is stranger than fiction. – PC Wren, Introduction to Beau Sabreur.
There are no belly laughs in that introduction, but there's a fair amount of wit. It's dry, it's amusing, and it makes its point. Anybody who feels the overwhelming urge to misunderstand the message, or to 'top' the author's remarks, should probably go read something else. He won't be ready for wit.
The Keep-'Em-Laughing Method
This is a favourite technique of mine. Elektra and I used to practise it on a poor friend of ours named, appropriately, Joy. Joy couldn't help it: if she got started laughing, she had trouble stopping. Her humour threshold went down. We took shameless advantage of her, telling one-liner after one-liner while she collapsed helplessly onto the sofa. I'd been doing it all my life, and I'm mean that way.
You see, my mother suffered from the same affliction. I don't know who in Mark Twain's family had it, but I'll bet someone did. He seems to have had a lot of practise, too. That skill came from somewhere. I've quoted this one before, but here's a rerun, because I like it so much. Besides, I'm too lazy to look up another one, and it's already GuideML'd and everything.
Spaniards are very fond of cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as something sacred. So the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that time. Their unfeline conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a hatred toward them in the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving them out of Spain was tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are foes forever now. France had a minister here once who embittered the nation against him in the most innocent way. He killed a couple of battalions of cats (Tangier is full of them) and made a parlor carpet out of their hides. He made his carpet in circles – first a circle of old gray tomcats, with their tails all pointing toward the center; then a circle of yellow cats; next a circle of black cats and a circle of white ones; then a circle of all sorts of cats; and, finally, a centerpiece of assorted kittens. It was very beautiful, but the Moors curse his memory to this day. – Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad.
The All-Out Assault
When all else fails, try total, relentless absurdity. Picking a suitable subject – such as, say, the US military – is a big help. Apparently, Thorne Smith was drafted in World War I, so he had plenty of material.
Feb. 25th. I never fully appreciated what a truly democratic nation the United States was until I beheld it naked, that is, until I beheld a number of her sons in that condition. Nakedness is the most democratic of all institutions. Knock-knees, warts and chilblains, bowlegs, boils and bay-windows are respecters of no caste or creed, but visit us all alike. These profound reflections came to me as I stood with a large gathering of my fellow creatures in the offices of the physical examiner.
"Never have I seen a more unpromising candidate in all my past experience," said the doctor moodily when I presented myself before him, and thereupon he proceeded to punch me in the ribs with a vigor that seemed to be more personal than professional. When thoroughly exhausted from this he gave up and led me to the eye charts, which I read with infinite ease through long practise in following the World Series in front of newspaper buildings.
"Eyes all right," he said in a disappointed voice. "It must be your feet."
These proved to be faultless, as were my ears and teeth.
"You baffle me," said the doctor at last, thoroughly discouraged. "Apparently you are sound all over, yet, looking at you, I fail to see how it is possible." – Thorne Smith, Biltmore Oswald.
What Have We Learned?
Probably nothing.
If you don't think these are prime examples of Grade-A wit, go away and don't talk to me. If you do, let's sit down for a chat.
All three of these gentlemen were far wittier, in my humble opinion, than Mr Wilde. And they didn't have to crow about it: they let the readers do it for them.
Think about this the next time you approach an online forum with personal PR on your mind.
Writing Right with Dmitri Archive
