A rubber haddock... hilarious

As I may have mentioned before in this space, I've been thinking a lot lately about how to write funny.

And I have been paying close attention lately to passages in other people's writing that make me laugh to try to understand what techniques and strategies they employed to create a comic effect.

My thought is that, by studying how other people manage to be funny, perhaps I will hone my own skills in that area.

And that's about as un-funny an introduction you can get to how to write funny!

Anyway, I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter books and I think that J.K. Rowling is a wonderfully creative, effective writer so it came as no surprise to me that my first new lesson in how to write funny came from her.

The lesson for writing funny I got from J.K.? Be specific.

The second lesson for writing funny I learned from J.K.? Some words are funnier than others.

If you want to create a funny situation, use specifics as much as possible.

For example, in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, Rowling gets me to laugh simply by describing Harry as standing there holding a "rubber haddock". Not a "rubber fish", not even a "rubber cod": a "rubber haddock".

It's funny because Rowling identifies the specific kind of fish he's holding and she chooses a specific kind of fish that has a funny name.

"Haddock" is funnier than "Cod" which is funnier than the more generic "fish".

The third lesson for writing funny from J.K.? Build toward absurdity using a series of realistic steps.

She has already established that Ron's brothers are inventors who hope to open their own joke shop when they graduate school. She has provided us several examples of the kinds of innovative products they have already developed, including a line of joke magic wands that turn into different rubber animals (mostly chickens) when used. She has also let it be known that these wands are popular at the school.

So it is no surprise to us that Harry would be found with a fake wand that turns into some form of animal.

The surprise... the laugh is that Harry turns up with a "rubber haddock" in his hand. Not a rubber chicken, not a rubber fish... a rubber haddock.

Hilarious. And, in writing this analysis, I completely ruined the joke. Sorry.