How to Make Your Humor Heighten

Let's talk about comedic escalation

Today we’re talking about comedic escalation.

A quick note first: Our second book club discussion about Leave It To PSmith—covering the second half of the book—will happen this Thursday! I hope you’ll join us.

Now, today’s main course…

"You say, "Does the piece/story overall heighten enough? (Note: most comedy doesn’t heighten enough)" - is there any way you could give us a quick example? Either from one of your posts or one you love?” - Matt H.

It was inevitable that we’d tackle heightening in depth, sooner or later.

Heightening, or escalation—I see these as synonyms—is central to comedy.

The idea is pretty standard: We start with something funny, weird, silly, absurd, or crazy, and it keeps getting funnier, weirder, sillier, crazier, or more absurd.

Or, at the least, the reader or audience feels that the comedy gets funnier.

So, I’m not going to argue for anything counterintuitive here: humor should heighten.

The question is: How do we as writers accomplish this? And also: what separates great heightening from mediocre heightening?

In some ways, I think it’s easier to understand heightening if we start with what it isn’t, or, how heightening doesn’t happen.

This is a longer post, so, here’s the plan today.

1. Let’s start with the via negativa explanation: What heightening isn’t.

2. Then we’ll get positive to see what heightening is.

3. I’ll give you two “mindset hacks” for heightening in your writing.

4. We’ll look at some very clear cases of comedic heightening in television and sketch comedy.

5. We’ll deconstruct two excellent humor pieces, from Keaton Patti and Molly Henderson, to see how heightening works in prose.

Onward!

1. What heightening is not

When a humor piece doesn’t heighten well, I find it often boils down to one of these four problems, or a combination of them:

(Case A) The writing or story is too predictable. The reader is never or rarely surprised. Or, worse, the reader is able to anticipate the exact direction the story takes and perhaps even the specific jokes that will pop up. Predictability is the enemy of escalation. And predictability is the enemy of comedy.

There are a few sub-cases here. Perhaps, for example, the writer repeats jokes with the same basic idea or punchline. This gives the reader the feeling, “Eh, this kind of feels like previous joke XYZ.” I see this a lot in humor drafts.

Another sub-case: The piece is too familiar or lazy. Perhaps the writer even uses comedy clichés. In this case, the predictability comes from the writer not being original enough. The writing is too much a pale imitation of comedy that’s been done before.

(Case B) Even if the jokes are unpredictable, the joke writing just isn’t strong enough on an individual level. This is a separate case because joke-writing can be original and unpredictable and yet still not funny enough. Perhaps too many of the jokes just have a logic that doesn’t work. Or, the writer didn’t generate enough jokes and pick the strongest ones.

(Case C) The piece is inconsistent, confusing, or overly-complex. This prevents the story from heightening because the writer never locks onto one strong, clear idea. When the reader is confused, or when the piece is jumping around between inconsistencies ideas, the escalation can’t take off.

(Case D) The premise or central story idea isn’t strong enough. It “doesn’t have legs.” This makes the writer’s job too difficult to begin with. When an idea is weak to begin with, it’s no wonder that you can’t escalate it.

Those are the most common cases, in my reading experience.

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2. What heightening is

Now that we know what heightening ain’t, let’s talk about what it is. Our work is easier now, since we can just negate the previous stuff. I’d say all humor that escalates well has three characteristics:

• The comedic premise itself is funny and somewhat unusual.

• The jokes hit hard, and they’re individually unpredictable.

• The story or piece honors the original idea but takes it to a place that you wouldn’t expect.

First, let’s look at a classic example from Seinfeld. I’ve quoted this example before—many times before!—from an interview with humorist Mike Lacher, but I’m going to quote it yet again because it’s perfect:

ALEX: Do you think there’s a specific sense of “heightening” that’s shared by most good humor writing?

MIKE: To me, heightening is expanding your premise in new and surprising ways that still connect coherently to what you’ve set up earlier. It’s walking that balance of finding new territory while not jumping so far ahead that it feels contrived. In terms of humor writing, you usually see this in terms of “the jokes getting funnier.”

But I think that feeling is less about the fact that the author saved the best jokes for last, and rather than they’ve carefully expanded the premise step by step in more surprising ways. That feeling of surprise makes it feel “funnier.”

I think you see this clearly in shows like Seinfeld, where the situation evolves from something pretty normal to something absurd. Starting the show with Newman trying to eat Kramer like a chicken would be too absurd to find funny. But when it comes after a long series of steps where Kramer starts shaving with butter, Newman reads a book about cannibalism, and Kramer spills spices on himself, it’s pretty funny.

It’s also true for pretty much anything that’s enjoyable to watch/read, regardless of humor. If Raiders of The Lost Ark went straight to the Nazi’s faces melting, you’d be much less impressed than when it happens after numerous pitfalls and revelations involving the ark.

Heightening is especially easy to see in sketch comedy because comedic sketches are short and driven by strong and unusual ideas, and they have to take us somewhere absurd very quickly.

Let’s look at two very short and clear examples of escalation in sketch. Here’s a two-minute sketch from Key and Peele:

Key and Peele: Dueling Hats

I like the hat sketch as an example because it shows the escalation in a physically obvious way. The hats keep getting more absurd and showy. And not only that, but Key and Peele’s character reactions keep getting more dramatic and envious.

The escalation isn’t just in the absurdity of the hats, it’s equally in how the characters are taken aback and thrown off their game when the other guy’s hat is better than his. The emotional response helps the escalation.

Finally, it’s unpredictable. In a lazier version of this sketch, the hats could just keep getting nicer and more expensive or complicated. But in this version, they also get conceptually more impressive and weirder, ending with a seamstress sitting on Peele’s head, sewing him a new hat. That’s clever.

Final example, which I recall Scott Dikkers citing as a great example of escalation. So I’m going to steal the example from him:

Portlandia: Colin the Chicken

Three big moves in the Chicken sketch are:

• “Tell us more about the chicken? Is it local?”

• “Absolutely. Here are his papers.”

• “We need to go to the farm and see where he came from.”

In a lesser sketch, the Fred and Carrie would just continue to say mildly annoying and hipster-like things about the Chicken or their dietary habits: “Oh, we’re vegan on weekdays and flexitarian local on the weekends” etc. But deciding to actually go to the farm is more unexpected.

The sketch then continues in another segment where Fred and Carrie actually go visit Aliki farms. They decide they love it, and they begin living there with a cult.

Portlandia: Aliki Farms

If you watched the first minute of “Colin the Chicken,” could you have predicated they’d end up on the chicken farm, living with a cult? Nope. That’s a sign the heightening is great.

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3. Two weird tricks for heightening

Now that we know what heightening is and isn’t, how do you write stories that heighten better?

Here are two “weird tricks” that work well for drafting. You could also call these “writing filters” or “mindset hacks."