Out of the three chapters in Comedy Writing Series I found that the concepts discussed in chapter 3 surprised me the most. The concept discussed here was that of the recipe for humor includes six essential ingredients and they are represented by the acronym THREES. THREES stands for target, hostility, realism, exaggeration, emotion, and surprise. Target represents the audience of the humor and your humor must be suitable for your audience. Hostility is the second ingredient and its presence shows that humor is cruel. The next two ingredients are the antithesis of each other, but they are both needed for good humor. Since “good humor is a paradox.” The next ingredient emotion is important for building tension in your audience and can often be used as a trick. The last key ingredient is surprise, since surprise is one of the primary reasons why people laugh.
The book claims that if any one ingredient is missing that the humor will most likely be ruined. At first I found this concept hard to wrap my mind around, it seemed impossible to have all six of these components present in a simple sketch or joke. However, the more I though about the things that I found funny the more I found that indeed all of them were present, more often then not. In looking at things I found funny, I found that one my favorite comedy skits from Monty Python’s Flying Circus did indeed fit into the THREES model for ingredients of humor. I found that the more I practiced using the model the easier it became to identify each part of humor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piWCBOsJr-w&NR=1
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