Scott Dikkers, former editor-in-chief of The Onion, teaches the concrete principles and “funny filters” behind professional comedy writing, showing how to cultivate a comedic point of view, generate volume, structure pieces, and avoid common mistakes.
The core is point of view, not subject matter
Comedy comes from looking at the same world everyone else sees and finding the humor in it, not from finding inherently funny topics.
At The Onion, a funny photo was rejected because it “takes all your heat”; you want a straight photo and a funny angle on it.
Most people go through life as “normies” seeing everything as normal; comedians go through life thinking “there’s something not quite right about this” and needle it.
The rules of comedy are reflections after years of practice, not conscious frameworks applied in the moment — early career is mostly flailing and unfunny work until a tipping point arrives.
The Onion’s volume-driven process
Biggest mistake: not writing enough. Comedy is a skill like screenwriting — you need to write dozens of pieces to get good.
Short comedy (1–3 minutes now, 5–8 minutes in print days) is faster to iterate than screenplays; write as many as possible.
The Onion writers produced roughly a dozen articles per week for 40 years.
For each week’s dozen published articles, hundreds of headline concepts were generated.
Monday idea meeting: someone reads all submitted headlines in the most boring voice possible; 99% are passed on, a few get “that one was okay.”
Shortlist of ~12 headlines from hundreds goes to a vote; >50% must approve.
Then the “take” is refined: subhead, photo, and the single obsessive angle that will be escalated.
The take, escalation, and the uncanny valley
The take is everything in short comedy — one narrow track you must stay on; the audience wants you obsessed with that one thing.
You escalate that one observation to absurdity: drill in, get as absurd as possible, then apply funny filters to “gin up” the laugh.
Uncanny valley principle: commit fully to absurdity. If you don’t go far enough, it fails or looks weird; you must go “way farther than you think.”
Caricature works better than realism — people recognize an exaggerated representation more than a faithful one.
Comedy characters are cardboard cutouts, not real people; trying to make them relatable barks up the wrong tree.
Subtext and the 10 opinions exercise
Subtext = the underlying opinion or value judgment behind a joke; it’s almost never funny itself.
To generate premises: write down 10 opinions about anything. Everyone has opinions; it’s the easiest entry point.
Invariably 1–2 opinions on the list yield a funny article.
Filter that opinion through one of the 11 funny filters to find the comedic angle.
Mistake: thinking comedy should be “crazy silly” with no anchor. A simple opinion (even “the president likes gold”) gives a reference point audiences understand.
Reference is one of the most powerful filters — a shared observation others have thought but never consciously articulated (e.g., Uber drivers always on the phone).
The 11 funny filters
The 11 professional-grade ways to make something funny: irony, character, shock, hyperbole, wordplay, reference, mad cap, parody, analogy, misplaced focus, metahumor.
Stacking filters cleanly (e.g., character + irony = Peter Griffin suddenly smart) makes jokes funnier; too many at once creates confusion.
Comedy works by piling “incongruent intellectual stimuli” until critical mass triggers laughter.
Balance: simple enough to be getable, layered enough to reward the 10% who catch the smart references (Simpsons model: 90% accessible, 10% obscure Silus Marner jokes).
Irony, analogy, and mapping
Irony = taking the opposite: make the small big, the big small. Easy to use; sometimes flipping an opinion alone creates the joke.
Analogy = compare two unlike things that share similarities. Hide one thing, map its tropes onto the other.
Example: Seinfeld getting a new barber mapped onto having an affair — old barber finds hair on shoulder, sneaking out windows, etc.
Mapping creates repeated laugh beats as each connection lands.
Prompts, clichés, and the Family Guy formula
Prompts to mine observations: “It is ridiculous that…”, “I remember when…”, “Why is it that…”, “Did you ever notice…” (Seinfeld style).
Avoid cliché arenas (airline food, airport humor) unless you have a fresh twist; taste-makers will dismiss retreads.
Family Guy hits the 90% broad/crass humor hard; the 10% smart layer exists but gets overlooked because the broad stuff is so dominant.
Peter Griffin works because he’s an unstoppable driver of story (ambition + stupidity); irony variants (smart Peter, shed Peter) expand the comedic range.
Hooking the reader: headline, photo, caption, pull quote, first paragraph
Comedy is context-dependent: newspaper stand (surprise), group chat (friend’s endorsement), social feed (thumbnail + headline).
The Onion’s hook chain: headline → photo → photo caption → pull quote → first paragraph. 85% of readers never finish the article.
Unlike standup (captive audience), print comedy must be funny immediately and only get funnier — no slow build to a punchline.
Surprise is essential: unexpected comedy in a serious context (subway guy announcing he’s doing great) lands harder.
Thumbnail/headline must work at tiny size; if the visual doesn’t read small, the joke fails.
Straight person vs. joke person
Comedy needs a straight person (tension) and a joke person (release).
“War in Gaza” = straight person; “kids running through sprinklers” = different emotional hue.
Bureaucrat = perfect straight person archetype: self-serious, formal diction, creates contrast for absurdity.
The Onion itself is a bumbling authority — strict AP style parody, never breaking character.
Mistake: no headline, just a gray wall of text. Nobody climbs a brick wall. You need a red carpet: funny headline, funny picture.
Character archetypes (40 in Dikkers’ book)
Bureaucrat: stickler for rules, no humor. Zootopia’s DMV sloth = hyperbole (painfully slow). Brazil’s Robert De Niro = irony (bureaucrat Superman who cuts red tape).
Know-it-all: super smart, huge social defect (Big Bang Theory, Polar Express kid, Doc Brown).
Sad sack: performatively depressed (Eeyore, Marvin the robot). We laugh because we recognize that part of ourselves.
Lethario: obsessed with seduction (Pepe Le Pew, Austin Powers, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids). Taps childhood confusion about adult sexuality.
Bumbling authority: insignia-obsessed buffoon (Mall Cop, Ace Ventura, Principal Rooney, Naked Gun). The Onion is this archetype.
Wordplay, shock, and mad cap as garnish
Wordplay: risky (bad puns groan), but as garnish on deep humor (character, irony) it pushes a joke over the finish line. Jimmy Kimmel monologues use it as a “bed of laps.”
Shock: grown man streaking (Ferrell in Road Trip) = shock + mad cap.
Mad cap = wild physical humor, non-sequiturs, goofy silliness. Avoid clichés (banana peel); Peter Griffin falling down stairs breaking his arm works.
Steve Carell in Anchorman = kook archetype: total nonsense, everything he says/does is insane.
Clown brain vs. editor brain
Clown brain: uninhibited, childlike, spews everything, no judgment. Critical for generation.
Editor brain: critical, judges, tweaks, cuts. Critical for refinement.
Process: start in clown brain (write 10 ideas, draft fast, don’t worry if funny). Switch to editor brain after days/weeks — fresh eyes, judge as if you didn’t write it.
Beginners: write, let sit two weeks, then edit. Pros oscillate rapidly.
Dramatic structure for longer comedy
Long-form comedy needs dramatic structure (hero’s journey / unity of action) as the foundation — same guts as a serious story.
No more tragedies; everything is comedy with dramatic structure underneath.
Even Adam Sandler/Rob Schneider movies need heart, relationships, climax, change.
Short comedy doesn’t require this; can be pure comedic structure (sketches, Sedaris essays).
Beginners: start with dramatically structured pieces; avoid complex hybrid forms until you’ve mastered basics.
Giving permission to laugh
Audience must know it’s okay to laugh. Book covers, movie posters, casting signal genre.
Lost in Translation: Bill Murray’s casting signals comedy; the prostitute scene explicitly gives permission to laugh in a somber film.
First interaction with the product must communicate “this is funny.”
Satire: funny first, message second
Satire flops when it becomes preachy/important (Gulliver’s Travels ending). Works when the joke is primary, message a “sliver of subtext.”
Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal = absurd premise making a point. Good satire = honey with crumpled medicine inside; you shouldn’t taste the medicine.
Balance is hard; seasoned hand knows when it’s tipped too far toward art/editorializing.
Ending a piece: the button
Every short comedy piece needs a final punch/button distinct from the escalation.
Hardest part: after nailing premise, headline, and escalating beats, how to make the last joke special?
Best approach: slightly different character — step off the narrow track, expand the world, introduce a new funny filter, or use a topical reference.
At the end you have two worlds to play in: the real world and the comedy world you created. Stepping back to the real world (reference joke) is a powerful closer.
