They always say that comedy is serious business, and there's nothing funny about that, so stop laughing. Sometimes one's work falls a little flat, but just because it's not supposed to be rife with hilarity doesn't mean one can't inject a little ha-ha in it. Brad Schreiber has some thoughts on that. And he would know, as he is the author of What Are You Laughing At?: How to Write Funny Screenplays, Stories and More (Michael Wiese) and the best-selling Guinness Book parody Weird Wonders and Bizarre Blunders (Simon and Schuster). His arts and culture column "Development Hell" has been running in L.A. weekly newspaper Entertainment Today for ten years and he has also written for Daily Variety, The Los Angeles Times, and has won awards from the National Press Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, the California Writers Club and other organizations.

Humor involves such cheery topics as Embarrassment, Physical Injury, Humiliation and Shock or Surprise.

What you must ask yourself, when injecting humor into otherwise non-amusing writing--humor writing is damn serious, so we can't say serious writing--is the following question:

If it is painful, why am I smiling?

I once observed an old man and woman in a restaurant, eating in silence together. Suddenly, the man started choking and his wife could not help him.

For some inexplicable reason, despite the seriousness of the situation, the man decided the best way to not choke to death was to eat more hamburger, even while he could not breathe. His wife attempted to pull his handburger-toting hand away from his mouth and he began arm-wrestling with her.

In this moment, as concerned as I was, I saw the absurdity and juxtaposition and invented an exercise.

Take this frightening hamburger situation and come up with as many humorous resolutions as you can, numbering each simple, declarative sentence 1, 2, 3 and so forth.

Do not create a long story for each idea. This is about idea-generation. Do not limit yourself as to how weird your comedic resolutions are, how dark they get or how varied.

Try to come up with five good ideas.

Did he die? Of course not. Do you think I would invent a humor-writing exercise based on a guy who died choking on a hamburger? I'm strange...not cruel.

Okay, perhaps a little cruel. But not sick.

If you want to know more, take Brad's mediabistro course, Injecting Humor Into Your Fiction, Nonfiction, and Dramatic Writing.