Writing Exercise - Unconventional Truth

Have you ever heard the phrase "It's funny because it's true"? Have you ever seen a comedian tell a joke and said, "wow, I never thought about it like that"? These are so effective because they blend two aspects of comedy that are seemingly in opposition.

People like things they can relate to. Musicians love a good music joke. Mathematicians love a good math joke. But in order to make the most amount of people laugh, you need to make a joke about something everybody knows about. The problem is that things that are familiar are boring. Nobody laughs out loud while discussing the weather.

That's way people like the unfamiliar. Something new is always going to be more powerful. Since it's new, we couldn't possibly have seen it coming. A great joke is one that sets you up for a standard punchline, then hits you with a completely different one. The one problem with the unfamiliar is that not everybody can follow you. Since they don't know it, they are less invested in it.

So how does one be both new and familiar? The trick is to take something familiar and say it in a new way. Start with something simple. Find something that is true. "Birds fly." Then say it in an unconventional way. You need to be able to break things down. What is flying? Why can't we do it? How do birds do it? With enough playing around, you can turn "birds fly" into "birds fight gravity with their arms." It's not particularly great, but at least it's different (it's also off the top of my head, so get off my back).

Although I think this technique is best used for comedy, it works for all kinds of writing. Say something that is technically true, but unconventional. I'm fairly impressed with some of the things Carl Sagan said. They were true, but poetic. "A still more glorious dawn awaits: not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise - a morning filled with four hundred billion suns: the rising of the Milky Way." "The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently, we've waded a little way out ... and the water seems inviting."

As an exercise, try writing some unconventional truth. It doesn't have to be brilliant, but it should at least be new. This is partially just finding how many ways you can say the same thing. It is also going to make you create new associations and break free from common phrases. What joyous times these will be.