Kurt Vonnegut on writing jokes:
The reason I have written so
little is that it's so damn hard to make jokes work. In Cat's
Cradle, for instance, there are these very short chapters.
Each one of them represents one day's work, and each one is a
joke. If I were writing about a tragic situation, it wouldn't
be necessary to time it to make sure the thing works. You can't
really misfire with a tragic scene. It's bound to be moving if
the right elements are all present. But a joke is like building
a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make
the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.
An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut by Harry
James Cargas 1976
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