wittiness on the page
If you don't overuse a particular approach, a formula can be quite useful when you're trying to be funny:
Example 1:
Wednesday, February 2 was Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address. It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication and the other involves a groundhog. (Air America Radio)
Example 2:
What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish? One's a scum-sucking bottom feeder, and the other one's a fish.
Example 3:
What's the difference between a doberman and an Italian mother? Eventually the doberman lets go.
Which brings me to the topic of characterization, dialogue and wittiness.
I am not particularly quick witted in one-to-one conversation. Winston Churchhill was supposedly extremely quick, ala: 'Sir, you are drunk.' 'Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.' My cousins Tom is cut from the same cloth, although most of his wittiest spontaneous comments are so blue that they don't bear repeating. I knew many women in Austria who were astoundingly quick, but that came in part from the fact that they grew up in a social setting that valued storytelling and verbal acuity very highly, in some ways higher than they do any kind of written language skills.
One thing about writing fiction is that your characters can do the things you'd like to do, but can't. If you don't overdo it. You can have a character who always has the perfect quotation come to mind. Your Mrs. McGuire can be as quick on the draw as Churchhill, if you take the time to draw her thus. This is one of those areas where I draw from life, without shame. If I hear a particularly apt, very funny quick rejoinder while I'm moving about my day, something that comes up in spontaneous conversation, I'm likely to use it at some point in a scene.
A character can be witty, but oddly enough, it's really hard to have characters tell jokes and pull it off. I think the difficulty is twofold:
--delivery is everything in telling a joke. Body language, gesture, tone are crucial, and those are the things that you can't really recreate on the page.
--the minute a joke shows up, a reader comes out of the fictive trance and begins to compare it to other jokes they've heard.
Here's an example of a joke that I tried and failed to put into a scene (I gave up on it, eventually):
Martha and Ivy sneak out of the nursing home to go on a joy ride one day. They take the director's car. Martha doesn't say anything when Ivy climbs into the driver's seat, thinking she'll get her turn on the way back. Then Ivy goes through a red light without hesitating. Martha thinks, well, okay. It's been a while since she's driven. Give her a break. Ivy zips through the next red light. Martha squeeks. Third red light, Ivy rams right through and they almost get broadsided by a truck. "Ivy!" yells Martha. "Where in the hell did you learn to drive?!" Ivy turns to her with a confused expression. "Oh," she says. "Am I driving?"
I can't think of a single instance of a character telling a joke in scene that really works. Please do point one out, if you've got such an example.