Dick Cavett

I have a feeling that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there.

American Entertainer

Robert Mankoff

One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At 'The New Yorker', we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind - Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation.

American Artist

Andrew Shaffer

In 'Hope Never Dies', Biden attempts to disguise himself with a beach look, hoping that the incongruity of it will allow him to snoop around Wilmington without being recognized. Obama, on the other hand, knows the best way to keep a low profile is to just be himself.

American Author

Maria Konnikova

Las vegas shouldn't exist. The incongruity hits you from the moment you first glimpse it from the airplane. First mountains, then desert, then neat squares of identical houses that look as if they were plucked straight from Monopoly.

American Writer

Joanna Scott

I don't think Donald Barthelme would have minded being called a confusing writer. Confusion was a favorite subject for him in his essays and reviews, and it's enacted in his fiction in a mishmash of dizzying incongruities.

George Eliot

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

British Author

Emmett Kelly

Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it's because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don't know.

Reinhold Niebuhr

The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

American Theologian

William Hazlitt

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

English Critic

Max Beerbohm

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

English Actor

Use 'incongruity' to point out things that don't match up as expected.

Mismatch Highlight

It emphasizes when there's a gap between what's anticipated and what actually happens.

Expectation vs Reality

Use it to express a clash between professed principles and actual behavior.

Moral Contradiction

Highlights a striking difference that results in humor or absurdity.

Ridiculous Contrast

Use when something is not just out of place, but unusually so.

Unexpected Twist

It refers to things outside the realm of common expectations.

Beyond the Ordinary

 Humor is subjective. Comedy is trial and error. Writing is rewriting. Just keep trying. Find the flaws, discover the details, insert incongruities, incorporate k-words, and remember the most important rule of writing have fun.

How to make your writing...

 Now these look like very different forms of humor but actually they bear a great similarity. In each instance, our expectations are defied. In each instance, the narrative gets switched. There's an incongruity and a contrast.

Incongruity

Mismatch Highlight

Expectation vs Reality

Moral Contradiction

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