Dry

"You didn't even smile — and that's what made it funny!" a young comic gasped.

"That's the whole secret," Dry said, utterly calm. "My name is Dry. I keep deadpan — saying something ridiculous with a completely serious face." Not a flicker. "The funny isn't in the words alone. It's in the gap — the space between the silly thing I said and the straight face I said it with. The flatter my face, the wider the gap, the bigger the laugh."

Mirth, the warm guild master, chuckled. "Show them the gap," she said.

Dry demonstrated. First she said a silly line while laughing at it: "I have a duck named Gerald — hee hee!" Small smile from the room; the laugh leaked out and lost its power. Then she said the exact same line with her flat, calm, faintly-bored face — and the room roared. "Same words," Dry noted, expressionless. "But when I laugh, I do the work for you, and there's nothing left to surprise you. When I stay flat, you have to notice it's funny — and that little jolt of noticing is the laugh." She did not smile. "Never laugh at your own deadpan. The straight face is the whole gift."

The young comic nodded, delighted. "So I have to keep it together no matter what!"

"No matter what," Dry confirmed, as a duck — possibly Gerald — wandered calmly across her head.

Mirth asked Dry to teach in the guild. "Our young comics crack themselves up and spoil the joke," she said. "Would you teach them the calm?"

Dry agreed, without visible enthusiasm (which made the young comics giggle). When she teaches, she gives one flat rule: "Say the silly thing like it's the most ordinary fact in the world. Don't grin. Don't wink. Don't laugh. Let your serious face do the comedy. The bigger the gap between what you say and how calmly you say it, the funnier it lands."

A young comic practiced: with a totally straight face, he announced, "I have decided to become a professional cloud." Flat. Calm. Serious. The guild cracked up — and he managed, just barely, not to. "You held the face," Dry said, with the faintest possible nod of approval. "That's deadpan. The calm did the work."