How to adapt methods from works about different places and times
Sometimes the historian is the first to take on a specific topic, so there is neither a need nor a possibility to explain previous historical scholarship on that topic. In such cases, the historian can instead explain how other historians have written about similar cases drawn from other places and times.
In The Princeton Guide to Historical Research (p. 280), I note that many historians structure their works in three parts (plus an introduction and conclusion), allowing for a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I borrowed this idea from drama and cinema.
Now I learn from Elliott Kalan’s Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense that jokes can work the same way. He writes:
Let’s look at a joke from the all-time great stand-up Rita Rudner:
I broke up with my boyfriend. He wanted to get married, and I didn’t want him to.
You could break it down as “setup/punchline” structure, like this:
Setup: “I broke up with my boyfriend.”
Punchline: “He wanted to get married, and I didn’t want him to.”
Or this way:
Setup: “I broke up with my boyfriend. He wanted to get married,”
Punchline: “and I didn’t want him to.”
But to me, it feels more elegant to break down the structure like this:
Act 1: “I broke up with my boyfriend.” (establishing a premise)
Act 2: “He wanted to get married,” (bridge, providing new information)
Act 3: “and I didn’t want him to.” (payoff, with surprising, but logical, information)
It’s nice to think I have something in common with great comedians!
