Tickling Funny Bones: Nearly 9 Terrific Tips for Writing Humor
"How do I write something that's funny?" you ask. Good question. Writing humor can be tough because humor is often subjective. What has me rolling on the ground laughing till I cry may barely elicit a bored yawn from you. But writing humor may be easier than you think. In fact, my Numero Uno tip for writing humor is:
If you want to write humor, have a sense of humor yourself.
That's right. If your idea of "humor" looks like the farm couple in American Gothic, you may want to consider another line of work - like balancing the national deficit or ordering out for dessert.
Now that we've got that straight, what else?
First, think examples. What makes you chuckle? Lucy and Ethel in the bon-bon factory? Danny Kaye and the “chalice from the palace"? Robin Williams in an old lady Doubtfire suit? See what's out there. Read. Experiment. Practice. Work on finding your own voice and developing your own style. I mean, c'mon. Do you think I got this much panache overnight? It took awhile, but I've published a couple humor books as well as dozens of side-splitting, insanely funny and Pultizer-Prize winning humor articles (okay, so I made up that last one). I also learned a lot about humor writing. Since I’m such a nice lady, I’m passing these tips and tidbits along to you for free. They include, in no particular order, the inevitable:
1. Is Joke-Writing Different from Writing Humor?
Puh-leeze! Is the Pope Catholic? Is rain wet? Is Obama running for re-election?
While there may be some “spill over,” writing jokes and writing humor are two different genres. Two different endeavors.
A joke writer is after the one-liner. The “ta-da!” moment followed by a canned laugh track. Writing humor is more of an art form. It’s a sustained chord, subtly released, as opposed to a tympanic crash. Humor is to writing what a seven-course meal is to cooking. Jokes are a quick trip to the drive-thru. Comprende?
2. Write what you know.
Doesn’t this sound like an echo from your long-lost junior high English teacher? That’s because she (or he) was right. Don’t try to impress people with how funny you can make a topic or event that you haven’t experienced or seen first-hand. Start with familiar territory. Stamp it with your own particular brand of kooky. (You can take that any way you like.) Branch out once you get the hang of it. If you get really, really good at charting hilarity in territory you know nothing about, run for Congress.
3. Put yourself in your story.
Unless you’re as dull as dirt – and you know who you are – put yourself in your story wherever and whenever appropriate. Readers connect with personal narratives, particularly if you're poking fun at yourself. Besides, if you don’t think your stuff is funny, chances are no one else will, either. So unsheath your rapier wit, trot out your droll conviviality and craft your magnum opus like it’s the best thing since raspberry white chocolate cheesecake. Try this: Tell your story as if you’re sharing a cup of coffee at the kitchen table with an old friend. You can also picture yourself sharing your story with a new enemy, but I won’t be responsible for the consequences.
4. Write in the first-person whenever possible.
- Related to the incredibly incisive and sagacious above advice, use “I” in your story, vignette or article whenever possible. Inject some of your personality into your writing. Find your “voice.” Keep it active rather than passive. This may take some tinkering and experimenting. That’s alright. Questions to ask along the way:
~ What are you passionate about? Where do you like to go, spend your time, invest your day? What makes this incident or event funny to you? Who else will relate to this topic?
- Give people a chance to get to know you. Write from the heart. This doesn’t mean sharing every minute detail of your life. If you do, readers will doubtless expire by or before the end of your story. Use your best judgment. (This tip is null and void if you’re a felon on the lam, oyster eater, or cat lover.)
5. Study the Masters
Stroll over to your local library and take a gander at some established humor authors. Skim some of their books. Are you chuckling wildly after a chapter or two? Grinning and guffawing? What makes that particular chapter, paragraph, person or topic humorous? How did the author construct his or her plot, characters, setting, tempo, and transitions? Sometimes an ordinary, every day occurrence can turn into an adventure in hilarity if the author tells it that way. (Sometimes it can wind up like a wrong turn down a one-way street, but let’s not go there.)
6. Double check everything!
- Thoroughly proof your manuscript before sending it to a publisher. Nothing screams “amateur!” like typpos, missspeld werds or pore grammer. Don’t rely on spell check. Ask a family member or friend to read your work. They may catch mistakes you haven’t.
- Read your piece out loud. That’s right: O-U-T L-O-U-D. U’d bee surprised howe meny “oopses” yul find wen u reed yur werk alowd. Reading aloud also gives you a better “feel” for important elements of humor writing such as pacing, dialogue, voice, and characterization.
7. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
How long did it take me to write my first humor book, Guys and Other Near-Humans? Do you want the whole nine yards or the condensed version? Okay. The condensed version: about four years. Just keep at it and be sure to pack a lunch.
8. A final tip: Be patient with yourself, and:
- Don’t take rejection letters personally. Learn from them and those kindly acquisition editors - yes, there are one or two - so you’ll avoid making the same mistakes next time.
- Keep writing. Keep learning. Keep an eye out for new material. It can materialize in the most unusual places: dead of night, while driving, in the shower, or arguing the nutritional merits of broccoli with an eight year-old. Keep studying and sharpening your skills. Practice, practice, practice - and keep submitting.
Humor writing is hard work. Do you think I was born this funny? Not! So if you’re warming up your funny bone and planning to join the literary luminaries of the humor world, good for you! Now close down this page and knock out some silliness and smiles! Lord knows we can use a little more of both – and lots more dessert!
Kristine Lowder is an
award-winning humorist. She’s won numerous humor
writing contests and
is a three-time winner of the Humor, and
Life, in Particular international humor writing contest. Her brilliant wit and winsomeness shine in Laugh
Your Shorts
Off: Stories to Make You Giggle By Award-Winning Writers. And
that’s not all! Kristine’s humor has appeared in a variety
of venues including A Long
Story Short,
Our Echo and Faith to Write. Her insanely funny titles – which are worth
every dime - include Guys and
Other
Near-Humans (Uncial Press) and how
I
got to be 50 and other atrocities: a baby boomer reflects on the boom
and other
splashes of everyday life (Living Stones Publishing). Versions of the above article appeared in the December 2010 issue of A Long Story Short and in Roads Diverged.
~~~
Social Media: Who & Why
“Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication.”
Social media. We’ve all heard about. Many of us use it regularly. How can “social media” impact you?
Let’s start with a definition. These abound, but basically, “social media” is an electronic or digital conversation – people talking to people and others talking back. These conversations have a huge impact on what people buy, where they go, what they think and how they act.
“Social media” falls into five basic categories:
- Social Sharing such as: blogs, flickr, videos, photos, YouTube and the like.
- Social Networks where people meet other people, make friends or “followers” and dialogue on a certain subject or item of interest. These “social utilities” allow users to connect with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Examples: Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, MySpace, and Last.FM
- Social News: Digg, Propeller, Reddit. Users interact by voting for articles and commenting on them. They discover and share content from anywhere on the web.
- Social Bookmarking: Users interact by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people. Examples: Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Simpy, FURL and StumbleUpon.
- Social Knowledge: Wikipedia or Yahoo! Answers, for example. These are places where groups of people get together to share their expertise or knowledge in a certain area. Others ask questions and receive responses from a huge community with a large reservoir of input.
Other technologies include: picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few.
Whew! Enough to make your head spin, isn’t it?
“Do I have to master all this stuff to be an effective writer or marketer?”
Tools – Not the Whole Tamale
Relax. The short answer is: “No.” Nothing – repeat, nothing – takes the place of initiating, cultivating and nurturing interpersonal relationships and one-on-one communication with your target audience. This is also known as “face time.” Neither the tangiest tweet nor the most fabulous FB fan page can take the place of being there, in person.
Understanding this, social media can help you communicate and share your vision, passion, events and energy to the folks with whom you come into contact - either in person or electronically! Social media are tools, not the whole tamale. So, how can you put social media to work to increase your visibility or products?
Stay tuned.
Also see:
How You Can Maximize Your Social Media in 15 Minutes per Day
How to Become a Social Media Expert
10 Ways to Build Your Social Media Clout
5 Ways to Get Un-Followed on Twitter
7 Things You Shouldn’t Do on FacebookLaughing all the way: 10 Tips for the Hilarity Highway
Being a freelance humorist has its benefits. You can set your own schedule, show up for work in your jammies, or hammer down on raspberry white chocolate cheesecake whenever your feel like it. One of the biggest perks of being your own boss – besides firing and rehiring yourself at will – is that you choose your own topics. Today it’s humorous travel writing.
If you’re wondering how to connect travel and humor, you haven’t seen enough of Clark Griswold. Let me illustrate with Easter on the O.P. This delightful piece is an incredibly compelling narrative about a family hike on the Olympic Peninsula (excerpted from my soon-to-be bestseller, how I got to be 50 and other atrocities):
“The Heather Park-Lake Angeles Loop Trail is one of the premier day hikes on the Olympic Peninsula” gushes our handy-dandy trail guide. “You’ll climb from deep forest to airy cliffs and pass a sapphire lake tucked in a snowy cirque.”
Doesn’t that sound delicious? They left out the part about a trail so steep you have to be part mountain goat to navigate, sluicing down ice-clogged creeks, and traipsing through every type of debris, tangle foot and treacherous traipse known to humanity.
We strike out on this “premier day hike” and, Energizer-Bunny like, keep going and going and ... Scrambling over downed logs. Skittering over snow. Crossing streams on foot bridges so narrow the chipmunks have to scamper sideways.
“Buck up, kids,” Snuggle Bunny chirps. “It could be worse. At least we have the trail all to ourselves.”
Of course we do. Everyone with brains stayed home.
Temperatures are dropping by the minute. Our breath exhales in frosty plumes. The higher we climb, the colder it gets.
“I can’t feel my toes,” son Josiah whines. “I can’t feel my nose,” complains Sam the other son. We bribe them with Gatorade and enough Ho-Hos to buy stock in Hostess.
“Not to worry, kids. Ya gotta love the great outdoors,” I huff and puff. “Besides, it’s all part of the adventure.”
“Yeah, and it could be worse,” Snuggles chimes in cheerfully. “Let’s be thankful it’s not snowing.”
Ten minutes later: it’s snowing. And I don’t mean the light, feathery, wuss snow. I’m talking the Real Deal. Like someone just dumped a giant package of powdered sugar out of the sky. We slog on, punching through hip-deep drifts and floundering through terrain that’d give a Yetti cause for pause.
Is this place great, or what?
***
That’s just for starters. With a little curmudgeonly creativity, you can turn any outdoor expedition into sheer misery, too. Here are ten tips to take on the hilarity highway:
1. Start strong. Don’t expect your audience to stay with you into the backstretch if you haven’t corralled ‘em at the starting gate. You get a nano-second to saddle an editor’s interest, spur them into the next paragraph and gallop to the finish like Secretariat. Take that bit in your teeth and surge ahead strong.
2. Be unique. No one wants to read the millionth version of “It was a dark and stormy night.” Even if it was. Come up with something new. Even if it kills you. This is especially tricky if you’re writing about a well-worn tourist spot that hasn’t seen a drop in visitors since before the Ark landed. So either make funeral arrangements now, or see Tip #3:
3. Keep it fresh. Readers gag on pre-chewed leftovers. Angle for a unique angle. Writing about the Grand Canyon? Avoid words like “stunning,” “spectacular” and “gorgeous.” They taste like milk that’s been left out since last Christmas.
4. Keep it original. Related to the brilliant tip above, don’t rehash the geology, geography, or donkey trails at the Grand Canyon. Half the population of the Free World has beaten you to it. Write about what happened when grandpa leaned over the railing for that chipmunk photo…
5. Select your target audience. Ask, “Who’s my main audience? How do I want them to react to this piece? What experience or expertise can I offer that will connect with my readers?” Direct your writing toward a specific target rather than the entire world.
6. If you can’t or won’t target a specific audience for your next riotous romp, do what political pollsters do: shoot the stuffin’ out of everyone. You’re bound to hit something. (If you’re lucky, you might put a campaign commercial out of our misery.)
7. Write what you know or have experienced first-hand. If you’re a childless senior, writing trail tips for parents of toddlers may not be your best bet. If you’ve never ventured south of the Mason-Dixon line, you may want to forego that piece on the best B&B in Cajun country or the tastiest hush puppies in Atlanta.
8. Know your potential publisher. Study their product. What kind of tone, style, and topics find their way into print? Make sure you pitch the right article to the right publisher. Trotting out Hamlet and Ophelia for a droll stroll through Grit and Grunge magazine may not be a great idea.
9. Submission guidelines are road maps. Follow them to the letter. If a 700 word maximum, double-spaced, sent in the body of an email is specified, DO NOT submit a 5,000 word, single-spaced magnum opus as an attachment and stalk off in a blue funk when it’s rejected.
10. Finish well. When wrapping up your latest masterpiece, don’t just stop. This leaves readers with concussions. They feel like they’ve been dropped on their heads. Close any loops and swoop onto the tarmac with a smooth landing, not one that requires a crash truck.
