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Feb. 3rd, 2005 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kokopellinelliI am bored, so I've been going through some of my old computer disks and found this. It's leftover from a couple years ago when I was trying to write some humorous articles for a class. This in itself isn't a humor article, it's more like a few paragraphs talking about how hard it is to write humor. I'm no expert, certainly, but anyway. It's a little angsty, maybe, and because I'm feeling too lazy at the moment to write new angst, I thought I'd post some old angst. But don't worry, it's not OVERLY angsty. /ramble
Musings of a Wannabe Humor Columnist: Not Quite There Yet
What makes something funny? Is it sarcasm? Irony? Unexpected understatement?
Probably some of everything. After all, pretty much anything can be funny if worded the right way. People joke about death, disease, people jumping off cliffs or getting hit by falling cows (actually happened). These things were probably not funny to the people when they happened, and for many are still not funny. But when a comedian or humor columnist comes across such incidents, they make a few ribald or subtle pronouncements, and send audiences into gales of laughter.
It’s harder to do this than it seems. Sitting down and thinking, “Okay, funny, I need something funny” and expecting pure humor to flow from your pen is not a realistic goal. The first couple drafts, you’re gonna get pure crap, I promise you. You can take ideas from the news (Iraqi Head Seeks Arms) or from the world around you. I like to read the fake tabloids at the grocery store, you know, “Elvis Ate My Baby.” Whoever writes that stuff has to be on something stronger than just printer ink.
As far as sarcasm, irony, and understatement go, you need something else. Some kind of hook. Dave Barry suggests the word “weasel” whenever you’re stuck. I like the word “bonobo” myself, but it would seem not many people outside of the primatologist crowd understand the subtle sexual humor to be found among these gentle apes. My roommates refer to them as “sex monkeys”, which I guess is a fairly accurate observation. Come to think of it, “monkey” is kind of a funny word.
A lot of words sound funny (though not necessarily funny ha-ha) when you say them enough. As an experiement, go ahead and say your own name to yourself twenty or thirty times. I’ll wait.
Now isn’t that interesting? I don’t know your name or I’d be making fun of you directly, but take my name, for example. Nelli. It rhymes with several things, none of which I particularily want to be associated with, but...it’s something.
Musings of a Wannabe Humor Columnist: Not Quite There Yet
What makes something funny? Is it sarcasm? Irony? Unexpected understatement?
Probably some of everything. After all, pretty much anything can be funny if worded the right way. People joke about death, disease, people jumping off cliffs or getting hit by falling cows (actually happened). These things were probably not funny to the people when they happened, and for many are still not funny. But when a comedian or humor columnist comes across such incidents, they make a few ribald or subtle pronouncements, and send audiences into gales of laughter.
It’s harder to do this than it seems. Sitting down and thinking, “Okay, funny, I need something funny” and expecting pure humor to flow from your pen is not a realistic goal. The first couple drafts, you’re gonna get pure crap, I promise you. You can take ideas from the news (Iraqi Head Seeks Arms) or from the world around you. I like to read the fake tabloids at the grocery store, you know, “Elvis Ate My Baby.” Whoever writes that stuff has to be on something stronger than just printer ink.
As far as sarcasm, irony, and understatement go, you need something else. Some kind of hook. Dave Barry suggests the word “weasel” whenever you’re stuck. I like the word “bonobo” myself, but it would seem not many people outside of the primatologist crowd understand the subtle sexual humor to be found among these gentle apes. My roommates refer to them as “sex monkeys”, which I guess is a fairly accurate observation. Come to think of it, “monkey” is kind of a funny word.
A lot of words sound funny (though not necessarily funny ha-ha) when you say them enough. As an experiement, go ahead and say your own name to yourself twenty or thirty times. I’ll wait.
Now isn’t that interesting? I don’t know your name or I’d be making fun of you directly, but take my name, for example. Nelli. It rhymes with several things, none of which I particularily want to be associated with, but...it’s something.
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Date: 2005-02-03 07:20 pm (UTC)You have to know your audience, as well, which is why reader feedback is such a valuable tool to a humor columnist. Some themes are just going to resonate more with the crowd that gravitates towards you than others. When I was working as a humor columnist in Mississippi, for example, a great deal of my readership was made up of college students or recent college graduates, so bitching about the nightlife, and traffic, and how stupid drivers in the area were, or how amusing drunk people could be were all safe bets. Rants about social security, on the other hand, made everyone look at me like a dog that had just been shown a card trick.
So since there are so many variables to how it's going to work for you, I think the most important thing you can do is find your voice -- the style and vocabulary and tone that sounds the most casual (because humor is nothing if not informal), like you're just having a conversation with your readers, and cling to it. And make sure it's really you, there's nothing more painful that reading a humor columnist who is just trying too hard. Funny is informal and natural, so your writing should be as well.
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Date: 2005-02-03 07:39 pm (UTC)That has always been my biggest problem, trying too hard. If it's something I REALLY want to be good at, I try too hard, and it sucks. If it's something I don't really care about, something I can just shrug off, I do fairly well. And it pisses me off. I can make my friends laugh most of the time, but when it comes to writing, there's this part of my brain (that I have yet to be able to subdue...drugs are the next step) that says "You must be FUNNY, but um...politically correct, so people will like you...and yet bawdy! Yes, do that!"
Don't ask how that's supposed to work. Now I'm all dejected again. *sigh* I wonder if we have any ice cream.
Anyway, thanks for the advice. You are my source of writing knowledge.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 07:49 pm (UTC)No need to get dejected though. We all go through it, just stick with it, and maybe think about any humor article you try to write as though it were a journal entry. Maybe even write them in live journal behind filters just as practice.
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Date: 2005-02-03 07:59 pm (UTC)NO LEGOS!
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Date: 2005-02-03 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 08:09 pm (UTC)And not a royal ass, never that. You're not snobby enough to be royal. ;)
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Date: 2005-02-04 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 10:03 pm (UTC)