Comedic Sans: Tips for Humor Writing

The Writing Forge

Humor writer Julie Vick joins us this week to talk about all things funny.

Tips and Tricks:

• Surprise is a key element for writing humor. Play up the unexpected. The rule of three is part of this.
• If you’re going to be satirizing someone directly, make sure not to “punch down.”
• You don’t having to be funny on the first draft. Editing can and should make things funnier.
• Read your work out loud to judge your comedic timing
• Put the funniest bits at the end of a paragraph.
• Analyze reading that you find funny to figure out how the writer did it.
• Your type and level of humor will depend on your genre. Make sure to think about your intended audience as you’re crafting jokes.
• Humor can work differently in fiction vs. nonfiction, particularly if you’re writing fiction in a 3rd person POV. Formatting like footnotes and parentheses and italics can change how your funny elements come through in the end.
• Humor can carry the reader along so they don’t pay as much attention to other aspects of the writing.
• Certain phonemes are inherently funnier than others. Saying “Tropicana” is funnier than saying “orange juice.”
• Comparisons can be very helpful for adding humor to writing.

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Cover art by Maggie Walker