Before I started writing my own humor column over 25 years
ago, I studied, with rapt interest, the styles of other humor writers. I wanted to see if there might be some
common thread or a specific writing technique that made them funny.
Well, it took years of research and the agony of suffering
from laughter-induced stomach pains, but I think I’ve finally figured out five
basic writing techniques that most humor writers share.
First of all, there is what I call the “Double As”
technique, where the word “as” is used twice in a sentence: “He was as hungry as a toothless man in an
apple orchard.” Or “She was as dumb as Lois Lane never figuring out that
Clark Kent was Superman.”
Then there is the “so” technique that Johnny Carson was
famous for: “It was SO hot out, chickens were lining up in front of Kentucky
Fried Chicken and begging to be plucked!” Or “His hair was SO greasy,
head lice were seen bobsledding down the part in it.”
Another popular technique is to write a serious-sounding
sentence, but to make it humorous by adding a comment in parenthesis: “The secret to my quick weight-loss is
that I drank 10 glasses of water every day (and then my bladder fell out).” Or “Our son, who always was in trouble in
his younger days, is now in the medical profession (as a cadaver).”
The most popular technique by far, however, seems to be exaggeration. I haven’t found a humor
writer yet who doesn’t exaggerate, though some really go hog wild with it,
while others incorporate it more subtly.
Using the
exaggeration technique, humor writers have written about squadrons of
hawk-sized mosquitoes wearing army helmets and flying in V-formation, preparing
to attack, and also about houses so large, the occupants had to hire a taxi just to
go to the bathroom. Humorist Dave Barry
once wrote that his baby daughter had so much intestinal gas one night, if he hadn’t been
holding her firmly at the time of one especially loud, bloomer-inflating blast,
she would have propelled herself, missile style, right through the ceiling.
Then there is the opposite of exaggeration, which is the
“understatement” or “shrinking” technique. This technique describes things as being much smaller and less
significant than they actually are: “A
puddle of spit was bigger than the lake where we rented our summer cabin.” Or
“The guy who painted our house charged by the hour and used a brush that had
only two hairs on it.”
There are other techniques, but these five definitely seem
to be the most popular.
I’ve noticed that titles are pretty important, too. Granted, the titles of most newspaper
columns are written by the editors, but humor writers who are submitting
articles to magazines or even books to publishers, should be able to let the
editors know just by the title alone, that what they are about to read is humorous
(or is supposed to be).
For example, “My Handyman is Clumsy” might be funnier
as, “Meet Thumbless Joe, my Handyman.” Or, “I Hate Housework” could become, “My Roommate is a Giant
Dust Ball.”
So now I will attempt to use all five of the aforementioned
techniques in only two paragraphs:
It was raining so hard the night we went to the
restaurant, Carnival Cruise Lines pulled up next to us in the parking lot. We were greeted by our waitress, Lyla, who
was so voluptuous, she looked as if she were smuggling two bowling balls
underneath her uniform. She seated us
at a table that was no bigger than a deck of cards, and it was so close to the
table behind us, when I reached up to scratch my head, I scratched the guy’s
head behind me and panicked, thinking I’d suddenly gone bald.
Everything on the menu looked delicious (especially the smear of gravy stuck on the front and the blob of mashed potatoes on the
back). We finally ordered the chicken
dinner. When our food arrived, not only
was it as cold as a snowman’s butt, the portion was so small, it looked as if a
hummingbird had died on the plate.
After our meal, which we finished in about 15 seconds, we ordered
dessert. My chocolate cake was so
sweet, my teeth continued to ache even after I took them out for the night.
Okay, so maybe these five techniques don’t work very well when
you clump all of them together instead of spreading them out here and there,
but I think you get the idea.
And now I am going to head off to my dental appointment…or
should I say, “My Afternoon with Attila the Driller.”
# # #
Sally
Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist and the author of “There’s a Tick
in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “The Common-Sense Approach to Dream
Interpretation." Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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