It is my pleasure to introduce to you, award winning humorist, John Philipp. John writes for several California newspapers and aside from those columns, he also has a thought provoking series called Thought~Bytes.I asked him if he’d be willing to share some humor writing tips with us Over Coffee. Humor is something used in many genres and takes quite a bit of skill to pull off effectively.
John has graciously agreed to share a series of articles on writing humor. So for the next month, starting Friday, June 19th I will be featuring his articles here on Over Coffee.
John shares some thoughts on writing humor:
I am not a natural writer. I am a natural talker or so I thought until I transcribed a conversation I'd had with someone.
OK, I'm not a natural talker or a natural writer. (I am a natural eater and, while important to waist management, which has little relevance here.) I do consider myself a natural humorist. Taking that as strength, my choices were: do standup or write a humor column. I chose to learn how to write.
I wrote a few columns on topics I thought were funny and discovered I had some faults and was missing some skills. For example, I was not grounded in grammar. I felt one should write a sentence the way it sounds best. Turns out this is not true for a large percentage of readers, especially those in the newspaper business. If I wanted to write my own way I should have opted to do standup, but then there's the queasy stomach thing.
There are two relatively easy fixes to poor grammar — and neither of them is to study a grammar book. Sitting down, reading, and practicing the proper timing and placement of commas in sentences is, I am convinced, one of the top ten punishments in the Lower Kingdom.
I got better at grammar by lurking and reading writing critique websites where people edit and correct each other's writing. That experience also made me a more observant reader, grammarwise.
The second solution to better grammar is a semi-magical person called a copywriter. It is their job to correct your grammar, double check facts, correct proper name spelling and steward the use of capitals. Everything published needs a copy editor, if only because every publisher has a set of standards they follow (such as the AP Stylebook) and I guarantee you that you could spend your whole life studying and still never know when you should use a numeric character versus write out the word.
Spelling was another fault, one that surprised me. Either I've been leading a myopic life or spelling of some common words has changed since I was in grammar school (irony noted). Perhaps changing the spelling of words occurs at the same time when the government takes or gives us hours on the clock. Fortunately, there's an easy, electronic fix for bad spelling.
I found plenty of other faults that with practice and a damn good checklist I have pruned down to an acceptable level of occurrence.
The topic of missing skills was harder to overcome...
OK, I'm not a natural talker or a natural writer. (I am a natural eater and, while important to waist management, which has little relevance here.) I do consider myself a natural humorist. Taking that as strength, my choices were: do standup or write a humor column. I chose to learn how to write.
I wrote a few columns on topics I thought were funny and discovered I had some faults and was missing some skills. For example, I was not grounded in grammar. I felt one should write a sentence the way it sounds best. Turns out this is not true for a large percentage of readers, especially those in the newspaper business. If I wanted to write my own way I should have opted to do standup, but then there's the queasy stomach thing.
There are two relatively easy fixes to poor grammar — and neither of them is to study a grammar book. Sitting down, reading, and practicing the proper timing and placement of commas in sentences is, I am convinced, one of the top ten punishments in the Lower Kingdom.
I got better at grammar by lurking and reading writing critique websites where people edit and correct each other's writing. That experience also made me a more observant reader, grammarwise.
The second solution to better grammar is a semi-magical person called a copywriter. It is their job to correct your grammar, double check facts, correct proper name spelling and steward the use of capitals. Everything published needs a copy editor, if only because every publisher has a set of standards they follow (such as the AP Stylebook) and I guarantee you that you could spend your whole life studying and still never know when you should use a numeric character versus write out the word.
Spelling was another fault, one that surprised me. Either I've been leading a myopic life or spelling of some common words has changed since I was in grammar school (irony noted). Perhaps changing the spelling of words occurs at the same time when the government takes or gives us hours on the clock. Fortunately, there's an easy, electronic fix for bad spelling.
I found plenty of other faults that with practice and a damn good checklist I have pruned down to an acceptable level of occurrence.
The topic of missing skills was harder to overcome...
June 19th: How to Write a Humor Column.
June 26th: Writing Humor—Random Association Part I
July 3rd: Writing Humor—The Art of Exaggeration Part II
July 10th: Writing Humor—Part III
June 26th: Writing Humor—Random Association Part I
July 3rd: Writing Humor—The Art of Exaggeration Part II
July 10th: Writing Humor—Part III
July 17th: How To sprinkle Your Articles (Writing) With Humor
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John Philipp is a weekly humor columnist for four Marin County, California newspapers and has won numerous humor and memoir writing awards. His humor columns are posted at http://johnphilipphumor.gather.com/.His wisdom (with Phil Frank's cartoons) is posted at Thought~Bytes http://thoughtbytes.gather.com/
