Do you know the Secret?

High in the mountains of upper Bolivia, guarded for centuries by ancient Norwegian fish herders lies the secret.

Not the mystical law of attraction that promises to manifest wealth and satisfaction into your life for a small fee, but rather the secret to unleashing smiles and even audible laughter with your written humor.

This secret, which I am about to reveal in the next five words, is none other than editing.

I will pause for the inevitable groaning.

Once you retrieve the mouse you threw against the wall in bitter disappointment, we will continue.* Yes, there are some definite challenges when it comes to writing humor. The first of which is that it is painfully difficult to do. At least if you want to do it well.

Of course this really shouldn’t come as a surprise if you think about it, considering that nearly every tool of comedy is denied to the writer.

In stand up, live comedy, comedy films, and even in conversation much of the humorous effect of any exchange is delivered by facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and sounds; all of which team up for an interlocking assault on the audience’s collective funny bone.

But as a humble writer of prose, your humor rests almost exclusively on the power of your words. Which is why you must pick them with care and arrange them for maximum impact.

Picking Your Words

William Zinsser, in his well respected reference manual, On Writing Well, which has been in existence longer than many of the people reading this article, states that humor is the one type of writing where using a thesaurus is actually beneficial.

Although none of my work is available in a thirtieth anniversary edition, I too have found that there is a huge advantage to exploring the range of connotations and shades of meaning accessible through careful word selection.

It allows you to assume many different voices or tones in your writing and use them to sneak up on your readers while carefully concealing your punchline until the last possible minute.

Want an example? In the 7th paragraph/block of this piece I wrote that we must chose our words “…with care and arrange them for maximum impact.”

Having finished that sentence I looked up and realized that I had already used the phrase “humorous impact” in the paragraph right above it, which really diluted the power of the word “impact” by repeating it so carelessly.

So I changed that top sentence to read “humorous effect” instead, which I didn’t like as much but preserved the impact effect power strength of the overall piece.

Arranging Your Words

Much has been written about this. Dave Barry is famous for saying that he puts the funniest word at the end of a sentence and the funniest sentence at the end of a paragraph.

Try it, it works. Once you get comfortable with that rule, try breaking it.

Mix up the order of your sentences and even your phrases within each sentence until they smoothly lead the reader from one gag to the next.

A Word on Blogging for Humor

I can’t say this for sure, but the impression I get from many bloggers is that finding themselves with a funny idea and an hour before their favorite TV show, they pound out a quick post, hit publish, and hope that it will be funny.

People who are a little more serious about writing humor have a term for this sort of writing:

A rough draft.

Yes, I know that blogging is all about quick, unfiltered responses, but editing, revising, and many of the things that bloggers pride themselves on not doing are exactly the things required to be consistently funny.

In closing, everyone please bow your head and repeat with me my personal mantra: “Great humor is not written, it is rewritten.”
—–
*Those of you with wireless mice will undoubtedly take longer that the rest. Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you.
—–

Humor-Blogs.com doesn’t have a mouse anymore.

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I need to help get the message out there that Johnny Virgil of 15 Minute Lunch is the genius behind the now-famous JC Penney catalog post. He wrote it. If you see it anywhere else, the content has been stolen. It’s been pushed to the front of my mind again, because I saw a stolen version of his post on the StumbleUpon Humor Buzz page.

On the page that was benefiting from Johnny’s work, there was no indication at all that it was anything other than the author’s own work. I already know that there are several versions floating around the internet, which is partly the nature of having a post go viral on the level that the JC Penney post did.

Many of these copies are probably posted by people who are not too savvy in the ways of online publishing. This is clearly not the case in this particular circumstance, so I was prompted to send the following email to the webmaster.

— (begin email)

You Have Published Stolen Content!

I was disturbed to see the 1977 JC Penney catalog post on the Stumble Upon buzz page led to your site. I know the author of the original post. He uses the name Johnny Virgil and his blog is called 15 Minute Lunch.

(I provided a URL to the Original post here)

He is the original author of the material you have posted, failed to attribute properly, and passed off as your own under the terms of a supposed “All Material Copyright Jeff Rense ©1997-2007, Unless Otherwise Indicated.”

I do realize that Johnny’s post went viral. I understand it can become difficult to keep track of the source of such things, which is why you shouldn’t post content that originates in an email forward. Even still, there is not even an indication of email being the source. It’s merely passed off as original content, “Copyright Jeff Rense.”

There is not one single indicator that the content you have posted originates from another source. It is not being used for educational value, criticism, or any other manner in the spirit of “Fair Use.” There is not even the required attribution that would be in keeping with a GPL, or many Creative Commons licenses.

Under no circumstance, that I can fathom, have you been ethically sound in your publishing of this stolen content. It most certainly is NOT in keeping with the Creative Commons License that Johnny publishes under.

You are free:

• to Share — to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
• Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
• Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
• Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights.

I have no idea what kind of content you are posting on the rest of the site, as I have no interest in providing you with more pageviews than I already have. I’ll simply assume that your standard operating procedure is to benefit, via ads, from the work of other people. I find it laughable that you ask for donations for scraping the internet and stealing content.

You have no integrity. “Your First Source For Reality & Honest Journalism” indeed. Now that’s comedy.

~Fiar
http://humorblogging.com/
http://radioactiveliberty.com/
—(end email)

We can learn from this, though.

• If you are the sort to like to send out emails of something you copied and pasted off the internet, include a link to the source.
• DO NOT post the contents of an email as your own content.
• Find the proper source, and direct your readers there.

Following these guidelines, we can help maintain the integrity of the internet, and give credit where credit is due.

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