Bloggy Conference Tickle Their Funny Bone (Humor Writing) Speaker: Tracy Beckerman

This post contains my rough notes from attending a session at the Bloggy Conference.  Before you use any of the materials in this post or have any questions, please contact the presenter.

What makes something funny?

Theories of Humor

• Superiority – Humor obtained from someone else’s mistakes, stupidity or misfortune.

• Incongruity – When we anticipate one outcome and something else happens instead

• Relief

A building tension that has a humorous release at the end

Different Kinds of Blogs

• Informational
• Stream of Consciousness
• Personal Story about you and your life
• Personal Story about some products you use (product review disguised as a personal story)

Humor Tools

Can enhance what you have, can make a bad blog great

• Repetition
• Similies
• Alliteration and Rhyming
• Satire and Hyperbole
• “K” Sounds (e.g. movie A Fish Called Wanda)
• Run-on sentences
• Rule of three
• Nonsense words
• The inside joke (usually a pop culture reference, evergreen not topical)
• The Call back (referring to an earlier line)
• The three B’s
  • Bigger
  • Brighter
  • Bolder
• The Three E’s
  • Exaggeration
  • Elaboration
  • Embellishment
• Don’t be intimidated by writer’s block
  • Write blogs ahead of time and save them to post later
  • Look in the news for inspiration:  bizarre holidays, weird news, arrests, obituaries, squirrel contraception
  • Sites:
    • huffingtonpost.com/weird-news
    • holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/index
    • truecrimereport.com
  • The past is fair game
  • get a dog or a fish
  • Shake up your routine
  • Eavesdrop on other people
  • Get on the scale (write about your weight)
  • Get a colonoscopy
  • Go shopping with your husband
• Comments are a great way to continue the humor from the post.
• Use photos – creative commons
• Breaking out of the box
  • Lists
  • Questionaires
  • TV Game show
  • Reality show
• Sherry Antonetti has 10 kids on purpose – tips:
  • Keep a notepad with you
  • Humor is about degrees
  • Never use the same word twice to describe a singular thing unless repetition is part of the setup
  • Progression and misdirection.
  • Read aloud. (Great tip for proofreading yourself.)
  • Write something fresh daily.
  • Invert cliches.
  • If you can’t spot the relationship between your setup and punch line, it isn’t funny.
• Erma Bombeck Humor Writer’s Conference (humorwriters.org)
• A lot of this information is comparable to stand up comedy
• Dave Barry
  • 3 Elements of Humor Writing
    • Pacing
    • Work It
    • Show It
• Second City improv – element of truth
  Who is fair game?  yourself

“If you’re married to a blogger, forget it.You lose.”- Tracy Beckerman, Tickle Their Funny Bone session at #BloggyCon

— Liz Barnett (@WomanlyWomanLB) September 28, 2012