Tag Info

1) Pick any one item and take it to an extreme. "Organizing is good." Okay, can I alphabetize my spices? (bad example. I actually do that.) Uh, can I sort my vegetable drawer by size and then by color? How about putting the living room furniture in rainbow order? Where do I file the cat, under P for Pet, F for Felix domesticus, or O for Ollie (his ...

Off the cuff I would've said Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Dave Barry. Though to be honest, I have to say I truly believe that true humour is more a talent than a skill - it is possible to learn the rudiments, but to excel at it you have to be born with and to it. And if you listen to the sage advice of those in the industry and succeeding at it, you ...

This is a misconception. Interesting plots are hard to write. Some people think "Oh, I put in some funny jokes to hide that I totally suck at the real story." Therefore you find humorous books out there, which story is boring. But that has nothing to do with the humor in the book, it has to do with lazy writers. The way to an interesting plot is paved with ...

It really depends on your sense of humor, whether you have one, and who your audience is. If you're aiming your writing at adults, Terry Pratchet is a great read. If you're aiming at children (around 8) then Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton might help. I also recommend you read joke books. But DO NOT use the jokes in your stories, just read them for the ...

When I write jokes I'll often begin with stream-of-consciousness "brain vomit," putting every possible thought to paper. I'll mark places I think people would laugh with an asterisk. This is more organic than just trying to think of funny things. After this you can cross out everything that lacks an asterisk, and rework your sentences so that the asterisk ...

Douglas Adams has numerous examples. "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." "[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."

P.G. Wodehouse is a master of this. "Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces." "It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine." "His demeanour was that of a Napoleon who, suffering from toothache, sees his way to taking it out on one of his minor ...

The immediate thing to bear in mind is that the use you're describing is something very specific and unique to hypertext documents. You might as well ask "onstage I can wink at the audience, how can I do that in text?" or "I want my screenplay to be filmed with some equivalent of footnotes." You're not going to find a full equivalent, because you're adapting ...

I think the most important thing is to figure out what kind of humor are YOU good at. Lauren Ipsum's and Cody Hess's suggestions are how THEY get people to laugh. Gmoore's suggestion is a good one, figure out what makes you laugh, what you think is funny, and then try to duplicate that with your own ideas. Look at the way you create humor when interacting ...

Best way to learn humor is to read things that you find funny. Eventually, humor will organically bubble up in your own writing. This is the best way, as fored humor usually comes off bad. Comedy, as a genre, is hard to get right. Drama is easy. Anyway, the book that had the biggest impact on humor in my writing is this: The Signet Book of American ...

Here I roughly translate and sum up some advices from Daniele Luttazzi, an italian satirist (original text here) who learned from the best, like Lenny Bruce and Josh Carlin. (Sorry for any mistake, please edit). The punchline must be a suprise with respect to the preamble. If the surprise is weak the humor will be weak. If the surprise is awkward the ...

Terry Pratchett is the writer who springs to my mind (a product of the type of book I read I guess), and it always seems like his humor comes from: The characters having at least one defining "crazy" attribute, and they stay true to that. The situation being a combination of at least two separate very different but equally absurd story threads. And ...

If I had to name only one source, it would be M. Helitzer - Comedy Writing Secrets - the best book on comedy writing I've ever read. It explains why certain things are funny, describes techniques for brainstorming and writing jokes, and it's also a pretty funny book. Books My favourite humorists are P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves or Castle Blandings novels and ...

Douglas Adams was a master at it: surprising the reader (and the characters); taking clichés and pushing them to the extreme; using anthropomorphism (objects that seems to act on their own); using nonsense, absurdity, craziness. I have read the only trilogy in five volumes (H2G2) a long time ago and just re-read it in French (my native tongue) and I was ...

why can't it have action as well? some of the funniest things i have read are action packed. the humor comes from what the characters say and how they relate to one another. does that mean they can't be doing serious things in the process? NO!!!! as long as they continue to be amusing -- both to the reader and yourself -- i feel it can be counted as a ...

1) If piece is only printed: I would footnote it, and put the full link at the bottom or at the end, depending on your piece. That being said, I would only use such a construction for citing sources, not for jokey things like tvtropes as you have above. If mentioning the website is relevant to your text, then say it that way: Some programs, like the ...

Because I find your dialogue interesting as it is, I tried to approach it from the other end and create something different. It's a fun exercise :) I started my thought process on an idea to differentiate the characters - both of them are killers but the similarities should stop here. After a few minutes of YouTube research I depicted my impressions on the ...