“No matter what happens,
somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.”
— Dave Barry
Kids like funny books. Or at least they like a little humor mixed with their wizards or mysterious strangers or mean grannies. Or even their humpbacked whales in a non-fiction picture book.
Today I read this excellent post from Joanne Levy, via the Nerdy Book Club people. If you hurry on over and read it yourself, there's still time to enter the giveaway. (Deadline, January 15)
https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/writing-not-so-serious-books-by-joanne-levy/
Google "writing humor" and you'll find some excellent tips.
I particularly like THIS ONE which involves all five senses.
I've written about HUMOR before.
Most recently, THIS POST, with pictures. And tips!
My all-time favorite advice, however, might just be this post from Sarah Albee.
In a Teachers Write post, she shares some of her favorite things to read while she's trying to write something to make her own readers laugh. Or at least smile.
"One of my favorite humor writers, PG Wodehouse, is the master of extended metaphors. Whenever I want to write “funny,” I read Wodehouse. Here are a few of my favorites:
She looked at me like someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle with a shrewd “Emu” in the top right hand corner.
Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.
Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.
Try it with your work-in-progress. Check the sentences that don’t yet zing. Is there a comparison you can make that’s unexpected? Can you swap in a more surprising verb?"
Thanks, Sarah! I'm off to give it a try!
How about you? Any secret tips for writing funny?
