Ingredients of Humorous Writing

Comedy writing is about being able to tell a story or express an opinion that your audience can relate to. The more emotional the connection, the funnier it gets, especially if alcohol is involved. The challenge is writing humorous pieces that hits a chord with your readers. The best way is to come up with a premise that holds truth or some of it at least, to your target audience.

A premise is basically a statement that will be your basis of trust. For example, marriage is like long term prostitution. Married men, who are the sole breadwinners, will enthusiastically say, "Hell yeah!" to this bold statement. Women will probably take offense. Of course, it is a bit of an exaggeration but it does have an emotional impact, be it negative or positive. It also grabs attention, which is half the battle in comedy writing. The premise needs to get your readers' attention, kind of like hailing a taxi cab during rush hour. Once you get inside, you can take them for a ride.

A good premise can be based on but not limited to the following:

Pain: Everybody can relate to pain because we've all felt it. You can talk about heartbreaks, lousy jobs, shattered dreams, being obese, or any type of agony. Just stay away from terminal diseases.

Experience: Stories can be funny but you have to structure them in a way where there are actual punch lines. So the key is to talk about something that really happened to you but add a bit of exaggeration and misdirection to make it funny so you get your reader to be in stitches saying, "That is so funny because it is so true! It happened to me too!"

Stating the obvious: Sometimes just telling something the way it is can be funny. Everybody's thinking it but nobody has the guts to say it. Like if you write about Michelle Obama looking like a Ferengi from Star Trek, that would be hilarious. Or maybe it's just you who thinks that. You'd be surprised at how afraid people are to point out the obvious.

So to reiterate, when writing comedy material, come up with an observation or premise that is authentic and spice it up with how you feel about it. Then expound on that idea and explore the different facets that make it funny, the rest will follow.