Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Do you use—or try to use—humor in your nonfiction writing? Writing humorous content isn’t as easy as it looks. In this guest post, book editor
C.K. Bush (
@theladyck) provides excellent tips on how to become a funny nonfiction writer.
Humor is an important tool to have in your arsenal. It can help get readers’ attention, create a rapport between author and audience, or break up the monotony of a longer piece.
There’s a catch, though. Writing with humor is much harder than it may seem. It’s all too easy to make jokes that fall flat, don’t work as well in writing as they may work out loud, or that make your readers cringe.
In my work as a nonfiction editor, I’ve come across a number of authors who struggle to include humor in their writing. In this post, I’ll share the most common humor pitfalls I’ve encountered and how to remedy them.
Pitfall #1: Trying too hard.
This is the most common issue I encounter with authors whose use of humor doesn’t work. They may include too many jokes, pepper their writing with asides and parentheticals, or make deprecating self-referential comments at every turn. You might notice one common denominator here:
too many. The writer’s concern with making the book funny, in these cases, manifests itself as a nervous overflow of jokes. In these cases, I tell the writer to take a step back and cut down on many or most of these attempts. When it comes to humor, less is more.
Writing with humor is much harder than it may seem. Click To Tweet
Pitfall #2: “As the kids say!”
As you become a more seasoned professional, with more experience and authority to convey in your writing, you also become something else: older. Many writers who hope to use humor to connect with a younger, hipper audience, instead end up sounding hokey. Emojis, memes, and current TV references will sound forced if they don’t come to you naturally because you think they are funny. Remember: The relevant younger audience will be drawn to your work because they are looking for a clear take from an wise person in the field—not because it sounds like something their friends would say.
Pitfall #3: Inside jokes.
To you or the experts in your field, a particular pun might be especially hilarious. But someone coming to your book for information about a topic they don’t already understand might not share the same opinion. Here’s a good rule of thumb: If a joke requires a lot of set up for someone who has less background in the subject than you do, cut the joke. You shouldn’t need to do a lot of work to explain why something is funny.
You shouldn’t need to do a lot of work to explain why something is funny.Click To Tweet
Pitfall #4: Humor just isn’t your thing.
If you’ve tried cutting back on excessive jokes, only including humor you actually find to be funny, or eliminating jokes you need to do a lot of work explaining or setting up, and your editor or trusted reader still doesn’t find that the humor’s working, there’s something you might need to accept: Humor might not be your thing. Don’t worry—this doesn’t mean your work is destined to be dry or unreadable. It just means that other techniques, like pathos, inspiration, or suspense, might be more in your wheelhouse.
Humor can be a difficult tool to incorporate into your writing, and, more often than not, deliberate attempts to be funny fall flat. I find that writers often elicit the most chuckles from me when they casually write things using a subtle wit, one that comes naturally from their own voice or experience. The best humor is not written on purpose but on the way to other writing.
About the Author
C.K. Bush is a nonfiction editor and writer. She lives in New York City.
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How to use Humor Effectively in Your Nonfiction Work appeared first on
Write Nonfiction NOW!.
Nina Amir, the bestselling author of How to Blog a Book and The Author Training Manual, is a speaker, a blogger, and an author, book, blog-to-book, and high-performance coach. Known as the Inspiration to Creation Coach, she helps creative people combine their passion and purpose so they move from idea to inspired action and positively and meaningfully impact the world as writers, bloggers, authorpreneurs, and blogpreneurs. Some of Nina’s clients have sold 300,000+ copies of their books, landed deals with major publishing houses and created thriving businesses around their books. She is the founder of National Nonfiction Writing Month, National Book Blogging Month, and the Nonfiction Writers’ University. As a hybrid author she has published 19 books and had as many as four books on the Amazon Top 100 list at the same time. Her most recent book is called Creative Visualization for Writers, and tomorrow her 19th book will be released, The Write Nonfiction NOW! Guide to Creativity and Flow. Find all her books at booksbyninaamir.com or find out more about her at ninaamir.com.