Motley Fool Money - Dave Barry’s Tip for Writing Humor

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Dave Barry is the rare humor writer who has also been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. For anyone looking to inject some humor in their writing, Dave has some simple advice to follow.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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He's won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. And what makes these accomplishments even more remarkable is that Dave Barry is a humor writer. He's one of the first guests we ever had on the Motley Full Money radio show when I interviewed him back in 2010. I asked her his thoughts on the biggest mistake people make when they attempt to write for humor. This is going to sound awfully self-evident, but it's not, maybe as self-evident as it sounds.

It's a lot of times when people write humor, it's not funny. You're right. That did sound self-evident. But what I mean by that is I get a lot of, I mean, I've always said this, if you know, the only way you can tell if something's funny is to give it to somebody else not your mom. And if that person thinks it's funny, then you can argue it's funny. What you cannot do, but which people try to do, is say, this is funny. I know it is. If you don't laugh, it's because you don't, you know, you're not a good enough reader or whatever. And you can get away

that a little bit. I mean, some people think some things are funny and something. But you can't sort of generally state that something's funny if people aren't laughing at it. So I tell people if they want to become humor writers that they need to, they need to ask people who are reasonably objective, you know, if they think it's funny and, you know, get an honest answer and not ignore the answer, which I think a lot of people do. Other things that people do that makes humor not work so well, they tend to take one joke and beat it completely to death. The rule should be make a joke and get out, you know, go on to the next joke or stop, but don't keep, you know, over-restating, restating the same basic humor premise, which even good

humorists do sometimes. If you need a laugh, and who doesn't, find some of Dave Barry's writing. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.