Five More Short Humor Writing Mistakes
I’ve been writing short humor pieces for several years, for various publications. Short humor (or “premise humor” as we sometimes call it in the biz) is an addictive, rewarding, and chameleon-like form of writing.
I’ve also been an editor of Slackjaw, a humor publication on Medium, since 2018. Reading thousands of humor submissions — and analyzing them at the atomic level — has taught me a lot about funny writing.
I’ve gotten some interesting feedback on my previous piece, Top 10 Short Humor Writing Mistakes: Advice From an Editor. People kept saying, “Tell me more humor mistakes! I want to know them all!” Then they would throw gold coins at me. The fancy kind with chocolate inside.
Others would get argumentative over the word “mistake.”
“Don’t tell me what’s a mistake, humor is subjective!” Then they would throw small rocks at me. Rocks that really stung.
Well, in my practical experience as an editor and a writer of short humor, there are certain things that can hold your humor back. And let me assure you, I have made all of these mistakes myself — dozens of times!
It’s time to unwrap five more fairly common humor writing mistakes. Let’s dive in.
1. Using a premise that’s too vague or broad
Premise-driven humor thrives on specifics. The same is true for the humor premise and the headline of the piece itself.
Consider classic humor pieces like, “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers” by Colin Nissan. Or “12 Totally True Myths About Redheads” by Sarah Hutto. Both pieces hinge on a specific premise that is heightened in a precisely absurd way.
As a humor editor, I will see submissions where the writer had some vague idea for a rant, or they had some collection of witticisms that they wanted to publish. The humor piece might have a title like this:
“Things that really piss me off about life!”
Or like this:
“Some amusing thoughts I had about dating and sex.”
These pieces usually come across as jumbled and random. They are also perhaps a bit indulgent: the author couldn’t be bothered to package their humor in a way that’s precise and coherent, so they just threw their witty thoughts down on a draft with a vague and bland title.
Here’s the fix: Instead of a general piece titled, “Some Amusing Thoughts I Had About Relationships,” try something more like this: “Some Thoughts I Had About Relationships The Moment My Drunk Husband Fell Overboard On Our Norwegian Cruise.”
I’m sure you could point to certain funny pieces with vaguer titles. In Jack Handey’s New Yorker piece “Recent Articles Of Mine,” the title is intentionally quite vague. However, the actual piece is about an extremely specific and funny situation. Also, the piece was published in a popular print magazine where it is less crucial to hook the reader with a specific, funny headline. In online humor, attention spans are short, and specific headlines help you sell the piece.
Can vague headlines, vague situations, or very general premise ideas translate into quality humor writing? Yes, it’s possible. Anything is possible. But starting more specifically is usually the stronger choice.
2. Not identifying your mysterious narrator
A writing teacher of mine, Allison K Williams, occasionally asked me a good question: “Who is speaking here and why?”
In humor writing, and perhaps in all writing, when the answer to this question is non-obvious or nonexistent, the reader is confused.
Here’s an example where I see the mysterious, unidentified narrator come up. Sometimes a humor piece is written from the point of view of a publication or a reviewer. Example: “We are reviewing Charlie’s ninth birthday party today, and, overall, we found it severely lacking.”
I’ll always ask: Who is ‘we’? Is this reviewer a writer for a newspaper or huge publication? A random, deranged podcaster who sneaks into and reviews children’s birthday parties? Or is the speaker one of two twin brothers who go to school with the birthday boy?
Easy solution: When your humor has a narrator whose perspective or identity matters, quickly identify them and give us the basic background details. So often, this can be done in a sentence or two, or in just a few words.
Not every narrator needs to be uniquely identified. In, “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers,” the narrator is an F-bomb-loving, overly-enthusiastic, stereotypically-Italian guy raving about gourds. That’s all we need to know. Beyond that, his identity doesn’t matter.
When you introduce a narrator or character in your humor, ask yourself this: “Is this person’s identity, or the details of their job or their life, germane to understanding what’s going on here?” Then give your reader just enough specifics so that they know what’s going on.
3. Giving a preemptory apology
I’ve already said that good short humor writing dives right into the funny. Some writers needlessly begin with an explanation or apology. Here are two kinds I’ve seen:
The “What you’re about to read is satire!” disclaimer.
A good standup comedian doesn’t walk on stage and spend five minutes explaining that what’s about to happen is a comedy show and that some of the jokes might be edgy. Spare your reader from preambles the likes of, “get ready my friends, buckle your seatbelts, because the satire is about to begin!” This is cringey and unnecessary.
2. The author apologizes for who they are, or they add that not everyone finds them funny.
Here’s another disclaimer I’ve seen more than zero times — which is far too many: “I’m an older person, and I don’t get a lot of today’s humor, but I’m going to try it anyway. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Or, “My sense of humor is really edgy and dark and not everyone gets me! So be warned.”
Or, “Harken! My humor is rather highbrow and chiefly intended for 15th-century Albanian noblemen.”
Don’t do this. Not only are these disclaimers physically painful to read, but they are pointless. There are hilarious writers of every age, background, and style. This isn’t some politically correct shibboleth; it’s a fact. So don’t apologize for who you are, or for your sense of humor. Cut your preambles, your disclaimers, and your apologies. Your words are better spent on jokes.
4. Gilding the lily: using too many jokes when you only need one
In my previous piece on humor mistakes, I talked about not including enough jokes — see mistakes 7 and 9. But you can also pack in too many jokes.
I like the phrase “gilding the lily.” It’s an old-fashioned expression that means, “trying to add beauty or ornamentation to something that’s already beautiful or perfect.” In humor writing, the funny thing goes at the end — the end of the sentence, the paragraph, or the piece. The joke at the end should be the single funniest joke you can find — and not more than that.
Humor writers of a certain persuasion can be tempted to crowd certain sentences, sections, or paragraphs with excess jokes. I have this tendency myself, and it’s a tendency of which I need to be vigilant. When you crowd a sentence or a section with too many jokes, you crowd the reader, giving her no space to process the one funniest thing. This happens, I think, for two reasons:
(a) The maximalist desire: If one joke here is good, then five is better!
(b) Failure to edit: The writer is not sufficiently editing and cutting down to the essentials.
Take Sarah Hutto’s Slackjaw piece, “12 Totally True Myths About Redheads.” The premise is that redheads are evil and mysterious troublemakers. Here’s the coda of the piece:
“Redheads don’t die but morph into other lifeforms. While no one has ever been able to actually kill a redhead, many have tried. Most learn the hard way that gingers only shapeshift into your worst nightmares and haunt you for the rest of eternity, the flame-haired scamps!”
Great button. Now imagine if this passage had been extended into ten sentences with ten different supporting joke ideas: If you try to drown redheads, they’ll breathe underwater! If you shoot them, they’ll catch the bullet in their mouth and chew it to bits! That would wear thin. Instead, Sarah gets to the funny idea (that redheads cannot be killed) concisely and dramatically. It ends with a punch.
Some styles of humor writing, and some humor premises, lend themselves to a denser concentration of jokes and weirdness. Other styles and premises need more breathing room. Whether or not you are overwriting your piece with too many jokes can’t be answered from first principles. I think it’s something you determine by feel, on a case-by-case basis. Here’s my advice: in humor, play around with your joke density. Experiment and find what feels the funniest.
5. Not sufficiently revising and reworking your piece
Perhaps it’s an over-quoted Hemingway line about craft, but it’s still a good reminder: “The first draft of anything is crap.” I don’t think that’s true 100% of the time, nor should we believe it just because our lord and savior Ernest Hemingway uttered it. But in humor writing, Hemingway’s dictum holds with about 97.1% accuracy.
You almost always need to revise and rework your humor draft, sometimes multiple times. Revisions can and should include:
Structural changes to get the flow and the comedic escalation right
Cutting the chaff (the less funny parts)
Cutting the parts that are off-premise
Simplifying and trimming out unneeded complexity
Rewriting to make your individual jokes funnier
Tweaking or adding specifics to make things clearer or to make the details funnier
Those are just a few common types of rewriting in humor pieces. How much revising should you do? However much the piece needs.
I don’t think any humor piece can be perfect. But you should revise until you feel your draft has maximized its potential. At that point, further tinkering will feel like a boring waste of time. I personally rewrite every humor draft one to five times. On average, probably three drafts in total.
Occasionally, your first draft is strong, and everything comes out on-premise. Congrats to you, my friend, when that happens. More often, first drafts are like a hideous lump of clay with some hidden beauty inside: they need a lot of kneading to come out right. Thinking that your first humor draft should always be good enough for your readers is lazy and entitled. Instead, think of yourself as an artisan with a vision: you will rework until you get it right. But no pressure. The world has enough clay to last a lifetime. However hilarious or terrible your initial humor draft is, there’s always more where that came from.
Happy humor writing, and let me know how it goes!
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