Top 10 Short Humor Writing Mistakes: Advice From an Editor
This is a guide to common writing mistakes that I see in short, premise-driven humor pieces.
I’ve been an editor of Medium’s humor and satire publication, Slackjaw, for about a year now. In that time I’ve read—and accepted, or, more often, rejected—hundreds upon hundreds of short humor pieces. “Funny” may be hard to define, but good and bad humor writing has clear patterns. (For a more detailed humor writing guide, you can find that here.)
Avoid these short humor writing mistakes and your chances of publication go way up!
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1. Not using a funny, clear title.
The title of your humor piece should let your readers know here’s exactly what’s funny, or interesting, about this piece. It should reveal a compelling, specific premise that gets people to click.
If you’re a famous writer who regularly publishes humor in The New Yorker, you can probably afford vaguer or more literary titles. But for the rest of us who are publishing short humor online: use a clear, funny title!
A title like the classic, “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfucker” (which implies a specific type of funny narrator) beats a vague title like “Gourd Season” (which implies very little).
Here’s another great title from Slackjaw: “Women Of Shakespeare On Tinder.”
2. Not solidifying your comedic premise within the first paragraph.
The first few sentences of your piece should deliver on the promise of your title and immediately hit the reader with an LOL-worthy moment. Long preambles are not your friend. If you need a setup, make it concise. Experienced comedy writers dive right into the funny. Here’s a great example: the opening paragraph from, “This is Not a ‘Breakup’ it’s a ‘Pivot Toward Life Without Denise’,” by Erica Lies.
“Dear Tanner: Due to changing projections in my quarterly emotional needs model for fiscal year 2019, I am pivoting our relationship from domestic partnership to acquaintanceship. This revolutionary new policy is effective immediately.”
Here we have a comical breakup notice delivered as a jargon-laden startup business email. After reading the piece title and the first paragraph—a mere 33 words!—we know exactly why this piece is funny and where it is going. Solid.
3. Having more than one premise (or going off focus).
A premise-driven short piece should have one clear humor premise, not more. I often see pieces where the author introduces—perhaps inadvertently—jokes or ideas that don’t fit their original, primary idea. This is called “going off focus.”
Self-serving example: In a piece I wrote for Slackjaw, “Facebook Algorithm Upgrades,” the comedic premise is that we’d be happier if Facebook reduced our newsfeed to nothing. That’s the only premise. If the piece started talking about how tech companies misuse personal data or if it turned into a rant about social media, these things would be off focus.
By the way, it is easy to go off focus. It still happens to me frequently and often takes a good outside reader—e.g. someone in my writing group—to catch it. Develop hawk vision for this question, “what’s the premise here, and is every sentence in my piece furthering this premise and this premise alone?”
(Real quick: grab my Humor Writing Cheat Sheet to get a PDF of all of these mistakes and more.)
4. Using jokes or topics that are familiar or clichéd.
Comedy requires surprise and familiarity undercuts it. The worst version of this mistake is using comedy clichés (e.g. “That’s what she said!”). Even if your general topic, or take on that topic, has been done before or feels too familiar, your piece won’t be as funny. Instead, explore under-explored topics. Or mine territory that’s personal and unique to you. Or, if your topic is familiar—say, you’re writing about how commercial airlines are unpleasant—give the reader a totally original take that she’s never seen before. Be original and surprising.
5. Not getting outside reader feedback on your drafts.
When you’re trapped in your head, your humor will suffer. I’ve been there for months, spitting out draft after draft where the premise was unclear, or the jokes misfiring. You need a reality check. Get outside readers—a writing group, a friend, a teacher, or a coach—to read your comedy and tell you if it’s working or not. (For my recommendations on humor writing classes, check out my cheat sheet.)
Writing and “failing” is fine. Keep failing and learning. But don’t live in a palace of delusion, thinking your comedy is hilarious when no one else does. Get feedback, take the ego hit, and start improving.
6. Not being concise.
Good humor writing is tight. There are no wasted words. Always ask: “Do I need this? Is this sentence advancing my premise? Is this actually funny?” Then cut, cut, cut.
7. Not heightening quickly enough.
Mike Lacher defines heightening as, “expanding your premise in new and surprising ways that still connect coherently to what you’ve set up earlier.” Key words: new and surprising. All good short humor has forward momentum at each step: Each sentence and paragraph unfolds a new, interesting consequence of what was set up at the start. There is no treading water in humor writing, only forward motion.
8. Not being hyper-specific.
Use interesting, unusual specifics. They make your writing pop. Another selfish example (a piece I co-wrote with two friends): “What Your Favorite Piece of Furniture Says About You.” The joke of this piece is that your taste in furniture predicts your personality in absurd ways. We included weird furniture like, “1992 Goodwill futon with dog bite marks,” and “Assorted crystals hanging from wall-mounted driftwood.” If we had instead used “futon” or “chair,” it would have been boring. In fact, I actually owned an ancient futon with dog bite marks in grad school. It was an abomination. It’s easy to pull weird specifics from your life.
9. Not ending on a joke.
In general, each sentence—unless it is purely giving information or set-up—should end with a joke. (By a joke, I just mean, “something funny.”) And each paragraph should end with a bigger, satisfying joke. The funny thing goes at the end. How many of your sentences end with jokes? If it’s too few, this could be a problem.
10. Including sentences or jokes that you don’t love.
Very simple test: “Do I love this joke / paragraph / sentence / word?” If you don’t love it, cut it. By the way, loving it is necessary but not sufficient for keeping it. Sometimes you should cut it even if you do love it, because the cut serves the piece as a whole. (See mistake 3 and 6!) In humor writing, as in all writing, love is great—but love is not enough.
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