Three ways to get more humor into your writing

“I learned quickly that when I made others laugh, they liked me. This lesson I will never forget.”

— Art Buchwald, American humorist and Washington Post columnist

Humor gets attention, makes a message go down easier and helps people understand information faster and remember it longer.

THE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING. One way to find a funny word: Make a negative word positive. Photo by nouveau.

It even makes you sexier.

What are you waiting for? Here are three ways to get more humor into your communications.

1. Extend a list.

In Eat the Rich, P.J. O’Rourke finds humor by extending a quote by Winston Churchill:

“Russia is a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, tied in a hankie, rolled in a blanket and packed in a box full of little Styrofoam peanuts,’ said Winston Churchill, or something like that.”

Starting with a familiar series? Just keep adding items in escalating order of ridiculousness.

2. Substitute soundalikes.

When Men’s Health covered the news that chocolate might be even healthier than we thought, editors wrote this headline:

Avoid Death, Buy Chocolate

We know. Puns can be … punny. But they can also be funny. Use homophones lightly to make readers smile, not gag.

3. Flip a negative word.

Negative words that have no positives offer humor potential. Think debunk, disdain, disgruntled and inane. Now make them positive.

That’s what writer James Wolcott did in this passage of “Caution: Women Seething” for Vanity Fair:

“There’s something about Susan Estrich — some ineffable quality that, should it ever become effable, would peel paint off battleships — that annoys people of all faiths and political creeds.”

Use this list of Negatives Without Positives from Fun With Words to flip some negative words of your own.

Make fun

Want to make your copy more amusing?

• Rev Up Readership members: Read the whole story.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing project.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find out about Ann’s next creative writing webinar.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

A few years ago, my nephew Evan — aka one of the five most adorable boys in the world — was attending Catholic preschool.

BLAH BLAH BLAH: "Clichés are a sign of a mind at rest," says author Sol Stein. Wake up your writing — and your reader — by reinventing clichés.

It was his introduction to Jesus and heaven, and he’d been busy processing how all of this applied to his own life. When his uncle died, he wondered aloud when Jesus was going to finish fixing Uncle Carl and send him home.

When he and I sat down for a visit a few months after school started, he asked, “Aunt Ann, why is your hair white?”I answered the way I answer all the 4-year-olds who ask that question: “I don’t know, Evan. Why do you think my hair is white?”

“Because you’re going to visit Jesus?”
he ventured.

Thankfully, Evan’s guestimate has been wrong to date. But it’s not the first interesting response I’ve received about my loopy hair since it started turning white when I was 16. And since I belatedly made rock star stylist Mary Jane Van de Castle CEO of my head, may hair has been getting longer and kookier.

My sister, Lynn — the one who inherited all the good judgment in my family — has started urgently counseling headbands. Then last month, at a spa, a woman asked a question similar to my nephew’s, though less gracious:

“What’s that on your head?” she asked.
“A Chia Pet?”

Though I couldn’t take that as a compliment, I did appreciate her excellent use of analogy.

It goes without saying that my next stop was the headband store. When I showed my husband my new purchases, he said: “How nice. A Chia-management solution.”

“Darling,” I said, lovingly, “I believe you’ve just resurrected a cliché.”

What’s your least favorite cliché or buzz phrase? How can you revive that cliché to turn it into wordplay? Try:

• Reversing, combining or flipping overused expressions
• Riffing off of worn-out sayings
• Twisting tired turns of phrase

Play with your words

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and engaging through wordplay?

• Invite Ann’s team to handle a special writing project.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next creative writing teleseminar.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

The news of storytelling’s death has been greatly exaggerated

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of Story. As you may have heard, it’s kaput — or, at the very least, terminally ill, wracked by videogames, wikis, recaps, talkbacks, YouTube, ADD, and the rise of a multiplatform, multipolar, mashup-media culture. … Beginnings, middles, and ends are headed for the attic, next to the box marked VCR Rewinders/Beastmaster Franchise.”

— Scott Brown, Wired columnist, in “Story Bored”

Brothers and sisters, let’s let Scott Brown mourn the death of Story. We have more interesting things to do — like figuring out the beginning, middle and end for our next blog posting.

For the record, I’m a congenital worrywart (a gene passed down on my mother’s side). And I’m not troubled at all about the demise of storytelling.

Because storytelling is doing fine.

Sob story

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my concerns. On the day I found out about Twitter, I had to lie down and put a washcloth over my eyes.

“Really?” I sniffed. “Are we really going to do this in 140 characters or less?”

Luckily for me, that happened to be the same day that a quarter of a million kids lined up around my block. They were there to be first in line to buy the 652-page Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when my local Barnes & Noble opened at midnight. (And those were the poor folks who weren’t among the 750,000 to preorder the book from Barnes & Noble alone.)

Storytelling dead? Folks, she doesn’t even have the sniffles.

Tweet me a story

And technology’s not about to kill her. Consider:

• iPads and other e-readers actually kindle more linear, narrative reading.
• Some of the best nonfiction stories I’ve ever experienced are on the “This American Life” podcasts I listen to on my iPhone.
• And the cleverest among us — and by that I mean the folks at the FBIPressOffice — have figured out how to write mini-narratives in 140 characters or less. Three of my favorites:

“Gotcha!: Bad Cops Caught, Part II: Five cops go bad in Memphis, Tennessee, and the FBI worked with polic.. http://bit.ly/d4M1h”

“A DANGEROUS BETRAYAL: The Case of the Cash Hungry Contractor: An undercover sting helped prevent a federal energ.. http://tinyurl.com/lzvnrp”

“CANINE CRUELTY: Five-State Dog Fighting Ring Busted: A year-long multi-agency investigation results in approxima.. http://tinyurl.com/mffmh6”

So friends, let’s not waste another instant kvetching about the death of Story. Instead, let’s invest that time in mastering the art of the storyteller.

It’s an art we’ll be able to use for a long, long time.

Master the Art of the Storyteller

Want to put the most powerful form of human communication to work in your very next piece?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Art of the Storyteller” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Master the Art of the Storyteller in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Read Ann’s storytelling learning tools.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on storytelling at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Master the Art of the Storyteller” teleseminar.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

Goldman Sachs. Volcanic ash. GM bailout loan paybacks.

They’re not usually the stuff that poetry is made of.

Yet American Public Media’s Marketplace reporter, Bill Radke, manages to sum up each day’s news in rhymed verse in Marketplace Minute.

Take this little ditty, from April 23:

“Goldman Sachs is in trouble
“for betting against the housing bubble,
“while they were selling opposite bets
“to clients who now have some major regrets.”

And if that’s not enough, “This American Life” commissioned a Broadway song to help explain a complicated financial scheme that, the producers say, “parallels quite closely a Mel Brooks musical.”

I’m inspired. Could you summarize the day’s news, a big issue or maybe the VP’s speech in verse?

Play with your words

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and engaging through wordplay?

• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next creative writing teleseminar.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing project.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

London: How can I miss you if you won’t let me go?

After presenting a writing workshop for TELLABS UK and CCGroup last month, I was treated by a volcano to an extended stay in London.

Although by day 12, my clothes almost made me vomit, I was grateful for my extra days in London. How could you not love a city where the art museums are free, the restaurants are glorious, the train is never more than two minutes away and all the men are more handsome and charming than Jude Law?

Plus: the communication! I saw some brilliant stuff in the land of Shakespeare and Milton. Here are a few of my favorite things:

Give great verb

When it comes to your headline, the verb is the story. The sexier the verb, the sexier the story.

That’s why I love the cheeky verb in this headline, from Vitaminwater:

“Spank those naughty little oxidants.”

Before you write your next headline, use Visual Thesaurus to find the most stimulating verb for your story.

What’s in a name?

Is the name of your company fluent — that is, short, easy to pronounce, easy to rhyme and maybe even homophonic? (Shut up. I said homophonic, as in sounds like another word.)

If so, you might try wordplay like the Tate museums. Tate plays with its name for twists of phrase like:

• Tate a Tate — member get-togethers
• Taste of Tate — museum restaurants and cafes
• Tate to Tate — the Thames boat shuttle from the Tate Britain to the Tate Modern

How can you apply this approach? Use RhymeZone.com and Phrase Thesaurus to transform your organization’s name into clever twists of phrase.

Compare it

Analogy makes your benefits more tantalizing by making them more tangible. So use metaphor and simile to make your concepts concrete.

ING Direct, for instance, makes its mortgage process more alluring with this analogy for its competitors’ approach:

“A mortgage application that can take just 25 minutes. It’s a mortgage application, not a thesis on quantum physics.”

And Confused.com makes its discounts more tempting by making them more concrete with this promise:

“Save a guitar on your car insurance.”

To make your benefits more compelling, make them concrete.

Back in a flash

It’s great to be home (though my cat is no longer speaking to me). But after a couple of nights in my own bed, I’m ready to return to London.

Just with different clothes this time.

Play with your words

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and engaging through wordplay?

• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next creative writing teleseminar.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing project.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

As my plane lands at LaGuardia, I look down at the 23-square-mile strip of land that is Manhattan and think, “I can do that.” (When I land at LAX, on the other hand, I look down on Los Angeles and think, “I need a nap.”)

Right now, I’m in New York on one of my twice-yearly adventures. Using the excuse of judging the PRSA Silver Anvils, I’ve stayed for a week, running from Battery Park to Barney Greengrass Sturgeon King, taking in as many museums, restaurants, plays and shops as my wallet and feet can handle. And, it goes without saying, thinking great thoughts about writing along the way.

Here are some notes from my trip …

Write with your eraser.

If Leslie Vance were a writer, her most important tools would be an eraser and a delete key.

Vance, one of the most compelling artists in the new Whitney Biennial, is inspired by the seventeenth-century Spanish still-lifes. She arranges and lights fruit, shells and other objects, then “paints” the arrangement using a palette knife, scraping away layers of paint to create the final piece.

In writing, sometimes it’s what you scrape away that reveals the most gripping argument. Look at the copy you’re working on today. Don’t ask “What could I add?” Instead, ask: ”What could I take away to make this piece stronger and more vivid?”

Don’t express yourself abstractly.

Mark Rothko might have been a master of Abstract Expressionism, but “Red,” John Logan’s new play about Rothko’s Great Thoughts On Art, masters the art of expressing ideas abstractly.

What does black mean? How does red make you feel?

“‘Red’ is filled with the sort of psychodramatic goop that normally makes me want to drink paint thinner,” writes Ben Brantley, drama critic for The New York Times.

You know what normally makes me want to drink paint thinner? Reading articles about the corporate mission, vision and values statement. Like “Red,” these pieces usually express important ideas abstractly.

Instead, bring your mission statement to life. Show your values, don’t just tell about them. Illustrate your organization’s vision with drama, action and human interest — three qualities that are mostly missing from “Red.”

Turn ideas into things.

Study great dialogue.

Talk about natural dialogue. Some of the racially charged verbal battles in Bruce Norris’ “Clybourne Park” are so sharp and painful, I didn’t know where to look.

Crafting dialog that moves audience members is high art in playwriting. Crafting quotes that move readers is high art in business communications.

So why aren’t we better at it?

I can think of one reason: It’s because we study each other’s work. We get infected by that “We are pleased to announce …” virus that gets transmitted via press releases and news stories, and we can’t get well.

Here’s an idea: Let’s study great dialogue instead. Read Bruce Norris’ work — or any playwright whose dialogue moves you. Model the masters of compelling dialogue to make your own quotes more creative and engaging.

Mad about Manhattan

That’s it for this trip. But I’ll be back. In fact, I plan to return with a friend in November to walk Manhattan’s 13 miles, from tip to stern, in one day.

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and compelling?

• Bring Ann’s team in to write creative copy for your organization.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on creative copy writing at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Master the Art of the Storyteller” teleseminar.

After 15 years of schlepping books from sea to shining sea, I can now fit all of my reading materials into my purse, thanks to Kindle.

I thought the thing I’d love most about my e-reader would be the extra mini-fridge-sized space it leaves in my luggage for necessities like thick Marimekko sweaters and airport-sized Fazer chocolate bars that I collect on my trips. It turns out that my favorite feature is “My clippings,” a tool that transforms my highlights and notes into text that I can transfer to my laptop.

After a couple of months of reading on a reader, I decided to review my clippings. What I found will help me — and, I hope, you — model the masters, or steal techniques from some of the year’s best writers to make your own writing more creative and compelling.

1. Use metaphor, not modifiers.

One problem with modifiers — thin, lean, straight — is that they don’t paint pictures in your readers’ heads. Instead of simply describing your subject with adjectives and adverbs, engage your readers’ senses with analogy.

Meg Gardiner used this technique to describe a charismatic religious leader in her Edgar Award-winning mystery, China Lake:

“Peter Wyoming didn’t shake hands with people; he hit them with his presence like a rock fired from a sling-shot. He was a human nail, lean and straight with brush-cut hair, and when I first saw him he was carrying a picket sign and enough rage to scorch the ground.”

Find yourself writing an adjective or adverb? Could you develop an analogy instead?

2. Coin a word.

Rebecca Goldstein is quite the neologist. In 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, she creates half-and-half words in this passage:

“Auerbach harbors such impatience for the glib literati—the ‘gliberati,’ as one of his own digerati had christened them—that Cass has wondered whether there might not be some personal history.”

Can’t find just the right word? Why not make one up?

3. Twist a phrase.

To call attention to an idea, change a word or two in a colloquialism to give it new meaning.

After seeing David Mamet’s Boston Marriage hilariously performed by the Kansas City Actors Theatre, I read the play to make sure I didn’t miss any lines like this phrase twister:

“ANNA: Have you taken a vow of arrogance?”

Want to call readers’ attention to your point? Surprise and delight your readers with twist of phrase.

Model the masters

Regardless of your reading technology, modeling the masters is one of the best ways to improve your writing every day. When you find a passage or phrase or word you wish you’d written, clip it, study and master the technique yourself.

The better your reading, the better your writing.

What’s in your clippings?

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and compelling?

• Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on creative copy writing at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Master the Art of the Storyteller” teleseminar.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”

— Mother Teresa

Quick!

You’re in charge of a humanitarian effort to rescue refugees of Rwandan genocide. You’ve got enough money to save 4,500 lives. Would you rather save 4,500 refugees from a camp holding 11,000 people or 4,500 from a camp holding 250,000?

That’s the decision psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon asked two groups of research participants to make, author Shankar Vedantam reports in his new book, The Hidden Brain. Slovic found that people were way more reluctant to spend the money on the large camp than they were to spend it on the small one.

Save 10,000 lives instead of 20,000

Hmmmmm, Slovic said. OK, how about this: You’re running a philanthropic foundation. Would you rather spend $10 million to save 10,000 lives from a disease that caused 15,000 deaths a year, or save 20,000 lives from a disease that killed 290,000 people a year?

Overwhelmingly, the research participants said they’d rather spend money saving the 10,000 lives rather than the 20,000 lives. What?! Rather than invest in saving the most lives, these folks sought to save the largest proportion of lives within a group of victims.

Are they crazy?! Nope. That’s just how our brains work, Vedantam writes:

“I want to offer a disturbing idea. The reason human beings seem to care so little about mass suffering and death is precisely because the suffering is happening on a mass scale. The brain is simply not very good at grasping the implications of mass suffering. Americans would be far more likely to step forward if only a few people were suffering or a single person were in pain.… Our hidden brain — my term for a host of unconscious mental processes that subtly bias our judgment — shapes our compassion into a telescope. We are best able to respond when we are focused on a single victim.”

We care less about more

So we don’t feel 20 times sadder when we learn that 20 people have died in a disaster than we do when we learn that one person has died. We don’t even feel twice as sad. In fact, we may actually care less.

Consider another study, this one reported by Chip Heath and Dan Heath in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. In this study, people read one of two letters. The first featured statistics about the magnitude of the problems facing children in Africa. The second shared the story of a single African girl named Rokia.

On average, the people who read the statistics contributed $1.14. The people who read about Rokia contributed $2.38 — more than twice as much.

“It seems that most people have something in common with Mother Teresa,” the Heath brothers write. “When it comes to our hearts, one individual trumps the masses.”

So how can you appeal to the heart? Show me one.

Show me one

Want to master the art of letting individuals stand for your point?

• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project. We specialize in writing human interest narratives for organizations like Saint Luke’s Health System.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on writing human interest copy at RevUpReadership.com.
• Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.

___

Sources: Shankar Vedantam, “The little dog lost at sea,” The Week, Feb. 16, 2010; Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Random House, 2007

But acronyms can also make your copy easier to read and remember, writes Jack Napoli, if you use them to group your key ideas “into nuggets of distinction.”

MARC, for instance, is easier to remember than Mid-America Regional Council. It’s also easier to remember than an acronym that doesn’t spell out a pronounceable word — Midwestern Regional Council, or MRC, for instance.

“Can the audience recall your message 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 martinis later?” Napoli asks. To help your audience members, he suggests keeping your acronyms:

• Short: three to six characters long
• Meaningful: Make sure the acronym compliments the subject matter.
• Repeatable: easy to say and remember

Napoli sells the idea of using acronyms to create sticky messages in his excellent post, but he doesn’t offer any how-to’s. Here’s one approach for turning a list into a mnemonic device to help readers remember your key points:

• List the words you want to include. You might need to find potential substitutes.
• Type the first letter of each word into the online anagram server box.
• Click “get anagrams.”

The result: a meaningful acronym that helps readers codify and remember your big ideas.

Play with your words

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and engaging through wordplay?

• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next creative writing teleseminar.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing project.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.