How to Write Humor Columns

Writing a good humor article for a newspaper or literary magazine can be quite challenging. You have to entertain the audience with nearly every word! Follow these tips for a funny piece.

Instructions

1. The key to a humor article is focus. Though perhaps not a news article covering a story or an opinion article covering a strong topic, you still have to have a point you are trying to make. It's not just a series of jokes one after another that don't conclude to anything. If you're writing a humorous relationship column, make each article about a specific topic in relationships for example, not just each one about relationships in general. This will actually make it easier to come up with material later on when you have focus instead of thinking all over the place. Keep asking yourself, if this sentence/joke pertinent to my focused topic?

2. Pack more punches than you think you need. The readers are naturally going to think only half of your work is funny (at maximum) because everyone's sense of humor is different.

3. Keep your own sense of humor. Don't try to be someone you are not. If potty jokes aren't funny to you, don't write them because they won't sound natural coming from your writing style. Just like any other literary work, portray yourself (and your humor) In your work.

4. Write about what you know; stay away from what you don't. Though it seems obvious, this is especially important in humor. Often times humor writers will try to poke fun at people or groups that they are not a part of. Stereotype jokes can often get you into trouble if you really don't understand where those stereotypes are coming from. You are most qualified to make fun of whatever genres you belong in.