Customer Reviews

Writing Humor: How to Write Funny Articles, Columns & Letters for Profit & Pleasure

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In his forward to an anthology of humorous short stories, the Australian cartoonist, Bruce Petty, sagely commented: "Humorous writing is too hard." His advice? 'The best thing to do is give the whole business a wide berth." In this serious world, humour is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Fortunately, some newspapers and magazines continue to find a place for it and the Pulitzer Prizes have recognised it. One writers magazine has gone so far as to suggest we might see more funny pieces published. So the art form has not been lost altogether. Any aspiring writer of humour (or even those who may think they have made it) would do well to take Ken Pearson's 'Writing Humour" seriously, for it is a practical approach to discovering ideas and writing a range of humorous pieces from letters to the editor to whole articles and even columns (if you're really good and even luckier). A somewhat slender book, it is packed with useful and relevant information and, in the way the author approaches the subject, inspirational. In other words, it makes you want to write and takes you through a process of gathering material, structuring it into a readable piece, determining the form and writing from your own perspective. The book is published as part of the "How To Books" series within the broad category of 'successful writing'. If other books in the series are as helpful as this one, we can expect a new crop of writers in a very short time. And even if publication doesn't always come your way, there's a private satisfaction and, hopefully, enjoyment, in being able to compose a piece of humourous prose. Ken Pearson offers not so much a method as a pathway which, if followed, will always lead somewhere.