Can anyone be a funny blogger?
Can anyone be a humorous blogger?
Can anyone be a boring blogging?
No
Yes
Yes
Funny can't really be taught, no matter what anyone tells you. It's like hair color, you're born with it. Humorous can be taught and if you're boring, well, I'm sorry about that. Take up golf.
I don't have all the answers and can prove that because I cheated through high school. And if I remember correctly, grammar school. That's because I was the class clown and I was so annoying to teachers, but beloved by my stoned friends, that I never studied. My family insists I've been funny since I was 8 years old, probably the age I discovered donuts.
Even though you can't teach someone to be funny, you can teach them to be more humorous and maybe one day they'll slide into the funny (farm).
The very first thing you need to have as a funny writer is a persona. It's literally translated as "mask" and is used in writing as well as acting. An actor doesn't really kill someone in the 3rd act. His persona does. Woody Allen is probably the most recognized persona in our time along with Cher. Are they like that in real life? I don't know as they've stopped talking to me.
The reason persona is so important in comedy writing is that it's an identifiable trait or traits that separates you from all the millions of bloggers (22 million at last count). It's your voice and people become addicted to hearing that voice. In standup, finding a persona is the royal flush. Some comedians never find one and sink like a stone because they sound like every other comic. The same happens in writing. Your goal is NOT to sound like everyone else.
Sarcasm is not a persona.
The hardest part of the persona is isolating it. So here's how you can attempt to find yours:
1. Write 5 things about who you think you are
2. Deconstruct that list to its basest level
Example:
Goody 2 Shoes
1. married
2. excellent cook
3. has children
4. volunteers all over town
5. secretly depressed
Goody 2 Shoes Deconstructed
1. Wishes they had sex more regularly
2. likes to flambe everything
3. wishes her children weren't smarter than her
4. is sick of volunteering but can't say No
5. wants to scream at everyone but is too depressed to do so
Persona
The deconstructed version is what will get you the laughs. 'I love to flambe everything with my blow torch, turns out goldfish don't taste good that way.'
So let's pretend you wrote that. A rule of thumb is the funniest word in a sentence goes last. So it should be 'My goldfish swim really fast when I stand there with my blowtorch.'
Blowtorch is a word we don't expect at the end of that sentence.
One of my pet peeves in the blog world is that people title their posts with their punchline. In the above example, don't write HOW I KILLED MY GOLDFISH as the title. There is then no reason at all to read your post since I know the outcome.
Tomorrow, the difference between humor and funny.
