Pro Blog Service

You are here: Home / Archives for All Posts / Writing

Writing

By

A Humor Writing Secret – Let People Make the Connection

People say humor writing is hard. It’s not that hard. Not if you know the formula.

Yes, there are actually steps you can follow to write humor.

(Now, writing humor well is another topic entirely. For that, you’ll need years of practice spent studying humor and language.)

Humor is based on a number of different things that all have to happen at the same time, chief among them is letting people make the connection in their own brains (there’s also Recognition and Surprise, but we’ll discuss those later). If the reader can make that connection on there own, something is funny. If they don’t make it, because they’re unfamiliar with the topic, the joke dies, and you lose the laugh.

This is why you should never explain jokes or repeat them. The connection, and the surprise that comes with it, are gone, and so is the opportunity to laugh.

Here’s an example:

If you watch Family Guy, you’ll get this, and it should have made you at least chuckle. If you don’t, you don’t know who this is, and you’ll never get the joke.

So for you Family Guy viewers, why was it funny? Because a few things all happened at the same time:

  1. You recognized the character Bruce from Family Guy. You know what his catchphrase, and you know how he sounds. (Recognition)
  2. You read the text, and seeing “Oh no” triggered his voice in your head. (Connection)
  3. As you read the rest of the text, you realized you did exactly what it says. (Surprise)

If those three things happened — all at once, mind you — the joke scores and you laughed. But if you didn’t recognize Bruce, or you don’t know what he sounds like, or you’ve already seen this before, there’s no laugh.

To make a joke score, whether you’re telling it or writing it, you need to let people make a connection in their own minds.

By

Copywriters, Use the Words Other People Use, Not the Ones You Use

Do you know what audio theater is? Does it make you think of something to do with speakers at a movie theater? Or maybe it’s a subset of home theater equipment. Or maybe you’re supposed to go to a play and shut your eyes.

It’s none of those. It’s what we used to call radio theater. (Or radio theatre, if you’re Canadian or British. Or a snooty purist.)

Cast of Decoder Ring Theatre, an audio theatre company in Toronto.

You know what radio theater is, right? Remember when Ralph and Randy sat in front of the big giant radio and listened to Little Orphan Annie? We all know what that is, even the people who only hear about it from their grandparents.

But the people who actually do radio theater want to call it “audio theater” instead. Why? Because people don’t listen to the plays on the radio anymore, they listen to them on CD players, iPods, computers, car stereos, etc.

So in order to be more accurate, they changed the name of the art form to more accurately reflect what it is that they produce.

And lost out on a large portion of their potential audience.

There are still plenty of people who used to listen to radio theater with money to spend, but they don’t spend it on the entertainment form from their childhoods because they don’t know it’s called “audio theater” now. Companies like Decoder Ring Theatre have worked hard to overcome this hurdle by being one of the most progressive and dedicated audio theatre troupes I’ve ever seen, embracing social media and Internet marketing, as well as podcasting. (Full disclosure: Decoder Ring Theatre produced and aired six of my Slick Bracer radio plays this summer.) But a lot of other companies have only seen a fraction of this success, and I believe it’s primarily because of this language disconnect between what is “correct” and what is “best.”

How many times have companies harmed their marketing efforts by insisting people call a term by what they want to call it, not what the customers want to call it? How many times have government agencies lost the respect and credibility they worked for, because someone who knows nothing about public communication insisted the agency use the accurate term, not the best term? How many news programs get laughed at because they try to change the commonly accepted term to something that better suits their political biases?

  • An agricultural equipment company I know calls its products by the term they want to use, rather than the more common term their customer uses. This is evidenced by the 1,200 Google searches for their term, and the 20,000+ searches for the common term. While they may rank well for their chosen term, they don’t rank at all for the term their potential customers are using nearly 8 times more often.
  • When the H1N1 epidemic flu first started, the public was calling it “swine flu,” but the media managed — with a lot of work — to get people to start calling it H1N1, because it was harming the pork industry. But the government agencies wanted to call it the human flu, and flu pandemic. Regardless of what they wanted to call it, the media ignored them
  • Fox News’ insistence on calling suicide bombers “homicide bombers,” as per the Bush White House, made them a laughing stalk among journalists and news watchers.

If you’re not sure whether people are using your terms or theirs, go to Google’s Keyword Tool and put in your term and any industry terms you can think of. See which terms have the most global (worldwide) searches and the most local (US) searches. The ones that win are the ones most people are using, and the ones you should be focusing on.

Update: Deleted “Audio” from “Decoder Ring Audio Theatre” above, because despite being a loyal listener for 5 years, and now a contributor, I still can’t get their name right.

By

My Keynote Talk at Blog Indiana

Last month, I got to do something I’ve wanted to do for the last four years: give a keynote speech at Blog Indiana. While it wasn’t my first keynote, it was going to be a special one because I had been attending Blog Indiana since it started. In fact, I think I have given more talks than anyone at the history of Blog Indiana, mostly because one year I not only gave two talks, I gave them twice.

But this was going to be the big one, the one I had hoped for when I first started bugging the organizers about it two years earlier.

I also knew I needed something new to talk about. Something that went beyond my typical 10 Secrets for Promoting Your Blog or 10 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand.

The t-shirt, courtesy of ooShirts, says "Eschew Convoluted Phraseology." It means "avoid big words."

So I decided to focus on writing as my topic, but because I can never get away from 10 Secret Anythings, the topic was 10 Secrets I’ve Learned in 24 Years of Writing.

I’ve spent the last 24 years writing just about anything you can think of: books, newspaper columns, web copy, brochure copy, technical manuals (I hate these with a burning passion, by the way). I’ve written stage plays and radio plays. I’ve even written speeches for a US Congressional campaign.

And in those 24 years, I have learned that it’s the language that’s most important, and how you use it. It hasn’t been the experience, the knowledge of the industry, or whether I have experience with a certain type of writing. It’s whether I have a good grasp of how to use language effectively.

So I talked about important aspects of writing that have defined my own writing career — focusing on one aspect of writing you want to improve, and then doing it everywhere; know when you can, or even should, break the grammar rules; and, not to let your love of your words get in the way of good editing and improvement.

I even dropped the F-bomb in my talk to illustrate how words that represent the worst of what we do — like killing and torture — too casually, as in “my feet are killing me” and “traffic was torture today,” but the word that describes how the best thing we do — make other humans — is an awful word that is horrible to say.

I even had a special t-shirt made for the occasion, thanks to the generosity of ooShirts, who gave me a couple shirts as part of their promotion. So I got a writing related shirt that said “Eschew convoluted phraseology,” which is the ironic — some might say snotty — way of saying “avoid big words.” I also got a second one to give away, which Brooke Randolph won by being chosen by random after sending out a special tweet.

I had a great time speaking, and have finally achieved my goal of giving the keynote at my favorite conference. Thank you to everyone who was there, and for the kind words during and after the talk. And special thanks to Shawn Plew and Noah Coffey for allowing me to speak.

By

When “No Bullshit Social Media” Showed Up At My House

The last time I was this excited about opening up a box was last December, when I opened a box filled with copies of Branding Yourself. The first thing I did was call Kyle Lacy and congratulate and thank him.

This is one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen.

This time, when my copies of No Bullshit Social Media showed up, I called Jason Falls to congratulate him, and had to leave him a voice mail message.

There comes a time in every writer’s life where publishing blog posts aren’t enough, and they have to resort to the printed word in newspapers and magazines. Or plays. Or speeches. Then, there comes a time when those aren’t enough. Then, it’s books. Self-published, vanity published, collections, and even big boy really-and-for-true publisher books.

Writing is a drug, and blogging is the gateway.

There is no greater high to a writer than to see his or her own name on the cover of a book that they didn’t have to shell out $2,000 to have printed.

I have a lot of people to thank for giving me that opportunity: our editor, Katherine Bull, who I fooled believed in me, and was willing to put up with Jason’s bullshit quirky mannerisms; Leslie O’Neill, our development editor, who made our book awesome; Brandon Prebynski, who made sure everything in our book was correct and really worked; my business partner, Paul Lorinczi, who kept me on track at work, and made sure I had the mental bandwidth to get everything done; and, my wife, Toni, who helped me keep a writing schedule and still find time for the family, and made sure I got at least 4 hours of sleep a night.

This is a momentous time for me, and I have not felt this proud since, well, last December. I appreciate everyone who helped me accomplish a writer’s dream for the third time. I appreciate everyone who has shared their knowledge with me over the years to make me the kind of person who could write a book like this. And I appreciate everyone who will buy the book, and maybe make it a best-seller (secret goal #4).

Will there be more books? Yes. Do I know when or what subject? No. Will they have a curse word in the title? Probably not. But I’m sure going to try.

By

Four Language Errors That Make You Sound Pretentious

There are some grammar errors people insist on perpetuating (not you, you’re awesome!). Some are just common errors that we all make. But others are errors people make in the hopes of sounding smarter or somehow official. (Think government talk or cop talk.)

I heard the first error — “an historic” — on NPR the other day, and thought of all media outlets, this one should know better. And it actually annoyed me so much, I not only shouted at the radio — “A historic, dammit! A historic!” — I wrote this post.

So here are four language errors people make that sound a little pretentious.

1) It’s Not An Historic

Just because you heard them say it on the BBC doesn’t make it true. The reason you say “an” anything is if the next word starts with a vowel sound. Not even a vowel — a vowel sound.

An apple. An MBA. An honorable profession.
A unicorn. A universal truth.

Say “historic” out loud. What sound does it start with? “H.” That’s not a vowel sound. Unless you’ve got a cockney accent, you didn’t just say ‘istoric. The only reason you’d say “an historic” is if you dropped the H sound in front of the word.

And since you’re not an 18th century bootblack, you’re going to keep the H and say “a historic.”

2) Bemused is not Amused

This is a tricky one, because “-mused” is the root word. People seem to think bemused is a form of amused, like it made you chuckle or smile slightly.

It isn’t.

Amused means you think something is funny. It means you found it slightly humorous. Bemused means confused or bewildered. It means you’re cocking your head like a puppy hearing a weird noise.

Bemused is not one step above amused. It’s not “more amused.” There certainly will never be “cemused.”

Just remember, bemused = bewildered.

3) You Don’t End Your Sentences With a Preposition EVER

Regular readers know that I hate and despise the “don’t end your sentences with a preposition” rule, because it’s wrong. However, not everyone got the memo, and some people are just mentally locked in to this idea. So I don’t begrudge the people who write this way, because they were bullied into thinking this is correct.

But if you speak that way, it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.

It makes you sound like you’re trying too hard to be grammatically correct. But even most die-hard word nerds don’t speak like they write. They end their sentences with prepositions. They use slang. They have weird accents. But they don’t try to speak correctly all the time like an overenthusiastic school marm.

The most famous example is Winston Churchill telling an aide who misapplied the preposition rule to a speech, “this is utter nonsense up with which I shall not put.”

If you contort your brain and vocal cords to speak like this, you sound stilted and overly formal.

When you talk, end your sentences with a preposition, if that’s the way you would normally talk. If you’re not comfortable doing it, try to figure out a different way of saying what you wanted to say.

Like adding, “you know?” at the end.

4. Stop Saying “Myself” When You Mean “Me”

A lot of people say “myself,” when they mean “me.”

“Please email your questions to Bob or myself.”

I heard this a lot during my state government days. I think people did this to sound smarter or more official, but it’s wrong, so it negated any effect they were going for.

Using “myself” in most cases is almost certainly the incorrect usage. There are a few times you can use it — as a reflexive pronoun or an intensive pronoun — like “I see myself in the mirror” (reflexive) or “I built the workbench myself” (intensive) but that’s it. You would never use “myself” as the object or subject of a sentence.

Wrong: Give the cookies to myself.
Wrong: Myself baked some cookies.

The best way to see whether or not to use “myself” is to remove the other person — Bob — and see if the sentence makes sense: “Please email your questions to me.”

In this case, “email your questions to myself” just sounds wrong, so you know to use “me” instead.

We’re starting to learn that a lot of our hard-and-fast grammar rules are changing, either because common usage is rendering them unnecessary, or because they were never right to begin with (see #4 above). If you can avoid these, you can feel morally superior to people who make these mistakes in an attempt to sound smarter than everyone else.

I feel that way myself.

Photo credit: ranil (Flickr)

By

People Who Can’t Need to Stop Dismissing the Work of Those Who Can

“I’m tired of people who ‘don’t’ attacking the people who ‘do.'” — Britt Raybould

Writer, crafter, and blogger Britt Raybould put the dope slap on people who dismiss the work of others, saying “I could do that,” or “that costs too much” (Dismissing the Myth of Easy). It got me to thinking about the critics, both the professional and amateur a-holes, who give a knee-jerk negative reaction about some new venture, and why it won’t work, without considering whether it actually might.

There were people who thought Facebook would fail. They still write blog posts about why Google+ is doomed. (Update November 2017: It finally is nearly dead.)

There are people who have been predicting the death of email, blogging, and now Twitter for years, and despite their egregious incorrectness, still insist on doing so.

There are people who dismiss modern art, writing, and even social media consulting as “too easy,” and they don’t value it.

Britt’s pretty tired of it, and after reading “Dismissing the Myth of Easy,” I’m right there with her.

You don’t have to like my work, but don’t you dare say that it’s easy or has no value. Maybe not to you, but unless you’re willing to ante up, I don’t want to hear it anymore.

If you want to have a best-selling book, write one. Quit slamming people who’ve already got one. If you want to host a widely popular webinar AND charge money for it, then figure out what the market wants and do it. If you want a custom quilt, then by hell, buy the 12 different fabrics, cut out 200+ pieces, and sew the damn thing together.

It’s not easy to sit down and come up with words that string together into powerful sentences and come together to make big ideas. And it’s not easy to take your version of the blank canvas and create something out of nothing. It may look easy, but that’s just the result of time and a willingness to do the hard work.

So the next time you see me, please don’t say, “I could do that, too.” I highly doubt it, and you’ll just piss me off.

Stop Dismissing the Pros, if You’re Not Even an Amateur

I face this all the time as a professional writer. The problem is we all learned to write in the 8th grade. But for a lot of people, that’s where they stopped. And since the extent of their writing is dozens of emails, they know how to write. As a result, they don’t value writing, because they think it’s easy.

There’s a big difference between plopping out an email and actually writing something that’s powerful and moving. There’s a difference between whipping up scrambled eggs and cooking a souffle. And there’s a difference between playing a kazoo and playing a piano concerto.

But those people who write emails, make scrambled eggs, or have mastered the kazoo seem to think that what they do is on par with the professional writer, the trained chef, and the concert pianist.

It isn’t. Not even close.

The people who dismiss it as “not that hard” or “not worth anything” either need to go out and show us how smart they really are, or step out of the way of the people who are actually doing the work.

Because until they understand what actually goes into creating something, their criticisms and out-of-hand dismissals are nothing more than the meaningless and petty ramblings of the perpetually envious.

And anyone can do that.

Photo credit: hfabulous (Flickr)