Tag: humor
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Exformation
“…great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication theorists sometimes call exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.” –David Foster Wallace…
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Why You Should Take Notes When You Laugh
People ask where ideas for books (or scenes within books) come from. I think one of the most important things to do is very simple: Pay attention when you laugh. If you are sharing an anecdote or a family story with a friend, and you’re laughing about it, that means there’s some gold to mine…
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Matilda on the Need for Humor
In Matilda, Roald Dahl’s characters discuss the need for humor in children’s books; Matilda begins: “I think Mr. C.S. Lewis is a very good writer. But he has one failing. There are no funny bits in his books.” “You are right there,” Miss Honey said. “There aren’t many funny bits in Mr. Tolkien either,” Matilda…
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How to Write a Funny Poem
The characters in Edgar Allan’s Official Crime Investigation Notebook write lots of funny poems. Download this pdf to discover how to write your own humorous poetry: How to Write a Funny Poem by Mary Amato