Gramer Girl here. I'm a neon-foggerty. And on this show, we talk about writing, history,

rules, and cool stuff. Today, I have a segment about some of the theories behind humor writing,

and a segment about the two spellings of, whoa!

Adding humor to your writing is more than just telling a few jokes or dropping in some funny

sounding names. It's more than relying on tried-and-true tropes and truisms. It's more about creating

unusual situations for characters to react to, or catching your readers pleasantly off guard with

unexpected connections. A law firm called Duy Chido Menau is only going to be funny once.

Two dentists named Ketchum and Polom has a limited shelf life. Ken Jennings explained the

secret to good humor writing in his book, Planet Funny. He wrote, don't say funny things, say

things funny. There are as many as 12 different theories and practices you can use to get a laugh

with your writing. They go beyond advice like, use words that end in K or use funny names.

You can find rich sources of humor if you can tell a story where normal people are in an unusual

situation, or unusual people are in a normal situation. That's a comedy screenwriting technique

called Fish Out of Water, and you can see it in TV shows like Shits Creek, Community or Big Bang Theory,

or even great movies like Back to the Future. You can tell stories like that all day long,

mining a variety of situations for all kinds of humor, and never once resort to a name like Harry

Plopper. Let's look at four of the most frequently used sources of humor that you can use to get your

audience laughing. The first is called Iceberg Theory. It isn't officially a humor technique,

but it's important to most good writing, including humor. Iceberg Theory refers to the fact that the

portion of the iceberg that you can see is supported by the much larger portion that's underwater.

The American author Ernest Hemingway created the idea of the Iceberg Theory, telling writers that

they needed to have all kinds of knowledge and details in their minds when they wrote about a subject.

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