I'm really enjoying John Vorhous' book "The Comic Toolbox" more and more. It's really well written, and he's obviously an expert in so many areas I'm interested in that I'm just soaking up all I can from the book.
There's a lot in there that I'm finding really interesting, but that doesn't appear to be directly helpful for making my blog content more entertaining. He gives some great ideas and exercises on how to write using strategies to heighten humor in fiction, but I'm not writing fiction. I can see how fascinating these tricks would be in character and plot development, and I can't wait to start applying them to some fiction, But I'm having a harder time imagining how to apply some of these ideas to a non-fiction blog series.
But here's a couple of things I've pulled out so far. He mentions that all comedy comes from pain. And while it's perfectly legitimate to put your fictional characters through hell, you can't really do that with a blog reader. But then I was thinking, tapping into what I know the reader is afraid of, or what would make the reader squirm, might be a foot into the funny door.
Let's see if I can develop this thought a bit better. I know from my own experience that what I most fear in following a blog is that the writer is A) and idiot who doesn't know the first thing about which he/she speaks and B) that I'm going to waste my valuable time on something lame. Sometimes they are very knowledgeable, but spend the entire post that is really more of a geeky technological presentation of things I don't find all that interesting. I don't care to have someone throw me a list of equipment needed to create a podcast, and which microphone is better, and how to set up a sound board with a toggle switch for a sound effect library that includes stoner sounding expletives, I'm sure there are folks out there dying to have that conversation, and perhaps I'll be there one day when I'm more immersed in this social media lifestyle, but... no. Nothing will make me leave a group faster.
So knowing that about myself, how can I work that fear and pain into a comedy bit for the blog? I obviously can't just be abusive and make fun of my readers. That might have worked for Rodney Dangerfield (Oh, look him up if you're that young!) but it won't work in this environment. The key is to make the harassment self-deprecating. At the risk of shaking my role as "the authority" in the blog. I need to find ways to show how foolish I can be, how I learned a lesson the hard way, and how I got myself into, and out of, a jam. I need to be Woody Allen (Seriously, look him up. I can't believe you guys are that young!). I'm actually quite comfortable in making myself the butt of jokes. I've been doing it for years, and let's face it, it's not all that much of a stretch. I really do end up in the strangest, most embarrassing situations. The trick will be to make the humorous bits topical and genuine to the posting. Just to try to work in a joke might really cheapen the content... and I want readers to log in for content, not just for some sort of Jack Benny sketch. (Google him too, and watch some documentaries... no one can be that young.)
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