Leave Them Laughing by Nina Faye Morey

I’ve learned several ways to incorporate humour into my speeches and other writings. Toastmasters Advanced Communication Series manual, Humorously Speaking, taught me some useful techniques. I want to share these with you, along with some examples of how I’ve used them:

● Open with a humorous quote, joke, story, or personal anecdote. Here are a couple of opening lines with a famous writer’s witty quote from my “Becoming a Freelance Writer” speech:

“ . . . Do you see yourself travelling the world, dressed in glamorous outfits, signing your latest nonfiction book or novel for a long line of your adoring fans? Norman Mailer once famously quipped that ‘Writers don’t have lifestyles. They sit in little rooms and write.’”

● Add humorous personal stories to your opening and closing. The closing story should illustrate your main point. My speech, “Failure is a Stepping Stone to Success,” included personal dieting stories. Here are snippets of my concluding story, portraying holiday dieting pitfalls:

“ . . . ‘You simply have to taste this, it’s a fabulous new recipe I found in Good Housekeeping’s Christmas issue!’ . . . Each holiday seems like another discouraging battle in our war against weight gain. But we must not allow our diet to get permanently derailed. And, of course, it never hurts to cheer ourselves up with a bit of humour. As my sister-in-law would say, ‘Oh, well, isn’t that the reason they invented elastic waistbands?’” [Snap elastic waistband.]

● Take it up another notch by scattering jokes throughout your writing to illustrate the main points and engage your audience. Here’s a joke from the body of my speech, “Man’s Best Friend,” on training seeing-eye dogs:

“No professional trainer would want to match a handler with a disobedient guide dog who has a rap sheet that includes being ticketed for “running off leash while on duty.”

● Open with a self-deprecating joke, sprinkle sets of similar jokes throughout, and close with a humorous story. Jokes underscore your points and enliven dry, pedantic material. The closing story should accentuate your main point. Here’s a set of jokes I used in the body of my speech, “Murphy’s Law of PCs,” making fun of coping with new technologies:

“You see, as you get older, three things happen. The first is that your memory starts to go . . . Sorry, I seem to have forgotten what the other two are . . . Now . . . What was I saying? . . . Oh, yes, my son gets a bit touchy when he’s already explained the first three steps and I interrupt to ask if he could please repeat step one again. I perfectly understand his frustration though. It’s a lot like when I’m trying to figure out how to reset the digital clock on my microwave. It doesn’t appear too difficult until I actually attempt to do it. If you’re around my age, you’re probably familiar with how that goes [Mimic punching touchpad with each step.]: Read Step 1. Read Step 2. Repeat Step 1; Reread Step 2. Repeat Step 1; Repeat Step 2; Read Step 3. Repeat Step 1; Repeat Step 2; Reread Step 3  . . . [Pause & shake head] . . . Re-read Step 1 . . .”

● Use exaggerated comical stories and/or jokes to make a point about a particular theme/subject. Here’s an exaggerated joke about dealing with change I used to open my story, “If I’d Only Known”:

“I grew up in the era when you handwrote your manuscript on paper with a dip pen and inkwell and sent it off to a publisher through the Pony Express—no, just kidding!”

Go ahead and have some fun trying these techniques to add humour to your writing.

Photo Credits: Pixabay