by Hugh Holub

Created on: November 28, 2008

TEN TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE SATIRE

"SATIRE: 1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn 2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly"Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary.

Satire is one of the most difficult types of humor to write because your satirical point of view can get you into serious trouble. Americans as a general rule don't have a sense of humor. In other countries you can get thrown in jail or worse.

When I first started the Frumious Bandersnatch in the 1960's we had FBI agents going to our advertisers threatening them if they supported us. In the last 10 years the Bandersnatch managed to get on federally mandated library filtering systems, even though the name of the site is derived from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland Jabberwocky poem.

Effective satire points out how stupid, silly, or ridiculous something or someone is. The target of satire generally doesn't like being discredited and (if your article is really good) subjected to scorn.

There are some tricks to writing good and effective satire.

First, is understand the importance of context. For example, the Obama cartoon in the New Yorker was out of context, which is why it didn't work as well as it might have in, say, Mad Magazine.

If a satirical article catches the reader by surprise, they might not get the humor.

Thus, in plying your satirical wit, make sure you target it in a context where the reader is looking for humor.

This is why Saturday Night Live, John Stewart and Colbert work because you know its coming. A satirical story would flop in the network news. Rarely do you ever see a satirical commentary in a regular newspaper's editorial pages.

The Bandersnatch, which I've been publishing since 1965, is clearly a satirical newspaper. One should not expect a serious news story there. Even at that, the paper makes a point that it "is the least trustworthy source of news on the web".

Notwithstanding every attempt to make it clear the content of the Bandersnatch is fake, sometimes people miss the point. We ran a story about the Nogales (a US-Mexico border city) Chamber of Commerce promoting tourism by offering drug tunnel tours. The real chamber actually got a call from someone from the Discovery Channel wanting to take one of the tours and shoot a story.

Second, vicious does not work. "Trenchant" is a key word to remember. Sharp, vigorously effective. Words like "delightfully vicious" is more the goal.

Third, obscenity detracts from good

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