WRITING ADVICE: Non-Serious Serious Non-fiction

March 11, 2008 New York Times Top 5 at a Glance

1. LOSING IT, by Valerie Bertinelli ("Funny and candid...")
2. BEAUTIFUL BOY, by David Sheff ("...honest, hopeful...")
3. STORI TELLING, by Tori Spelling with Hilary Liftin ("...frankness and humor...")
4. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD, by Michael Pollan ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.")
5. LIBERAL FASCISM, by Jonah Goldberg ("...shocking and hilarious.")

And there you have it -- if you're going to write serious non-fiction, you have to be funny.

Most of my own published non-fiction uses humor to make a point -- in fact, two of my three major sales to Stan Schmidt at ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT are fictionalized, funny takes on serious problems: Americans ignoring "minor" laws like speed limits and the increasing number of "consumer warnings". My book, SIMPLE SCIENCE SERMONS FOR BIG AND LITTLE KIDS has been available now for a decade and uses wry commentary melded with scientific facts to bring Christian ideas into clearer light.

How do you do funny? There's a number of ways, but the most common is to say something connected to your subject -- but on an unexpected tangent. Most jokes follow this pattern. Another way is to "do" something visually unexpected. Carol Burnette, Seinfeld, Reba and the entire Saturday Night Live crew are all masters at this; Lucille Ball was undisputed Empress for the ridiculous images she set up -- you can do that in print as well, but nothing is quite as funny as a pie-in-the-face or a someone slipping on a banana peel.

So: if you want to write serious, be funny!