This is a blog about humor writing, and so I’ve focused a lot on adding humor to your written and verbal communications. BUT another way to add humor is by writing or telling funny, real-life, stories about your experiences. I’ve been doing that on my Facebook business page – click here
Funny Stories GRAB people’s attention
Which is what you’re trying to do with jokes and humor. See some of the examples on my Facebook page. Here is how one story starts. . .
So I’m standing in my boss’s office many moons ago, getting absolutely reamed out. He had just seen the budget numbers, and we were wayyy over by like $200,000+! He couldn’t understand how I ran my department before he came on board in the last year because I apparently didn’t know anything about budgeting. Blah blah blah. After a few minutes of this tirade, I was able to break in and ask WHAT did I overspend on.
He grabbed the printout, and pointed at a line item, practically shoving the sheet of paper in my face. He said, “look, we are about 200% over budget from last year on this item alone!” I looked for a minute, and then said, “Well, Robert (not his real name). We ARE way over on that item. It’s personnel. We hired YOU!” Que in the moment of complete awkward silence with a few ahs and ahems tossed in. I left without an apology, but his stumbling and stammering around made up for it.
Find the rest of this funny story here, along with many others.
It’s a short funny story, but it’s effective .. . funny with a little seriousness. And then I let people know about my humor keynotes on using humor in business. Stories are a fun way to use humor without having to write a comedy routine.
Where do I find the funny stories?
Well, from my life . . .and you can find them in your life too. Just write down stuff that has or is happening to you . . . keep your phone (pen and paper) handy, for when a funny story pops up; and they will. Also talk with friends and family; they will jog your memory to the crazy stuff that happened as a kid.
What Should I Include?
A picture of course – such as the one of my cat Maizie above. I’ve also included a “call to action” to give some attention to my keynotes. As for writing the actual story thought, make sure to start your story off with some action, such as I did with me standing in front of my boss getting yelled at. And build a little with some details like him shoving the paper in front of me and me wondering what it was that I was over budget on. And of course, make sure the story really happened. When you write jokes, you can make stuff up and exaggerate, but with writing funny stories, the story and pretty much everything in it needs to be real – unless you promote yourself as a fiction writer.
That’s it! Most of us have had funny things happen to us all of our lives. It’s time to share those funny stories with the rest of the world! And speaking of funny, check out my website – www.TheWorkLady.com
And don’t forget about my short humor writing tips on youtube. Here’s a post about those!