I find writing humour the hardest thing. This lesson will be looking at humour and how it is used in New Zealand advertising.
But first let's have a look at different types of humour.
Let's look at some classic New Zealand ads and look at the humour in it.
Why do we laugh when he explains what he is thinking? Let's assume it is in congruent. If that is true we then are laughing because we didn't expect him to say that. What were we expecting him to say? Why would we think he was going to say that?
Thankfully we are starting to change some of the way we play certain characters and races in our advertising. But lets get back to something funny.
What kinds of humour are they using and what techniques are they using? Could you spot the different types?
Let's try some situational comedy. The easiest way to do this is to take someone who is an expert in one field and put them into a situation where they are far from being an expert. This is the barbarian who is forced to dress as a dancer to escape discovery by soldiers chasing him.
Either write a scene from a story or dialogue from a play. To help make sure your scene is funny you can check out the Writing Excuses when they talk about humour as a genre. Get someone else to read it. It is really difficult to tell if we have managed to hit the funny bone.
Teacher's notes
This lesson can be used as an aside to the writing course. That has several standards attached which you can see here.