How to Write a Humor Article

I have recently come to the realization that very little of the work I produce is funny. This is based on the fact that when I showed an article to my dad, he opened it up, read it, and then patted me on the back and said, “Hang in there, sport.” This discovery is particularly sad because I have been writing for the humor department since I was a freshman, which means that for the last two years the 4.6 people who read The Spectator have been reading my articles, then breathing out once through their noses, then toward the end slightly longer through their noses, and that would be the most amount of laughter that would happen. In light of this discovery, I have decided to plot out my writing process in order to better understand why I suck.

1. I begin several minutes before the deadline. This isn’t always my fault since there have been times when on Thursday, at 3:00 a.m., I was sent a doc from the editor with a message saying “due Thursday!” complete with a damn smiley face, and the editor and I were both just supposed to laugh and pretend that Thursday wasn’t already happening.

2. I start writing, which always consists of me wondering what on earth I was talking about when I first suggested the idea. A part of me wishes I would just stop volunteering ideas, or that my laptop and I would just sink into the ocean.

3. Eventually I manage to squeeze out a few things that I find humorous until I’ve written a solid paragraph. Heroin and finishing a humor article produce quite similar feelings, I’ve noticed.

4. I submit a mediocre first draft in the hopes that it will age like fine wine and become exponentially funnier the less I look at it. As we have mentioned already, this never works, and instead, the articles rot until they die.

5. After receiving some comments from the editor, most of which simply read “make funnier,” “???” and “let’s not make fun of homeless people plz,” I begin the editing process. This consists of me rearranging some sentences, deleting my offensive jokes while a tear slides down my face, and sitting with my head facing the sun so I might be able to absorb some of her wisdom because God is a woman, you know.

6. Eventually the article ends up in The Spectator. It’s always shorter than the other ones and you can kind of tell just by looking at it that it’s not funny. I read it and realize that several changes have been made by a nameless face that made it slightly funnier. I show it to my friends who breathe heavily through their noses and say, “That’s funny,” in the deadened voice of someone who hasn’t laughed since 2006, while indicating with every single other part of their body that it wasn’t funny.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where along the way the article stops being funny, but I have an idea it might be when I start testing out whether a funky rhyme scheme might work, or how I can make a joke out of all those kids being detained at the border. Or maybe the whole thing stops being funny at the very beginning, like when I first think of the article idea. But either way, that’s my entire process of writing a humor article, and it repeats cyclically until all of us graduate, or die—whichever comes first. Humor recruitment apps coming soon.