Humor? Seriously?

"For some reason, many people look down on witty writing."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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It is indisputable that laughing is good for your mind and body.  But, like beauty, humor is in the eye of the beholder. There are distinct differences between what different cultures, and indeed sub-cultures, find amusing. What might be a knee-slapper in your local bar over a beer may cause pursed lips at a dinner party over wine.

For some reason, many people look down on witty writing. They seem to believe that it requires little skill, zero writing craft and certainly won’t put you in the pantheon of the writing gods. Or make you rich. As Willy Loman said, “Everybody likes a kidder but no one lends him money.”

But, happily, many writers ignore reality and write funny anyway, fame and money be damned. The best of their stories and poems seem to share these common elements:

• They span cultures and tap into the universal.

• They are well-crafted (that seemingly effortless piece of wit has probably been re-written several times).

• They punch up, not down. The privileged are fair game but not the world’s battlers.

• Put-downs, snark, and mockery are not their stock in trade (almost every TV sitcom, I’m looking at you).

• They don’t assume that everyone is mired in consumer culture (food, fashion, binge TV, the Royals etc).

I launched Witcraft last year because I believed there was a market out there of people who want some daily relief from the gloom and doom that seems to pervade the news and the web.

I love humor, wit, absurdity, wry social commentary, and people’s funny moments in their lives. I love writers who know how to craft their submissions to reach the audience they crave. The problem for them is finding a site that meets that need.

One of the major issues is that what passes for humor on many sites, especially on so many US “humor” sites, is infantile, derivative, punch-line driven clickbait and it consists mostly of put-downs, snark and adolescent obsessions with genitals.

As an Australian, I grew up in the Anglo-Irish tradition of humor, wit and absurdity that didn’t necessarily have a punchline and didn’t always generate belly laughs, but made you smile and make your day more human. Everything from the BBC’s The Goons, Monty Python, My Word, Take It From Here, etc, through the inimitable Irishness of Flann O’Brien and Paddy Doyle, and Australian TV shows like The Mavis Bramston Show and The Naked Vicar Show.

This developed into admiration for stand-up comedians who are great storytellers, including Scotland’s Danny Bhoy and Australia’s Kitty Flanagan. They are stand-outs because they are crafters who don’t rely on four-letter words, toilet humor, their ethnic background, their sexuality or any other crutch that says, “You’d better laugh at me or everyone will think you’re a racist, misogynist, homophobic etc.” I find it almost impossible to believe that younger audiences still think a comedian saying “fuck” is innately hilarious. (Not that I’m a prude by any means. No, really.)

Turns out a lot of people agree with me, especially Americans who are tired of sledgehammer “wit.” Since launching, Witcraft has received over 1,000 submissions from around the world and published over 300 of them. The subject matter has ranged from household appliances to dress codes to creative accounting to giants to the remains of a cake on the roadside and many more. Each brings an individual voice and approach but the feature that unites them is the craft and imagination of the writer. And when it all comes together and makes me laugh out loud or just smile in enjoyment and appreciation, I’m in the best unpaid job in the world and I feel very privileged.

So, as the Editor of Witcraft, what do I look for when deciding what to publish?

Craft – Pieces that don’t look like they were slapped together over a coffee (or something stronger). Literary snobs that look down on humor fail to understand that the best humor writing demands as much skill as any soul-searching “high art.”

Originality – For example, if you’re going to send a piece about the generation gap, it better have a take on it we haven’t seen a thousand times before. A recent story nailed it with the presence of a talking spider and ghosts.

Imagination – So many submissions have the core of a humorous idea but then fail to craft it in a way that makes it accessible and fresh. For example, instead of yet another well-meaning but boring piece on global warming, one of our published stories contained a recipe for making a planet.

A sense of the absurd – I have a real soft spot for absurdity. No, I don’t mean the pathetic clickbait headlines so beloved of some sites. Prime examples of beautifully crafted absurdity include Monty Python’s “What did the Romans ever do for us?” and John Clarke’s “The front fell off,” as is one of our recent pieces where a newspaper Correction piece demonstrated that there was nothing in the original that was actually true.

Respect for our publication – So many submissions have obviously never been through a spelling or grammar check or the writer clearly doesn’t know that their computer will tell them at the bottom of the page how many words they’ve written. Mind you, these are also usually the ones that have entirely ignored all the other guidelines, despite ticking a box that says they have read them and understand them. I save my best withering responses for these occasions, including the person who recently submitted a piece on how to skin a human being.

As difficult as it may be to believe, my tastes in humor are not the be-all and end-all on the matter. There are many other lit mags to provide outlets for skillful writers of humor but searching aggregation sites doesn’t always help. For example, some publications say they accept humor (along with a laundry list of other categories) but there is no recent evidence that they do.

So I’ve put together a list of both specialist humor sites and mainstream sites where humor writers can submit their work. It, of course, includes the usual suspects (even if I did have to grit my teeth when listing the aforementioned undergrad “humor” sites) but also my own research and experience, along with the help of our readers and writers.

You can access the list here:

100+ magazines that publish humour

Building Witcraft has been the most rewarding exercise in my writing career. It is providing a place where true humor writers can reach a reading audience that appreciates quality humor to lighten their day. I am constantly surprised by the range of approaches to humor I see in submissions and the growing number of subscribers and submitters from across the globe.

When writers send me comments like, Thanks for bringing us Witcraft, and for giving all kinds of writers, including me, a chance to show our work, and Keep it going, Doug. I think you are growing a fun community of humor writers, and Wonderful literary journal! Keep up the outstanding work!, I am both humbled and excited for the future.

Speaking of which, if you or any of your writer friends write humor, encourage them to submit to us for free via Witcraft.org.

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