GenresNon-fiction
Humour
The world, taken seriously enough to laugh at.
Humour in nonfiction has to be funny and it has to be about something. A comic memoir, a work of satire, a gift book that a person might actually read rather than only wrap: the joke is the way in, and there should be a subject on the other side of the door. Readers will forgive a ridiculous digression if the voice is good. They will not forgive a book that is only a stack of observations hoping one of them is a catchphrase.
The target matters. Punching a person who can't answer is easy and usually dull. Institutions, habits, including the author's own, and the absurdities of ordinary life are more durable. Comic memoir still needs the shape of a memoir, a reason these stories are together. Satire still needs knowledge of the thing it is mocking. Gift humour needs a real comic idea that can last longer than the bookshop table in December. If you wouldn't say the joke out loud to a clever friend, it is probably not ready for a page.
The kinds of book inside it
Comic memoir
A life is told for laughs and for meaning, and the jokes should come from what happened rather than from a comic persona pasted over the top.
Satire
A real subject is being taken apart with comedy, which only works if the reporting or the observation underneath is sharp.
Gift humour
The book is short, designed to be given, and still needs an actual comic premise, or it is a card that has gone on too long.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a contents list in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.