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Creativity is stimulated by wrestling with form. Humor can be a serious field of study. Like all forms of writing, sooner or later you need to forget about the warps and wefts and just let the shuttle fly. But the longer you've worked on strengthening your tools -- building your sense of the warp and weft of humor -- the more colorful the weave you will create when you fly.
The basics of almost all forms of writing are the same:
Sound is also a basic element of any form of writing.
One of the roles of the artist is to show us to ourselves. The humorist plays this role to the hilt. Pointing out the absurd implications of things we have taken for granted is a traditional use of humor.
One of the theories of humor by those who like to analyze it is that laughter is a form of rejection of what is too much for us to handle emotionally or too jarring to our sense of reality. Most techniques of humor are varieties of inappropriateness -- and I don't mean X-rated humor, which may be just a way of distancing ourselves from what is emotionally overwhelming.
Even non-sequiturs, the form of humor that appears the most unstructured, has rules that make it more effective:
Speaking of rejection: there are many different shades of irony, sarcasm, satire, parody, travesty, burlesque, gallows humor and poking-fun.
This isn't all forms of humor, by all means.

Visit Thalia, Muse of Comedy, who displays samples of humor from Anitra & StreetWrites & Friends (oh my)

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