Exercise: Satirical headlines

Required reading:

An introduction to satire

Writing satirical headlines is a very useful exercise, even if you have no interest in writing for a satirical publication. This exercise will help you find your unique angle on any situation whether it’s personal to you, or about a current event. The trick is to find the personal slant on any subject - that way you can avoid being clichéd.

In this exercise we’ll start by deconstructing some professional satirical headlines, then get on with the exercise.

Let’s deconstruct some satirical headlines

Here are some examples from 2 popular satire websites: The Onion, which satirises newspapers; and Reductress, which satirises lifestyle magazines. Let’s see if we can deconstruct some of their headlines. Both of these publications also tackle purely political subjects, but I’m cherry-picking the more personal ones because frankly, I’m not a political commentator. I haven’t gone into the body of the articles. Firstly, I never read them, secondly we’re going to stick to headline writing in this exercise.

I’ve broken the headlines down in to sub topics:

• What was observed?
  What was the real life event that was probably observed that inspired this headline? All of your headlines should be grounded in reality to make them relatable.

• What’s relatable?
  Which part made you connect with the story?

• Why is this funny?
  What makes this headline funny?

• Themes
  Brainstorm some themes

Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids - link

What was observed?

We often see or read that a toy has been banned or somewhere has been closed due to someone getting hurt or killed.

What's relatable?

Toys that were fun in my youth are literally no fun any more because of health and safety like Kinder Egg toys. All because of stupid dead kids!

Why is this funny?

The choice of words makes it really pop. We have “fun toy” all the way to “stupid dead kids”, in a few words creating a contrast. The word economy is *chefs kiss*, try and change, add or remove any of the words and it won’t be as funny.

Themes

Death, Darwinism?, Irreverence, toys, ruining fun, Health&Safety