Dearest SunWinkers:

Sometimes as a writer you have to reach back for something extra. So, as a selfless public service for the betterment of all mankind, our topic this week is hyperbole. Hyperbole is, very simply, exaggeration. It’s an essential tool in the comedian or comic writer’s belt, but it can make any genre of writing more lively. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: don’t exaggerate!” is a hyperbole. So is “If I had a nickel for every time you exaggerate, I could retire.” The thing exaggerated might be a quantity or size or some such, but it can also be the absurdity or the banality of something:

“I am two with nature.” Woody Allen

“I went to the Board of Health and asked for two thousand cockroaches. I promised my landlord I would leave my apartment the way I found it.” Anon.

“The scarecrow scared the crows so badly that they brought back the corn they had stolen two years before.” Fred Allen

“You might be a redneck if you’ve ever paid for a six-pack of beer with pennies.” Jeff Foxworthy

“I woke up the next day on a bench in a bus station. My shoes were gone. So was my wallet. So were my kidneys. I’m just kidding. That’s an urban legend. I still had my shoes.” DW, “The Depressed Detective and the Case of Boston Baked Beans”

When you make something exaggeratedly large, that’s called overstatement. But don’t forget understatement (or meiosis). Making something exaggeratedly small or inconsequential can be equally, if not more, effective.

“I’m not shooting for a successful relationship at this point. I am just looking for something that will prevent me from throwing myself in front of a bus. I’m keeping my expectations very, very low. Basically, I’m looking for a mammal.” Janeane Garofalo.

“As I told the tribunal at Nuremberg, I did not know that Hitler was a Nazi. The truth is that for years I thought he worked for the phone company.” Woody Allen

Stephen Sondheim sets us up with a series of understatements, then slaps us in the face with an outrageous hyperbole:

It’s the little things you share together,
Swear together,
Wear together,
That make perfect relationships.
The concerts you enjoy together,
Neighbors you annoy together,
Children you destroy together,
That keep marriage intact.

Stephen Sondheim, “The Little Things You Do Together” from Company

The humorous quatrains known as Little Willies rely on macabre understatement:

Little Willie’s old machete
Cleaved the neck of daft Aunt Betty
“Once again,” his Mama said,
“My batty sister’s lost her head!”

DW

The device of litotes consists of using understatement in an ironic fashion, describing something in a small way as a means of asserting that something is really big. “New York is a great little town” is an example of litotes.

“And I said I had to get a divorce. My mother put down her knitting. She got up and she went over to the furnace. She opened the door and she got in. Took it rather badly I thought.” Woody Allen

Part of the art of hyperbole is knowing how much is enough. For humor to be effective, it must have some relationship to reality. The 64 Quadrillion Dollar Question is: how much do you stretch the rubber band before it breaks? See what I mean? I stretched it too far and it fell flat. Now, you might say “64 Thousand Dollar Question” which is precisely the name of the old game show. You might stretch it just a bit and say “64 Million.” Or you could use litotes (ironic understatement) to good effect and say “The 64 Hundred Dollar Question.”

For more on the subject, I must recommend—and acknowledge my debt to—Comedy Writing Secrets by Mel Helitzer with Mark Shatz [Cincinnati OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2005]  Everything I know about writing humor I learned from Messrs. Helitzer and Shatz and Woody Allen.

The Prompt

Write a poem or sketch which uses the device of hyperbole. Extra credit if the hyperbole is non-numerical and/or understatement rather than overstatement.

Love,

Doug

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