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”
“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying.” Woody Allen
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
SunWinks! 