How Dave Barry used booger jokes to teach me how to write

Yesterday we talked about making a close study of writing you like so you can try to figure out what the author did to make you have a positive reaction.

I tried this type of dissection for the first time in the late ’80s, when I found myself laughing hysterically as I read Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry’s Pulitzer Prize submission package. Barry mostly wrote silly stuff about silly subjects, but somehow I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. And then a column about his mother’s death had me in tears.

Hang on a second, I thought. What’s going on here? I read all the time, and I almost never laugh out loud, never mind uncontrollably, and I almost never tear up. This guy’s got me doing both in the space of five minutes. And by the way, he won that Pulitzer for commentary in 1988, so I wasn’t the only one who thought highly of his writing.

I started reading as many Dave Barry columns as I could get my hands on, and I figured out that whatever silly subject he was writing about—he once wrote a book called “Boogers Are My Beat”—he was a master with the language. I learned how he used vocabulary, word choice, vivid—if sometimes ridiculous—visual imagery and sentence length to lead readers in one direction, then yank them in another. He didn’t use set-ups and punch lines like a comedian, but he created the same effect.

And it was invisible. He did it all without drawing attention to the fact that he was Writing with a capital W. It read like some dope was talking at a party. But in my experience that dope never makes me laugh before I’ve had about five drinks. Barry came off like a dope, but he was flashing big-time skills.

I’ve been studying good writers ever since, looking under the hood, as it were, trying to figure out what’s so good about the good stuff. I do it with sportswriters, other journalists, novelists, anyone. If I find myself liking something, I’ll try to figure out what the writer did that was so effective. Sometimes I realize the writer’s using some method I’m familiar with, but sometimes I learn something I can use in my own writing.

Cultivating that skill is the second best thing I’ve ever done for myself as a writer. The best was working at a radio station and learning how to write for broadcast. That’s a story for another time.