How To Write Humorous Greeting Cards
By Nick Daws
The greeting card industry offers many opportunities for freelance writers, but one of the best at present is coming up with ideas and slogans for humorous cards. In this article I’ll be explaining how to generate such ideas and how to present them to card companies to maximize your chances of selling them.
Most humorous cards, due to their very nature, are in two parts. The outside cover sets up the gag, and the recipient opens the card to discover the punchline. Many card companies will consider ideas which consist of no more than captions with a brief description of the illustrations required.
The examples below of ideas I have sold show how they should be set out, and will give you a flavour of the kind of thing required. As with
all writing, however, fashions can change, and it is essential to study today’s market yourself.
1. While you’re sick, take it easy, do what you like, let others make all the decisions for you...
...After all, you need to practice for when you’re back at work!
2. Valentine, this card is programmed in BASIC...
...(MESSAGE IS SHOWN ON COMPUTER SCREEN) I Love You!
3. This birthday card contains no artificial flavorings, preservatives or colorings. It is salt-free with no added sugar, low in cholesterol and guaranteed free of impurities...
...It tastes b****** awful!
4. (PICTURE OF SMILING HIPPIE COUPLE STANDING SIDE BY SIDE, ONE HOLDING A TOWEL) Aurora and Satchel would just like to wish you...
...a Hippie Bathday! (COUPLE ARE SEEN IN THE BATH TOGETHER, JOSS STICK BURNING, PSYCHEDLEIC POSTER ON WALL, ETC.)
5. As it’s your birthday, there’s a drink on me inside this card... ...Happy (hic!) Birthday! (CHARACTER IS SEEN FLAT ON BACK, CLEARLY SOZZLED, CLASPING A HALF-FINISHED BEER TO HIS CHEST.)
Some publishers, rather than a list of ideas, prefer to receive mock-ups of the cards. In these cases I use ordinary typing paper folded in half to give a paper ‘card’. The aim is to draw the mock-up in such a way that the publisher gets a good idea of what the finished card will actually look like - captions and illustrations. A modicum of artistic talent is obviously helpful here, but as long as you can get the basic idea across this should be sufficient. (I am, incidentally, the world’s worst artist, but even I have had ideas accepted from my pathetic
attempts at drawing - and my miniscule skills have actually improved a little with practice!)
How do you get ideas for humorous greeting cards? Sometimes (especially once you have been working in this field for a while) ideas just pop into your head, and in these cases it is important to jot them down in your writer’s notebook as soon as possible before they escape. Often, unless you write down an idea within a few minutes of its arrival, it will vanish altogether.
Relying on sudden inspirations is not the way to generate regular cheques, however. Sometimes ideas need a little encouragement to come forth. The following techniques may prove helpful:
* Try brainstorming on a particular theme or subject. That is to say, give yourself 15 minutes and write down without stopping everything you can think of connected with that subject. Then go back over what you have written and see if any of it suggests ideas you could use. A few possible subjects to start you off are birthday, holiday, work, garden, car, food, drink and house.
* Choose two totally different words or concepts, and see if you can find any links between them. Much humour works by connecting two apparently unrelated concepts. For example, the idea below...
This birthday card contains no artificial flavorings, preservatives or colorings. It is salt-free with no added sugar, low in cholesterol and guaranteed free of impurities ...
... It tastes b***** awful!
* Look at existing cards and see if you can change or adapt them in some way to create an original idea of your own. For example, if you see an intriguing card on display, before opening it try to guess the punchline inside. If your own punchline is different, all you need do is change the front cover design/caption to end up with an original greeting card idea of your own.
* Finally, look out for jokes/cartoons which could be translated into card format. To avoid infringing copyright, be sure to avoid simply copying the wording. There is, however, no copyright on ideas!
One other thing to bear in mind is that card publishers want original, up-to-the-minute ideas, so anything which concerns digital TV, cell phones, PDAs, the Internet and other such modern phenomena will stand a better chance of success. By contrast, ideas which are thinly concealed rehashes of jokes which have done the rounds many times before are unlikely to achieve success.
You can research potential publishers in your local shopping mall and/or via the Internet. Once you have a few names and addresses, write to them asking for a copy of their writers’ guidelines (a growing number of publishers put these on the net, so it’s worth checking there as well). The guidelines will tell you how they prefer ideas to be submitted, and any ranges for which they are especially seeking contributions. Once you have found a suitable publisher, you are ready to think about sending your work off to them.
Submit your ideas in batches of around 12 to 20. If you are simply sending captions and descriptions you can include several to a sheet, though make sure they are well spaced out. Give each idea a number so that the publishers have a quick way of referring to it (e.g. they might write back and say 'We would like to purchase your ideas 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8 for a total fee of $400').
Put your name and address on every sheet of paper, or every mock-up if that is the format you are using. An SSAE is a good idea when sending in your first batch of ideas, though once you are known to the company there is no real need to bother with this. Companies vary about how quickly they reply, but you will usually hear within a month whether any of your work has been accepted. This is a competitive market, so if you sell two or three ideas from a batch of 20 you will have done well.
One last point is that, as a greeting card writer, the world (or at least the English-speaking part) really is your oyster. Just because you live in the US, for example, don’t imagine you can’t submit work to publishers in the UK and elsewhere. And equally, if you live in Britain or anywhere else, you can and should regard American (and Canadian) greeting card publishers as potential clients.
NOTE - This article is based partly on a section from Quick Cash Writing, my new course on making money from shorter writing projects.
For further details, including my current special offer to purchasers of QCW via my website, check out http://www.nickdaws.co.uk/qcw.htm.
Nick Daws is a professional freelance writer based in the UK. He has written over 50 books, and innumerable published articles, short stories and so on. He's the author of ‘Write Any Book in Under 28 Days’ and ‘Quick Cash Writing’.
Check out his blog at: http://www.mywritingblog.com