7 Day Story Writing Challenge: A Brief Guide to Writing Satire
This guide is all about satire. What it is, tips for writing it, and a list of satirical stories you can read online for free. We also discuss the difficulties, limitations, and pitfalls of writing in this genre. This guide is a must-read for anyone assigned satire in a 7 Day Story Writing Challenge, or for anyone wanting to explore new or unfamiliar literary genres!
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What is Satire?
For the purposes of our 7 Day Story Writing Challenges, we’re defining satire as a story in which human nature, society, or politics is ridiculed, criticised, or scorned using irony, sarcasm, or exaggeration. We do not believe that satire must be humorous, although it often is.
Difficulties, Limitations and Pitfalls of This Genre
Satire is a notoriously difficult thing to write. We think the hardest thing will be getting to grips with the genre if you aren’t familiar with it. We definitely suggest reading as many satirical short stories as you can in the first few days of the challenge. We think some writers might go wrong by simply writing a funny, silly story. Satire is all about using fiction to make a bigger point about society or human nature. Make sure you think about what that point might be before you begin the story, and don’t lose sight of it while you’re writing!
Top Tip for This Genre
We think the first thing to do is to decide if you’re a funny writer or not. If you think you aren’t a funny writer and you don’t fancy trying to be one, don’t try to write a funny satire! If you aren’t writing a funny satire, you’ll probably want to use exaggeration as your satirical technique as the others lend themselves better to humour. Next, you could try to think of something in human nature, society, or politics that you find interesting and worthy of critique. This might be a good time to consider the theme of the challenge! Don’t be under the impression that the thing you want to critique has to be a lofty, intellectual idea. The idea itself isn’t the thing that’s going to affect how good your story is. If you’re stuck for an idea, it probably means you’re giving it too much credence. If you aren’t interested in politics or you don’t know much about it, it’s probably best not to try political satire. Try to think about something in society or human nature that you want to write about. This could be as simple as the British attitude to queuing, how people change when they have children, or the new obsession with ‘eating clean’. Once you know what you want to critique, it’s just a case of building a story around an exaggerated version of that thing. You aren’t going for realism here, you want your reader to know you’ve used exaggeration to make a point! This should be fun! If it isn’t fun, there’s a chance you’re feeling intimidated by the genre. Just because you’re intimidated by it, doesn’t mean you aren’t going to do it well. Read more examples of satirical stories and have faith that you can pull this off!
Satirical Short Stories you can Read Online
‘The World’s Narrowest War’ by Armando Iannucci
The Satirist has a large selection of short stories you can read online.
We also recommend checking out goodread’s list of satirical books. Unless you buy the book, you won’t actually be able to read them, but checking out the blurbs will certainly give you a clearer understanding of the genre.