Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Shanty town
Shanty town[edit source]
08:49, November 22, 2011 (UTC)
I created this article originally for VFH, but thought twice about it. It may not be good enough, and since self-nominated entries requires pee reviews, I placed Shanty Town here.
| Humour: | 5.5 | Hello Weasel, so you asked me to review this and I'll be glad to. I'd like to begin by saying although all I'm really going to do in this review is talk about what you do wrong, let me please assure you that for a noob article this is pretty fucking impressive. You are going to be an awesome writer here, I can tell. You could be the next (insert hypothetical good Uncyclopedian here) in just a short time. But anyway, I get ahead of myself, let's take a look at this article.
Some of the humour isn't as successful as it could be. I think there are a few problems here, first of all I want to talk about sarcasm. Sometimes sarcasm is the funniest thing in the world, but the way you're doing it here doesn't utilise what's great about sarcasm. What you're doing here is too blatant, at least in my opinion. You have your narrator yelling at us that shanty towns are amazing, but it's too obvious that it's not true. Generally I think sarcasm is better when it's drier. I like loud, desperate narrators as much as the next man, but sarcasm usually works when it's more subtle. What I mean is less exclamations, less sudden crudity, less shouting. It's probably funnier, at least in this situation, to say something plainer like "a few people complain about the holes in the roofs, but at least it means they don't have to buy a shower". Not that showers are even for sale in shanty towns (hey, you could add that line too). Do you see what I mean? It's up to you of course, but in my view you should tone it down. Sarcasm also tends to be better when the subject matter is more original. No offence but the whole desperate salesperson thing has been done many times over, especially on this site for some reason. This is quite similar to a lot of things I've read before really. But don't lose heart, or your erection either, because as a noob to comedy writing you weren't to know this. Better ideas will come to you as you read and write more. The reason it can be a hindrance is because comedy is all about surprise. It can be hard to surprise your reader with a good laugh when you're telling them about something they've heard before. It doesn't mean you can't have good punchlines though, as you prove with this one: "Who cares if they're illegal?" That is good, that is a funny line. I didn't see it coming, which is the key. Try to do this whenever you can and you will be a good comedian. At least that's what I've been trying to do, what do I know right? That reminds me; some of your weaker jokes are actually good ideas that just aren't told very well. For instance, the one about how having to squat over the toilet is good for you; it's a good idea but you're not telling it as well as you could. As Shakespeare said, brevity is the cock of wit (or words to that effect), so try to cut things down and stay simple. Just saying something mundane like "the seat was removed on purpose so you could exercise your legs" would probably be a funnier way of saying it, but have a think about it and see how you can re-word things like this. Obviously, this harks back to what I was saying before. A final word in this section; one thing that really holds the article back is that it's essentially the same joke all the way through. Your narrator says shanty towns are great, but it's plainly obvious they are not. The only time I really noticed you breaking from this was with the random insult carrots, which was just plain bizarre. It'd be great to see you expand in regards to the types of jokes you tell. Try to fit them in wherever you can, try irony and surprise and wordplay. Go against your readers' expectations. Read a lot of our featured articles to get an idea of how to tell good jokes. A wiser user than me once said that if a line doesn't contain a joke or set up a joke then it has no place in an Uncyc article. Think about that when you rewrite this, or when you move on to your next piece. |
| Concept: | 6 | The biggest potential issue here, which I think was raised on the VFH page, is that it doesn't make that much sense. Why does this guy want me to move to a shanty town? I mean, what does he have to gain? Is he selling them? No one sells shanty towns, and no one buys houses in one, people just get stuck there. Perhaps it could be reworked to be more of a Government report which tries to convince all of its hard-living citizens that their lives are fine just the way they are? |
| Prose and formatting: | 5.5 | So the prose is pretty clumsy in places. I would recommend giving it a very thorough proofreading. Perhaps try reading it aloud to get an idea of how it flows (or doesn't). A spelling/grammar checker (eg. MS Word or a browser with that function such as Google Chrome) could help but since most of your issues seem to lie in the slightly odd way some things are worded I wouldn't recommend relying on them 100%. If you're not totally confident in your own abilities I'm sure one of our lovely editors would be glad to help out, just ask.
One issue is that it seems to flit between the "awesome" narration and then the odd wordings I mention above. There are some really unnatural phrases in there like "Now for the magnificent areas." No offense meant of course but this doesn't sound like something a human would say, and trust me, I've met humans. |
| Images: | 5 | As you scroll down, most of the images are pretty good. I would get rid of the first one though, that's not so good. Well, that might not be fair, it's about as good as a big, pixelly images of Mugabe with blocky red text can get. Don't bother illustrating your narrator, it sort of ruins the joke. I say just have some pictures of your subject matter, as you already do. Perhaps try to find some funnier ones though? There's got to be tons of funny images of shanty towns on the internet. |
| Miscellaneous: | 6 | Overall feelings. |
| Final Score: | 28 | So I'd like to repeat that this article is actually pretty good, and I mean that. Don't beat yourself up if your first article doesn't receive worldwide acclaim, because nobody's does. Writing comedy is hard and takes tons of practice. Some people never get it, but you're already basically there. Don't be afraid to move on to something else with the lessons you've learned, I guarantee it'll be better than this.
That said, I hope the review helps if you do try to fine-tune this article. If there's anything else you want my opinion on, or if you simply want to chew the fat, drop by my talk page. Wear something nice. I hope the review is ok. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 01:46, December 17, 2011 (UTC) | |