Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:David Cameron - Nick Clegg wedding announced
UnNews:David Cameron - Nick Clegg wedding announced[edit source]
DaveFromMars 21:49, June 19, 2011 (UTC)
| Humour: | 6 | The biggest problem you have with the humour here is that you don't really write things in a funny way. What you're doing is describing a funny event, which is very different. You talk about them getting married, for instance, and about the woman "taking her clothes off in despair", but you don't word it in a humorous way. With written humour, the way you tell jokes is far more important than the content of the joke. Take a look at this hilarious article, and see how although the content is fairly standard stuff, the author puts real effort into the way he presents the material, so that it twists and turns and goes against the reader's expectations. To use a Tommy Cooper classic as an example; saying "when I first told people I wanted to be a comedian, they laughed at me. Well they're not laughing now" is much funnier than just saying "I'm a comedian but I'm really unfunny". Do you see what I mean? Just describing funny scenes can be ok if it's something really hilarious you're talking about, but a lot of the time it will just confuse or bore the reader. There needs to be a "turn" in the prose that the reader doesn't expect; a punchline, for want of a better word.
A common problem with UnNews, in my opinion, is that writers rely too much on quotes rather than the journalistic prose for humour. I guess it's probably easier to get more jokes in that way. In any case, I would think about this when revising it, and attempt to trim as many of the quotes as you can. I would also recommend you work on your "politician speech", as most of the quotes from MPs in there don't read like they were spoken by professional public figures. Try to capture the way these people really speak and it'll give your quote-based jokes a lot more weight. Jokes about Clegg wanting to be on top and politicians screwing each other are fantastic ideas, but I think they would work a hell of a lot better if they were written in a more formal way, preferably not as quotes. For example, you could say something like "in many ways the Clegg/Cameron relationship is no different from any of the notable political partnerships throughout history; politicians have been screwing each other for years." I personally think that would be funnier, but obviously it's up to you. I'm sure you can come up with something even better. |
| Concept: | 7 | The concept is a decent one, the idea of Cameron and Clegg being a gay couple is a little overdone however, so some development of the idea would help. What can you say that hasn't already been said? Could you get some more political satire in there perhaps? Would there be conflict given that one is conservative and the other liberal? It'd be nice to see their marriage sort of mirror their real political relationship in a satirical way. Perhaps Clegg could agree with the cutting of fundings for the arts but not Cameron's choice of movie on a Saturday night? Or something funnier... I'll leave that with you. |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | Your spelling/grammar is spot on. Your prose could do with a bit of a tweak here and there as I've mentioned, just to make the narrator sound more like a journalist and the politicians sound more like politicians. The opener is a good example of clumsy writing, in my opinion: "As we previously reported here" doesn't sound very professional. Don't use first person - just start with something like "following the Coalition's attempts to make the Government appear more stable and butch than it really is..." and you could link that (or parts of it) to the previous article.
There are a couple of issues with your formatting. First off, the date should be a bit lower, below the UnNews template. Also, having footnotes as well as sources makes it a bit of a struggle to read in places. The references aren't hugely funny anyway, so you might be better of with just the sources. Linking to "justmadeitup.com", for instance, doesn't look very journalistic. |
| Images: | 6.5 | Yeah it's ok, not amazing. It'll do, but if you can find something funnier it would help a lot. I'm thinking of something like this article I did. I'm not sure if you're already familiar with it, but you can request images on this page. |
| Miscellaneous: | 6.5 | Average. |
| Final Score: | 32 | Ok, so take a look at how you're telling your jokes and try to be a little more unexpected in your humour and you'll have a much better article on your hands in no time. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, or even if you're just lonely, please let me know on my talky page and I'll try to help. Keep up the good work and I hope the review is ok. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 20:05, July 23, 2011 (UTC) | |