6 Magical Writing Tips from David Sedaris

They’ll help make your personal essays more relatable, entertaining, and real.

Whenever I’m reading anything by best-selling author and New Yorker contributor David Sedaris, I’m either laughing or smiling. Just the humor makes his work special. Add to the laughs the fact that he gets to the deep longings and dark sentiments we harbor because we are, well, human, and you have a writer that’s not just special but extraordinary.

I’m a top fan.

A few months ago I listened to Sedaris’s MasterClass, titled Storytelling and Humor, which is full of wisdom and tips for us writers. I was just looking through my notes (yes, I take notes during class still) to remember his lessons and see which had stuck and which I’d failed or attempted.

It turns out I did take away and internalize a few things. I can also instantly recognize writers who use the techniques effectively and have been playing around with them a bit myself. I’m nowhere near mastery, but I am getting better, like anyone who engages in repetition and practice would.

Here, then, is what I learned from David Sedaris, based on my notes and on what endures in my limited memory. I’ll provide excerpts Sedaris doesn’t use in his MasterClass, as far as I can recall. The examples come from various essays originally published in The New Yorker.

As you’ll see, the quotes speak for themselves and hardly need any elaboration

1. Exaggerate examples and comparisons

Take this excerpt from Sedaris’s essay, Leviathan, where he’s talking about people’s compulsion to say hello in the South, no matter what:

I’m willing to bet that the local operating rooms are windowless and have doors that are solid wood. Otherwise, the surgeons and nurses would feel obliged to acknowledge everyone who passed down the hall, and patients could possibly die as a result.

Also from Leviathan:

My brother, Paul, for instance, has all but given up solid food, and at age forty-six eats much the way he did when he was nine months old.

Such exaggerations are not just funny; they bring the point across in a way you can instantly relate to and visualize.

2. Let funny people do some of the talking

Here’s a great example from Sedaris’s essay, Stepping Out, where the author has Lesley, a woman he met on a trip to Australia, do some of the funny talk:

Lesley works for a company that goes into developing countries and trains doctors to remove cataracts. “It’s incredibly rewarding,” she said as our antipasto plate arrived. “These are people who’ve been blind for years, and suddenly, miraculously, they can see again.” She brought up a man who’d been operated on in a remote area of China. “They took off the bandages, and for the first time in two decades he saw his wife. Then he opened his mouth and said, “You’re so . . . old.” (Emphasis added)

I love this technique because it applies perfectly to one of my favorite subjects, my beloved son Diego, who’s not only autistic, kind and clever, but also hilarious.

3. Berate yourself

There’s only one person you can criticize to death to make your writing more relatable. That person is yourself.

One way Sedaris does this is to write about how he sees himself in people we’re supposed to look down on or pity.

In Stepping Out, he delves into his obsession with the Fitbit and compares himself to a woman who spends all day on a treadmill and was the subject of a TV show about obsessive people.

I knew that I was supposed to scoff at this woman, to be, at the very least, entertainingly disgusted, the way I am with the people on “Hoarders,” but instead I saw something of myself in her. Of course, she did her walking on a treadmill, where it served no greater purpose. So it’s not like we’re really that much alike. Is it?

In Why Aren’t You Laughing?, he puts himself down for not doing anything other than write his name during a trip to Hawaii:

My only accomplishment was to sign my name to five thousand blank sheets of paper sent by my publisher.

There’s only one person you can criticize to death to make your writing more relatable. That person is yourself.

4. To be relatable, you must be honest

Perfection is boring and fake. Who relates to that?

Sedaris shows us that honesty goes a long way in making your writing relatable by conveying nuance and the messiness of our humanity.

A good example of this is the way Sedaris writes about his mother. His love for her clearly comes through when he delves deep into her alcoholism, as he does in Why Aren’t You Laughing?:

Another reason “Intervention” makes me think about my mother is that she was an alcoholic. It’s a hard word to use for someone you love, and so my family avoided it. Rather, we’d whisper, among ourselves, that Mom “had a problem,” that she “could stand to cut back.”

Loving your mother doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be honest abour her flaws and failures. It’s more of a betrayal if you aren’t.

Perfection is boring and fake. Who relates to that?

Isn’t something like the following scene, however tragic, almost universally compelling?

Sitting at the table as she repeated a story for the third time — “I got them laughing” — watching as she stumbled, as the ash of her cigarette fell onto the floor, I’d cringe, and then feel guilty for being embarrassed by her.

Though it’s not the exact equivalent, this instantly brought to mind how I’ve felt guilty for being embarrassed by my son’s behaviors. He's autistic.

5. End with truthfulness, not sentimentality

Sedaris ends Leviathan with an image of his father, the essay’s central subject, that’s honest, funny and compassionate, and that renders both Sedarises relatable:

While I know I can’t control it, what I ultimately hope to recall about my late-in-life father is not his nagging or his toes but, rather, his fingers, and the way he snaps them when listening to jazz. He’s done it forever, signifying, much as a cat does by purring, that you may approach. That all is right with the world. “Man oh man,” he’ll say in my memory, lifting his glass and taking us all in. “Isn’t this just fan-tastic?”

I, for one, instantly know what he’s talking about, my own father having been obliviously rude all of his life. He’s still rude but his frailty smoothes out any rude comment he makes. When he’s just being polite like any normal person, he now comes off as super sweet.

6. Keep a diary / journal

I’ve utterly failed at this last tip. No matter what I do, I haven’t managed to journal for more than three days straight.

However, since keeping a diary has been a constant element in Sedaris’s writing practice, I must add it to this list. Sedaris credits journaling as the main source of his material. In fact, his 1977–2002 diary entries were made into a best-selling book!

So, do as David does and keep a diary. Maybe when you’re famous, your diary will be a bestseller too.

To conclude this list, I’ll leave you with an idea that made me ponder and smile:

You know why you’re privileged to be a writer, according to David Sedaris?

Well, because when something bad happens to you, you can do something with it, and, as Sedaris says in the Introduction to his MasterClass:

“Everything’s funny eventually.”

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