A human interest or feature story, as opposed to an objective straight news story, is designed to appeal to readers' emotions. Human interest features involving local people and events can be sold to daily and some weekly newspapers. Human interest elements, such as anecdotes or accounts of personal experiences, can support ideas in magazine articles as firmly as facts or statistics. Based on incongruity, humor consists primarily of the recognition and expression of peculiarities, oddities and absurdities in a situation or action. Humor lies in the angle or point of view from which a writer approaches a subject.
Editors are interested in humor in both fiction and nonfiction.
In addition to all-humor pieces, they sometimes look for some humor in articles that treat serious subjects. The spectrum of publications interested in humorous material is broad, but requirements differ greatly. Like any type of article, humorous pieces must be carefully slanted to the publication's readership and editorial needs. Writers and editors agree that humor is often the most difficult type of writing to do. It is difficult to market, as well, because what is funny to one editor may not amuse another.