Humor : Exagerate / Drama : Be subtle

Hamming it upAs you get more experienced and start to get in the swing of telling stories and acting them out, it gets tempting to ham it up. Once I decided to act out the drama I have in my head about people being able to see that I’m nervous as I’m giving a presentation.  The more I ham it up, the more people laugh.  But there are other situations where hamming it up has no effect at all on the audience. The distinction between these two situations had eluded me.

Doug Stevenson had the answer:

    Humor is big, drama is small

When you want people to laugh exaggerate. But when you want to portray emotion, think Colin Firth – be subtle.