A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For February 23-March 1, 2022, a roundup of the week's finest prose and prose humor-related news.

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. By a stroke of serendipity, all of our picks in this edition satirize different cinematic conventions, so we're officially declaring it MOVIE TROPES WEEK. Each of these pieces is a testament to how important it is to have a deep knowledge of your source material, and each boasts a rich array of specifics that all feel recognizable without being overly reference-y. (Oh and they're also funny too.)

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What We Enjoyed This Week

The Protagonist’s Best Friend Would Like to Stop Having to Shoehorn So Much Exposition into Their Dialogue by Simon Henriques (McSweeney's) A spot-on parody that nails the tone of, and specific turns of phrase used in, clumsy expository dialogue: "But who am I kidding, I don’t have to tell you that;" "I know that’s a sore spot for you;" "You know how you’re always saying..."

I've Committed the Perfect Murder! by Graham Techler (Points in Case) One of the tricky things about satirizing a trope is finding the right balance of specificity. If your focus is too narrow, the reader might think you're parodying ONE specific movie; if your focus is too broad, your piece can feel overstuffed and confusing. This piece is able to fit in a wide variety of related tropes (for example, all the different people who might catch the murderer: the inquisitive niece, the crime novelist neighbor, the detective renting the spare room) in a way that makes perfect sense and feels totally justified.

Actually, Becoming A Cyborg Assassin Has Been Great For Me by Audrey Clark (The Belladonna) What if Alex Murphy was overall pretty cool with getting turned into RoboCop? This piece suggests one possible answer to that age-old question, and is also packed with great cyborg assassin specifics that give each paragraph focus and a clear central joke.

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An Old Favorite

This week's Old Favorite pick and writeup come from Rosanna Stevens. Thanks for writing in, Rosanna!

Tarot Cards That Do Not Exist by Supercomposite (Twitter) Rosanna writes, "An AI artist called Supercomposite has taken the classic Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck and produced a deck of 500 tarot cards with new images and names, but that classically eerie familiar-strange essence that makes AI stuff so repulsively fucking funny. I thought it was entertaining when I saw there was a card titled: 'One of Bonsai', but then I came across cards such as 'The Guy of Jeans' and 'Two of Getting Kicked in the Nuts' and I cannot stop laughing. Check out her Twitter thread--and you can buy your faves on her RedBubble."

Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.

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Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

James has a piece this week in McSweeney's called "An Excerpt from a Fantasy Novel Written By an Author Who Thinks He Made Up Doors." Come for the tortured descriptions of "dœrs," but stay to find out what happens to Gerf, son of Gorf.

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See you next week!

@lukevburns & @jamesfolta

We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.

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