A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #226
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For March 2-8, 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. We recently donated a box of our childhood toys. We were sad to let them go, but at a certain point, one has to be an adult, setting aside childish things and devoting oneself to serious matters. And while it might not be quite as fun, it is just as rewarding to take multi-volume, hard-cover biographies and important works of literature into the tub and pretend that they're submarines and scuba guys.
What We Enjoyed This Week
Benjamin Franklin’s Google Search History from June, 1752 by Maeve Dunigan (The New Yorker) A simple, repeatable, and recognizable format like this is a great way to dive right into jokes. Friend of the Show Maeve Dunigan has a ton of fun playing with Franklin's biography as stilted search terms. What works particularly well are all the runners and callbacks that thread through this piece, which lets the piece build to more than just a list of funny searches.
Creative Writing Prompts From Your Doting Parents by C. E. Stayton (Slackjaw) We're not used to seeing parents in humor pieces being this supportive and understanding of a writer's life, and the choice of "doting parents" makes for a fun and unique take. This is also a great example of one way to write a character who is trying to come across as knowing more than they do: the parents redirect the conversation to references and situations where they are comfortable or knowledgeable, even though they're out of date (elementary school accolades) or irrelevant (Uncle Gary's opinion).
What If Every Movie Was Named After a Beatles Song? by Nate Jones (Vulture) From time to time, we like to feature writing from non-comedy outlets that use the tools of short humor well. This is a great example. Nate's piece has a solid, clear premise, and he gives the reader exactly what he promises. Plus it's funny. If we had to retitle our Newsletter with a Beatles song, it would probably be "Dig It," though we're open to suggestions! Please don't say that b-side "Junk" -- that's just mean.
An Old Favorite
This week's Old Favorite is a Brian Agler Selection (TM)--a piece whose accompanying note was written by Brian--from Newsletter #99.
Playbill Bios for the Cast of Your Recurring High School Nightmare by Sarah Garfinkel (The Belladonna) A standby of humor pieces is the ability to mimic (and heighten!) voice. It's why, for instance, the Onion is still going strong today. In that vein, Garfinkel's piece does a fantastic job of taking a hyper-specific style of writing and using it to ground her jokes.
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.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Luke's got two weeknight humor writing workshops starting at the end of March! Let's Write a Short Humor Piece starts March 29th, and Let's Write MORE Short Humor Pieces starts March 30th. Click through for the full schedules and more details.
A reminder that we're going to start including a small ad section at the bottom of the Newsletter, right below this! If you're interested, click here for more information and a form to place an ad.
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.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!
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.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can subscribe to our paid tier, or you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you'd like to place an ad in the Newsletter, please fill out this form.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!