A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #230
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For May 30-April 5, 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. April is famous for its rhyming epithet, "April showers bring May flowers." It got us thinking that we should write some pithy rhymes about short humor: "If you haven't written a strong premise, a solid piece you can dismiss." "When writing feels too much like combat, spend some time thinking about format!" "If the prose is makin' you yuk-yuk, that's short humor you got there, you shmuck!" That last one probably doesn't need to end so rudely, but we were getting pretty frustrated while drafting these. Let us know if you've got any aphorisms to pitch!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Why I Removed All the Exclamation Points From My Emails and Replaced Them With Links to Vaguely Threatening Images by McKayley Gourley (Reductress) McKayley does a great job of not only giving us plenty of fun specifics, but also all the ramifications of the premise. Exploring the way a premise ripples through the world is a great way to build out a piece, even if a premise is wacky.
Fun Facts From Starbucks Baristas (And A Horrible Secret) by Sam Allemang (Slackjaw) Sam uses a simple, recognizable format to slowly unfurl a super fun, super heightened story. The format lets the piece move quickly in space and time, which makes the resting and heightening arrive in fun and surprising ways.
Don’t Cross Me Because I Will Get My Revenge By Being Marginally Less Pleasant the Next Time We Meet by Talia Argondezzi (McSweeney's) This is such a relatable and fun character behavior, and the pattern of a heightened tone leading into an inevitably subdued reaction works nicely.
Brutally Honest Writing Bios by Adam Dietz (Slackjaw) Speaking of relatable, this is a sharp collection of tropes in self-deprecating bios. This one builds and calls back in fun ways, which makes the piece feel complete.
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 #84.
A Few Things to Know About My Sister, Your New Wife, on Your Wedding Day by Danielle Kraese (New Yorker) The Maid of Honor speech is ripe for parody, and this piece does a great job, effortlessly bouncing between tropes we can all recognize and a truly bizarre premise that somehow feels like it totally fits.
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
James is teaching his Introduction to Parody course again for Pandemic University! We're going to be talking all things print parody, and you'll leave class with a completed, workshopped draft of a short piece or a workshopped plan for a longer parody project! The course is four sessions from May 19th to June 3rd, but there's lots more info and a link to sign up here!
Luke's got a new edition of his workshop Let's Write a Short Humor Piece starting on April 30th! If you’ve got ideas for short humor pieces but aren’t sure how to get them on the page, this workshop is designed to help. Feedback, support, and deadlines, suited both to beginners looking to do hands-on learning as well as experienced humor writers looking to do focused work on trickier ideas.
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!