A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For Oct -11, 2022.

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. We all know that bears consume lots of extra food each day in the months leading up to hibernation, so they can live off their stored fat over the winter. But did you know that in that same period, bears also read hundreds of extra pages of short humor pieces every day, since when they're hibernating they won't be able to get online and access their favorite short humor sites? Nature is incredible!

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What We Enjoyed This Week

Threateningly Is a Messaging-Optimization Program That Gets Results by Noel Crain (Points in Case) The juxtaposition between threatening mobster tone and business-speak is so much fun. Sometimes short humor monologues that have a narrator speaking to another character while moving around a specific location can start to feel a bit clunky, or weighed down by the author trying to work quasi "stage directions" into the speech; but Noel avoids the pitfalls common to this type of humor piece, and does a great job overall creating a picture of the scene.

Opinion: That Jump Rope Rhyme About Me May Be Factual, But It’s Still Hurtful by Nathan Kamal (The Hard Times) Nathan really knocks it out of the park with the jump rope rhymes, getting the rhythms and the rhymes just right without skimping on jokes. The descriptions of the narrator's experience of being tormented by the jump-roping children are also deeply funny as well. ("None of you can understand what it is like to be ceaselessly mocked by the piping voices of children every day, the sound of feet rhythmically hitting the ground, and the terrible sound of jumping ropes.")

It's Novelty Creamer Season and I Tasted Many of Them for You by Kelly Conaboy (Gawker) We're big fans of Kelly's Halloween candy rankings, and so we were very excited to see this foray into a new category of seasonal treats. The evocation of the contradiction at the heart of these creamers, that they are simultaneously disgusting and delicious, is hilarious, and the line at the end of each review is a great running gag.
 

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An Old Favorite

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

Boileryard Clarke Endorses “Four Loko” by Dayn Perry (FanGraphs) Justin writes, "I have loved this piece for years because the first sentence really starts off with a bang. It is one of the funniest sentences I have ever read and shows just how much you can pack into a well constructed sentence. I really appreciate pieces that are extremely short and deliver laughs in every single sentence. Despite being a piece written for a baseball humor website, it is still accessible and funny to basically everyone."

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

Luke's new workshop "Where to Start With Short Humor", starting at the end of the month, is halfway to sold out! The class is designed to give beginners and newcomers the tools they need to get started writing short humor. And by the end of the four weeks, you'll have written a draft of your own. (Luke also just announced a November weeknight edition of "Let's Write MORE Short Humor Pieces".)
 

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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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