A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #286
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For April 26-May 2, 2023
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. As you probably heard, the WGA voted to strike this week. We hope it should be obvious that we're supportive of the Guild, the strike, and all writers who are fighting for fair wages, contracts, and careers. This thread from Adam Conover is a good, brief explanation of how the Guild was forced to strike, and there's lots more information on the WGA's strike hub, including what's at stake, how you can help, and a list of scheduled pickets! Solidarity from our newsletter to our fellow writers!
What We Enjoyed This Week
I Don’t Want To Brag, but I’m the Reason You Can’t Bring a Falcon to Disneyland Anymore by Nathan Kamal (Hard Times) This is a fun and specific premise, but the real cherry on top is the voice. Starting right off the bat in the title with the clause "I Don't Want to Brag," Nathan fills this piece with turns-of-phrase that give us a great idea of who this falconer is and, more importantly, who he thinks he is.
How to Lock It Down Even Though He Is Avoidant and a Time Traveler From the Future by Freddie Shanel (Reductress) Similar to Nathan's piece, Freddie makes some really strong choices to take this piece to a more fun and heightened place. Making the specific choice for this to be The Time Traveler's Wife style time travel is not just world-building & window dressing, it's set-up for much more specific jokes.
New Study Finds Link Between Hunger and Hallucinating Friend as Giant Ham by Camden Brazile (Hard Drive) A serious, grounded approach to cartoon logic is what satirical news pieces do best. It's how you get great lines like, "It was tough, having to slowly go insane from hunger and eventually drooling over the giant chicken leg wearing my best friend’s clothes, but that’s science for you."
-- ADS --
Django Gold (The Onion, Colbert, this newsletter sometimes) is taping his first-ever live stand-up comedy album/special on Saturday, May 13, at the Gutter in Williamsburg.
Two tapings, at 8:00 pm and 10:30 pm -- both will sell out, so buy tickets in advance and don't end up stuck outside the venue cursing the gods, rending your garments in despair, etc. Come laugh your little butt off.
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Longtime McSweeney’s contributor Chas Gillespie is teaching a 5-week comedy class for the Writing Workshops that’ll cover his process for generating ideas, writing, and punching up a draft. It’s designed for early-career writers looking to build up their skillset and experienced writers hoping to get a bit more explicit about their process. The goal: learn some fundamentals that apply to many genres of comedy writing and workshop at least one McSweeney’s-style piece to a final draft. Learn more here, and let him know if you have any questions!
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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.
5 Moments at Grandpa's Funeral That Were, In Retrospect, The Wrong Time to Set Up My LuLaRoe Pop Up by Laura Schwein (Points in Case) With a title like this, you know a piece is going to be good. There's a great history of humor pieces of narrators looking back to explain why "what happened" really wasn't "their fault." In fact, that's the basic idea behind this Handey piece. Here, we have a ridiculous situation from the get-go, and the logic, as it were, continues throughout.
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 Newsletter
Luke has a new piece, co-written with Marina Tempelsman, up on McSweeney's today! It's about Yoda trying to tell a few simple jokes and completely messing them up.
Luke's also got another edition of his short humor writing workshop, Let's Write MORE Short Humor Pieces, starting on May 30th! Write three pieces in four weeks, get feedback and encouragement, and meet other funny folks.
Other Humorous Writing News
If you're looking for another way to support the strike, DSA LA is organizing The Snacklist, a strike fund to deliver snacks, water, coffee, and other necessities to workers on the picket line!
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!