A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #313
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For November 1-7, (W-Tu) 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. Issue #313 is, you guessed it, our thirty-first palindrome edition! Here's to thirty-one more, and we'll see you all at the usual palindrome celebration spot tonight with our favorite snack: UFO tofu.
What We Enjoyed This Week
I’d Like to Have Kids, but I’m Not Sure It’s Ethical to Bring Children into a World Where Their Dad Would Be Me by Simon Henriques (Points In Case) Simon's exploration of this clear, simple premise creates a very satisfying portrait of an unfit father. The set-up about anxieties around parenting frames a series of delightfully weird specifics about the dweebish dad-not-to-be.
The All-Time Best Moments from America’s Got Lettuce by Jonathan Zeller (McSweeney's) Speaking of weird and fun specifics, this one's got 'em in droves. A strange idea that only gets stranger -- Jonathan does an excellent job of committing to the surrealism of this premise, and everything from the jokes to the sentence structure starts to morph as the piece heightens.
QUIZ: Is She Flirting With You or Did She Genuinely Just Steal Your Hat? by Freddie Shanel (Reductress) We're big Freddie fans around here, and this piece is a great example of their skill with a silly idea. This one packs a lot into a lean quiz format: aggressive heightening, parody of a Hallmark-style Christmas movie, the phrase, "The police say there’s no record of a “beautiful woman with a heart of gold” living in this town." There's something for everyone here!
-- AD --
Superman applies for a Green Card but doesn't have any documentation from Krypton. The Little Mermaid writes a tell-all book about Eric’s siren-skeptical royal family. And J. Edgar Hoover opens an FBI investigation into counter-cultural rabble-rouser Forrest Gump. These are just a few of the scenarios explored in Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies from frequent McSweeney’s contributor (Jurassic Park series, Simone Biles decision tree) Carlos Greaves. Available wherever you get your books.
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Writers Write About Their Own Writing
Sarah Sweeney Writes About Script Guidelines for Your Hallmark Channel Christmas Movie (The Bold Italic)
Borne out of a thankfully short-lived obsession, my piece "Script Guidelines for Your Hallmark Channel Christmas Movie" appeared on The Bold Italic in 2019. Recently, a screenwriter contacted me, not with the usual “please film my Hallmark screenplay!” that I occasionally get. Instead, because a production company sent him a template to satisfy Hallmark's screenplay requirements — a near-identical version of my satire piece. With good sense and a nanosecond googling, he found my original piece. We met for coffee, and retelling this pseudo-meet-cute on Twitter brought oodles of replies shouting, “THIS IS A HALLMARK MOVIE.” Soooo, now I’m writing a screenplay.
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
In just ONE week, Luke's doing an hour-long intro to short humor workshop for the UCB training center! Get the lowdown on the essentials of short humor writing so you can feel more confident about working on your own drafts.
Congrats to SAG-AFTRA on fighting for and winning a tentative agreement to end their strike! Strikes work!
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!