A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #353
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For August 7th-13th, 2024
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. Summer is now in its last, hot month, and we don’t want to jinx ourselves, but so far we’ve managed to avoid our biggest nemeses all summer: Kid Who Kicks Sand on Our Book, Guy Who Drips Sweat on Our Book, and most deviously, Popsicle Who Melts on Our Book.
What We Enjoyed This Week
An Oral History of My Aging Body by Janine Annett (McSweeney’s) An oral history format is always fun — it makes for great parody and allows for lots of voices and variety — but can get a little confusing if the treatment errs too close to a sketch, which isn’t typically well-suited for reading on the page. Janine avoids this by not letting this piece get too bogged down in conversation, instead using the format for lots of fantastic one-liners, short runners, and call-and-response jokes.
Things I Wish I Could Say When A Coworker Asks About My Weekend by Tami Orendain DelaCruz (Slackjaw) This is a really nice, simple, well-executed piece! The idea will be relatable to anyone who has had/been a boring coworker, and Tami finds plenty of interesting, grounded observations and behaviors to make jokes about.
Woman Leaving for Trip Makes Sure Room Is Clean Enough That She Wouldn’t Be Embarrassed if She Died by Freddie Shanel (Reductress) This is one of those great Reductress pieces with a premise that spins everyday intrusive thoughts into funny, worst-case scenarios. This one is full of really great jokes — it is a Freddie Shanel piece, after all — but we particularly like how they play with the satirical news form and have the fictional reporter comment and question their subject.
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An Old Favorite
This week's Old Favorite pick and writeup come from Rosanna Stevens, Host and Producer of The Belladonna Comedy podcast, The Antidote. Thanks for writing in, Rosanna!
The Pitch Meeting for Wishbone by Abbey Fenbert (The Toast) Rosanna writes “The Toast was an iconic source of creative and experimental humour writing. Abbey Fenbert's series pulling apart TV shows by imagining the writer's pitch, was the diamond in the Toast-crown. Fenbert took the simple premise of a pitching room, and used the sell as a format to simultaneously build kooky and vulnerable writers room characters, and turn the most obscure aspects of a program into its selling-points. Her Wishbone pitch is far and away the most whimsical, as she reveals all the nonsensical elements of Wishbone that somehow became a cohesive show.”
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 just THREE spots left in his advanced humor writing workshop starting September 3rd! And SIX spots left in the workshop starting September 7th! Write three pieces in four weeks; get feedback, support, and deadlines; and meet other funny folks.
And please join us in a couple weeks for our next Hangout of Humorous Writing in August! We’ll be catching up and chatting humor at Peculier Pub (145 Bleeker St.) on Wednesday, August 28th at 6 PM! Can’t wait to see you!
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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