How Do You Generate Ideas?
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
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There are certain questions about humor writing that Luke and James get asked more often than others, and every now and then, we like to tackle one of them for our subscribers. Today we're talking about idea generation. And after that, we’ve got a couple of recommendations of things we’ve been into lately: a stand-up special, a summer cocktail, and a new season of a comedy series.
How Do You Generate Ideas?
LUKE: My broad approach to idea generation is to cultivate an awareness in everyday life of thoughts and observations that might lend themselves to being developed into a piece, and to set myself up to be able to note these things as they occur to me.
JAMES: I’ve found that developing a note-taking habit helps build and support this awareness. Carrying a pen and notebook, making notes on your phone, texting yourself, whatever--any way that you can quickly jot things down is great.
LB : The more ideas you can come up with the better--and they don't all have to be good! I start from a place of assuming that not every idea I come up with is going to be good, much less that it will make for a successful short humor piece. Write down as much as possible, but don't put pressure on yourself that you should be able to use EVERY idea you write down.
If I'm able to use one or two ideas I come up with out of ten, I consider that to be a pretty good batting average. And that's before we even get into whether the drafts based on those ideas are worth submitting, to say nothing of whether they wind up getting accepted. Behind every published piece I have, there are tons of ideas that didn't go the distance.
I also find that it's pretty rare (though it has happened a few times) for a premise to occur to me fully formed. Usually I have to work over my ideas/observations to get them to a point where they feel like they're writeable. Another reason why I err on the side of noting as many ideas as possible in these initial phases and try to avoid rejecting anything out of hand–you never know how an idea might develop over time.
JF: I also find that I have to refine my ideas nearly every time, and it’s why it’s worth being loose about how you’re defining “ideas.” Note anything that feels shiny or interesting to you, and then examine and judge your notes later. Keeping all your scraps in one place helps me with this process too: sometimes observations and ideas will spark off each other in your notes and lead you somewhere you couldn’t have anticipated.
LB: I like to set aside "working on ideas" time before the actual drafting phase where I can go over my ideas and try to develop them further. In that time I like to ask myself fairly simple questions like "What is funny or interesting about this idea to me?" and "What might other people find interesting or funny about this?" Those simple questions, I find, help me articulate and clarify what I'm trying to do with a piece.
And all of this is by way of saying that I think very often people have more usable ideas than they realize--it's just that it's tough to find the full potential of an idea without doing a little extra refining.
(Do you have a question that you’d like us to answer or weigh in on? Send it our way!)
Some Recommendations From Luke and James
James Recommends: If you haven’t watched Connor O’Malley’s new stand-up special yet, it’s well worth your time. It has the amazing jokes and performance that you’d expect, but it’s also an amazing critique of the current thirst for AI amongst a certain type of businessperson. Connor focuses his jokes less on the AI products and more on the desperate and sweaty men hawking them. Richard Eagleton (another of Connor’s great studies of American masculinity in crisis) and his belief that AI will change his life, makes for a freshly specific indictment of tech’s promised future and the hucksters hyping it.
The heat has finally arrived in earnest in NYC, and I’ve gotten back into making one of my favorite summer cocktails: the Negroni’s more casual sibling the Americano. I’ve been making them with Topo Chico and garnishing with an entire quarter of an orange. If you’re looking for something refreshing and interesting that won’t knock you on your ass, this is the drink!
Luke Recommends: I’m just catching up with the new season of Girls5eva, now on Netflix, and am finding it just as delightful as ever. The show has incredibly strong fundamentals—really great performances and writing—but, as you might expect from a project involving Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, it particularly excels when it comes to small details and side jokes. In this season there’s a great recurring bit about a hotel chain called “Divorced Dad Suites,” a short gag about a Kidz Bop version of “Fuck tha Police” called “Ducks Are Mean Geese,” a wonderful performance moment involving two parents taking off their glasses at the same time, and much more. There are only six new episodes, so it’s not a huge time commitment—and ep number three is a particular highlight.
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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