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This week we're doing a survey of a type of short humor piece that we like to call “found humor.” After that, we’ve got a couple of recommendations of things we’ve been into lately: a new, funny horror novel and a limited-edition cookie.

Found Humor and a Favorite Newsletter

When writing a short humor piece (or writing just about anything, really), your starting point is basically always going to be your own personal experiences and real world observations. Sometimes your final draft winds up departing from this starting material in a big way, going to more heightened, less realistic places; and sometimes your final draft winds up staying relatively grounded and connected to the real world thing it’s based on. But there’s a certain type of piece that hews EXTREMELY closely to the material that inspired it, a type of piece we like to call “found humor.”