How to Write Funny

Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint for Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing, Book 1

By: Scott Dikkers

Narrated by: Scott Dikkers

Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

The definitive joke-writing handbook

Learn comedy writing and how to write a joke with a simple comedy-writing and joke-writing formula you can use right now to write your own jokes. See why Amazon reviewers call How to Write Funny "one of the best books on humor writing."

Author Scott Dikkers will tell you how to write jokes. He’s a master joke writer, founder of the world’s most popular humor site TheOnion.com, number one New York Times best-selling humor author, professional public speaker, and successful cartoonist. Scott created and leads the “Writing with The Onion” training center at the famed Second City in Chicago. His students have been hired for the top comedy writing jobs in TV and won dozens of Emmy Awards. He’s consulted with top entertainment companies like NBC, Comedy Central, and Pixar.

This easy-to-follow guide lays out a clear system and simple formula for how to write a joke that will get big, milk-coming-out-of-your-nose laughs, reliably and repeatably. You'll learn...

• The three sure-fire ways to generate funny text
• The 11 different “Funny Filters” and how to use them to write jokes
• The secret to getting rid of writer's block - permanently
• And many more humor writing tips, tricks, and techniques

Create any joke using the Funny Filters, the 11 fundamental building blocks of humor:

Funny Filter 1: Irony

Funny Filter 2: Character

Funny Filter 3: Shock

Funny Filter 4: Hyperbole

Funny Filter 5: Wordplay

Funny Filter 6: Reference

Funny Filter 7: Madcap

Funny Filter 8: Parody

Funny Filter 9: Analogy

Funny Filter 10: Misplaced Focus

Funny Filter 11: Metahumor

If you've wondered how you can start writing jokes, how to tell jokes to your friends, how to add humor to your writing, how to add jokes in a speech, or how to add humor to your presentation, this book spells out the simple joke writing formula professionals use.

How to Write Funny is for you whether you want to find a comedy writing job or just want to learn how to tell a joke.

©2014, 2018 Scott Dikkers (P)2018 Scott Dikkers

Great Starter for Beginners!

Being 100% fresh into learning about comedy, this book was not only interesting but entertaining due to the narrator's succinct and easy to understand delivery.

My favorite part is that he includes very simple action steps on how to actually make jokes.

4/5 for me only because many of his other related action steps/tips are in the other books in his series...I wish he went more in depth in this first book.

Regardless it's a lot of great info for a newbie like me, fun listen.

Very informative with good exercises to prime the funny mind

Coming back to sketch I listen to this in the car . how dikkers explains the different types of funny filters helps the novice comedy writer. I also took a class in which he went into detail about how to make money in the comedy biz. Overall he is great resource and you will get your money’s worth !

Solid material. Dry but informative

First, I'm glad he didn't try to make the book funny. Humor is so subjective and I've often given up on similar books because the author was so unfunny that I lost confidence in their ability to teach the subject.

It's solid material, but I did find it almost too dry which made it harder to get through. Most of the examples are not that funny (for my subjective humor) so that made it a bit tougher. But the principles are sound and well structured.

Good practical advice p

Concrete steps to try, realistic advice to start ideas flowing. Tried the exercises, got some surprisingly interesting stuff out of it. Moving on to Book 2!

Very informative for ALL writers

This book pretty much covers all the areas of curiosity on how to write with or for humor. It might have been better to get the book.. that way you can highlight or see all the distinguished advice, because not having the Chapters named (only as numbers & letters) makes it very much like a technical manual; without interest.

His voice can be bland.. but there’s a lot to soak up in here. It either helped me learn or confirmed a lot of my choices.

Encouraging, practical, direct, dynamic

I don't write funny stuff and got this more for encouragement of the writing process and damn was it good. The last part when he works his process aloud and on the spot... invaluable. Thank you, Scott Dikkers.

The definitive book for writing Comedy

OMG I effin' love this book as an aspiring comedian. I've been looking for a book that will help me build a foundation for writing jokes and being a comedic entertainer and I feel this book is it. I love how Scott breaks down the 11 different Comedy Filters and then he gives you real life examples of using those filters on your undeveloped jokes. This book is going on repeat. This book in combination with a couple of Comedy books I'm gonna be a comedic genius!

Slow start, but extremely useful main body

I was a bit bored in the first third of the book to be honest (more about The Onion history and different forms of media), but by the 1/3rd mark, it 100% delivered on what was promised by giving a relevant no-nonsense guide to writing funny with very clear and actionable steps on how to move forward. Very helpful if you are a script writer, content creator, or even Tweet maker. Great book!

Good. Practical.

Irony. This book sucked.
Hyperbole. This book is better than the Bible.
Character. Alf says, “Best book I ever ate.”
Shock. Buy this book, motherf***er!!!
And so on.

An Indispensable Guide

This book is a fantastic primer for crafting jokes and developing your written voice. The author lays things out in a clear, logical way that is helpful for beginners and established humor writers alike. I can’t recommend it enough. I’m looking forward to listening to the other volumes in this series.