Writing Humor

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. In this definitive joke-writing handbook, he'll teach you 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.

Maria Bamford is a creative genius. But the process of creating is not something that “comes easily” or “is enjoyable” for her. So, over the years, she’s invented a number of helpful techniques for tricking, shaming, coercing herself into doing things. You Are (A Comedy) Special is 15-step comedic send up of a self help guide that examines Maria’s approach to stand-up in a hilarious fashion.

Can you learn how to write comedy? Absolutely - anyone can. Scott Dikkers will tell you how. He's co-founder and longest-serving editor-in-chief of The Onion, the world's most popular humor publication, and founder of The Onion Training Center at the Second City in Chicago. He's also a number one best-selling humor author and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. In How to Write Funnier, he tells you everything you need to know to start writing funny stories, how to write funny scenes, and how to write funny sketches.

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.

This entertaining and sharply written guide - for both beginners breaking into comedy and professionals seeking to improve their sets and advance their careers - examines the work of great comedians such as Louis C. K., Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Izzard, Moms Mabley, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor, and more as a means of illustrating the most important techniques of performing and writing stand-up.

Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all.

The follow-up to Caitlin Moran's breakout hit, How to Be a Woman - a hilarious collection of award-winning columns, available to American listeners for the first time ever.

"If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber ranch, it must be the sort of life which I have not read of in books or experienced in person," wrote Mark Twain, and now you can share in that experience. The beloved American humorist spent seven years on a "pleasure trip" through the untamed wilderness of Nevada. Twain intended to spend three months touring silver mines, but the lure of rough terrain and comfortable clothes proved irresistible - as will this vibrant travelogue.

Dr. Peter McGraw, founder of the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, teamed up with journalist Joel Warner on a far-reaching search for the secret behind humor. Their journey spanned the globe, from New York to Japan, from Palestine to the Amazon. Meanwhile, the duo conducted their own humor experiments along the way-to wince-worthy, hilarious, and illuminating results.

Amusing and informative, Hey Ranger! teaches as it entertains with tales of boat-ramp misadventures, lost Afghani campers, encounters with wild animals, dumb crooks, and more. One chapter, "Tales from the Wild Side", brings together unusual incidents from National Park Service reports, and the concluding essay, "Don't Be a Victim of Your Vacation", advises visitors on how to avoid being a story on the evening news.

His name is Deutsch Baggerly. He's a sort of hot, middle-aged, retired potato salesman turned private eye. He's traded the spuds to go after the puds. Anything anyone can do he can't do better. He has the instincts of a wet-bottom shoofly pie. Absurdity, apathy, and luck are his favorite weapons, and occasionally potatoes. Yet he somehow stumbles into solving cases no one else will touch. He's horrible at shark diving, paintball, karate, safe-cracking, knife-throwing, e-mailing, zip lining, you name it. But don't tangle with him: he's Pennsylvania Dutch and he may put the hex on you. He has...

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder’s description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era. This anthology gathers together, for the first time, the funniest work of more than seventy New Yorker contributors.

A crime scene cleaner and a demon profiler must clean up a vampire hoarding site, find a powerful relic, and toss it back into hell before it destroys the French Quarter and the world.... My name is Faith Jordan. I clean up crime scenes after the police, CSI, and the dead have gone home, and faithless, dark places where the dead, and other creatures, linger on. I run FULL MOON CLEANERS and my main responsibility is to thoroughly and discreetly mop up after someone or something dies violently, to restore a scene to what it looked like before the violent death. I am daily exposed to nasty ...

Nationally recognized and award-winning humor writer Jim Mize shares his insights from forty years of writing humor. In addition to discussing techniques, Mize credits his original sources so readers can view the materials that first inspired him. Readers will also be entertained with examples from his writing and see firsthand how Mize put these skills to work in his stories. Topics covered include joke writing, humor formats, misdirection, tension, timing, workshops, finding markets, and more. Of course, along the way, quite a few humorous things happened and these stories are shared as ...

From the courts to the culture, Pickleball Riffs is the ultimate courtside companion for anyone obsessed with America’s fastest-growing sport. With wit, wisdom, and a heaping dose of heart, veteran sportswriter and Pickleball Magazine writer Rick Cipes serves up a spirited collection of essays, life lessons, and humorous tales and cartoons from the pickleball frontlines. Whether he's dishing on the power of a pump fake, learning mindfulness from a sarcastic AI or serving up tips from the desk of Vin Diesel, Cipes offers players of all levels an entertaining deep dive into the game behind ...

🎃👻 Why did the undead chicken cross the road? To get to the fool's house. Knock, knock! Who’s there? …The undead chicken😆😅😂🤣 – 🧟♂️🧠 written by unknown undead. Get ready to howl with laughter (or moan, groan & face-plant 😱🤣) this Halloween! Prepare for spine-tingling, side-splitting chills with the ultimate 🎃 categorized collection of Halloween & Horror Humor that’ll tickle your funny bone🦴🩻 & leave you cackling like a witch 🧙♀️💀! Get buried alive in an utter avalanche⛷️🏂 of face-planting😒🌵 BAD (😈 EVIL?) DAD jokes -...

Introduction to Le Tour Once more I want to inspire you to travel – to France. I have been delighted at the lovely responses I have received to my books and have enjoyed supplying more precise suggestions to some of you personally. This book ties together our journeys in France as a cohesive tour de France. Most of this book comprises of fresh writing but to make the tour flow I have included relevant excerpts from my four book French Travel Series. If you are unfamiliar with those books, I hope you will go on to enjoy the full story of our experiences in French regions such as Provence, ...

Although there's no shortage of books on writing and publishing, there's none quite like Robert's Rules of Writing. Drawing on his many years of experience as an award-winning journalist, TV writer, and the author of over 20 books, Robert Masello addresses all the issues that confront, and all the problems that beset, writers of all stripes.

STRICKLY ADULTS ONLY 1000 Sausages and Dingleberries shows up when conversations go off the rails—when someone brings up an off-limits topic or things just get awkward. Each entry gives you something else to think about. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes a little rude, but always unexpected. This book is here to distract, entertain, and maybe even cheer you up when you’re feeling down. It’s the perfect escape hatch for uncomfortable moments. Stuck in a tense family dinner? Flip to page 72 and casually bring up “The Sausage That Spoke Latin.” On a bad date? Dingleberry trivia might...

Writer Agatha Larkin unexpectedly finds herself pulled into the world of her own fantasy novel, ‘Adagio of Ellegus’. As she takes on the role of the missing main character Adagio, Agatha discovers mysterious alterations, challenging her understanding of the world she created. With each new chapter, Agatha must navigate through enigmatic changes, confronting magical creatures, plot twists, and unforeseen challenges that blur the lines between fiction and reality. Will Agatha unravel the secrets of her own creation, or will she forever be lost in the fantastical realm of Ellegus? "Fantasy...