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This comprehensive joke writing masterclass has been devised for beginners and experienced joke writers alike. The techniques you will learn can be used again and again to write funny and original material. You hold in your hands the key to unlocking your inner comedy genius.
A discussion of the basics and genres of the comic point of view includes essays and interviews with such authors as Dave Barry, Sherman Alexie, and Melissa Bank.
He has written and produced comedy/talk shows for over fifteen years. Now four-time Emmy winner Joe Toplyn reveals his proven methods of writing for late-night television in this one-of-a-kind insider's guide. Toplyn analyzes each type of comedy piece in the late-night TV playbook and takes you step-by-step through the process of writing it. His detailed tips, techniques, and rules include: * 6 characteristics every good monologue joke topic must have* 6 specific ways to generate punch lines* 12 tools for making your jokes their funniest* 7 types of desk pieces and how to create them* 9 steps to writing parodies and other sketches * How to go after a writing job in late night* PLUS a complete sample comedy/talk show submission packetAlso use this comprehensive manual to write short-form comedy for the Internet, sketch shows, magazines, reality shows, radio, advertising, and any other medium.
Judy Carter, guru to aspiring comedy writers and stand-up comics, tells all about the biz of being funny and writing funny in this bright, entertaining, and totally practical guide on how to draw humor from your life and turn it into a career. Do you think you’re funny? Do you want to turn your sense of humor into a career? If the answer is yes, then Judy Carter’s The Comedy Bible is for you. The guru to aspiring stand-up comics provides the complete scoop on being—and writing—funny for money. If you’ve got a sense of humor, you can learn to make a career out of comedy, says Judy Carter. Whether it’s creating a killer stand-up act, writing a spec sitcom, or providing jokes for radio or one-liners for greeting cards, Carter provides step-by-step instructions in The Comedy Bible. She helps readers first determine which genre of comedy writing or performing suits them best and then directs them in developing, refining, and selling their work. Using the hands-on workbook format that was so effective in her bestselling first book, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, Carter offers a series of day-by-day exercises that draw on her many years as a successful stand-up comic and the head of a nationally known comedy school. Also included are practical tips and advice from today’s top comedy professionals—from Bernie Brillstein to Christopher Titus to Richard Lewis. She presents the pros and cons of the various comedy fields—stand-up, script, speech and joke writing, one-person shows, humor essays—and shows how to tailor your material for each. She teaches how to find your “authentic” voice—the true source of comedy. And, perhaps most important, Carter explains how to take a finished product to the next level—making money—by pitching it to a buyer and negotiating a contract. Written in Carter’s unique, take-no-prisoners voice, The Comedy Bible is practical, inspirational, and funny.
If you think you're funny, and you want others to think so too, this is the book for you! Greg Dean examines the fundamentals of being funny and offers advice on a range of topics, including: writing creative joke material rehearsing and performing routines coping with stage fright dealing with emcees who think they're funnier than you are getting experience and lots more. Essential for the aspiring comic or the working comedian interested in updating his or her comedy routine, Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy is the most comprehensive and useful book ever written on the art of the stand-up comedian.
A straightforward, often humorous workbook approach to comedy writing as creative problem-solving. In it, veteran Hollywood comedy writer John Vorhaus offers his tools of the trade to writers, comics, and anyone else who wants to be funny. Among these indispensable tools are Clash of Context, Tension and Release, The Law of Comic Opposites, The Wildly Inappropriate Response, and The Myth of the Last Great Idea. Readers will learn that comedy = truth and pain (the essence of the comic situation), that fear is the biggest roadblock to comedy (kill the ferocious editor within and rich, useful comic ideas will flow), and much more.
Stephen Rosenfield, founder and director of the American Comedy Institute, the premier comedy school in the United States, has taught literally dozens of major standup comics in North America, and has also pioneered comedy as an academic discipline in many universities, a trend that is rapidly spreading. Mastering Stand-Up draws on Rosenfield's own extensive experience (and those of countless stars like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Rodney Dangerfield, Louis C.K., Steve Martin, Roseanne, and Johnny Carson) to show the reader—and would-be comic—what works, what doesn't, and why. Forty sharply written chapters cover every conceivable angle of the joke and how to tell it. There are a number of books on comedy and how to do it, but none has the breadth and authority Rosenfield brings to his theme. It's not for nothing that the New York Times has described him as "probably the best-known comedy teacher in the country." Rosenfield's book is sure to become the classic text on its subject. And it should help thousands who long to make others laugh to realize their fondest hopes.
You've always known writing comedy was about more than just being funny. But how do you create a joke and work it into a script or a stand-up routine? Comedian, writer, and teacher Jim Mendrinos has the answers. In The Complete Idiot s Guide to Comedy Writing, Mendrinos gives readers the principles he teaches in his popular courses, from understanding what funny is and how to find it, to how to actually construct comedy. Working through the basic constructions and forms including premises, points of view, and twists, he shows the variations of written, verbal, and physical comedy. With useful exercises, Mendrinos helps writers refine their writing, appeal to their audience, and even break writer's block by learning techniques for brainstorming, free association, lists, and finding infinite points of view.
"Everyone knows that Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of the great statesmen, lawyers, and effective orators in the history of Rome. But did you also know he was regarded as one of the funniest people in Roman society as well? Five hundred years after his death, in the twilight of antiquity, the writer Macrobius ranks him alongside the comic playwright Plautus as the one of the two greatest wits ever. In this book, classicist Michael Fontaine, proposes to translate selections from Cicero's great rhetorical treatise, On the Ideal Orator (De Oratore). That larger work covered the whole of rhetoric and effective public speaking and debate. However, contained within it, is a long section focused on the effective use of humor in public speaking. In it, Cicero is concerned not just with various kinds of individual jokes, but with jokes that are advantageous in social situations. He advises readers on how to make the most effective use of wit to win friends, audiences, and achieve their overall ambitions. Cicero wants to teach his readers how to tell a joke without looking like a buffoon, and how to prevent or avoid jokes from backfiring. Hence, he does give scores of examples of jokes-some of which are timeless and translate easily, others that involve puns in Latin that challenged the translator's creativity. But overall, this work brings to the fore a little known, but important part of Cicero's classic work."--
