This Will Change How You Use Comic Relief in Your Writing Forever

Lesson 1 of Comedy for All: How to Make Your Writing Funny

Art by Mariam Chagelishvili

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Hello, writers! Welcome to “Comedy for All,” in the illustrious Forever Workshop.

This is an introductory humor writing workshop for writers of all varieties.

Whether you write personal essays, short stories, novels, narrative nonfiction, business writing, ad copy, or comedy itself, this course is for you—assuming, of course, that you want to invest in your humor writing.

If you are opposed to humor, though, this course is not for you. If “humor hater” describes you, please check out the course, “Tears, Demons, and Sad Literary Symbolism 101” which is in the other Substack in the basement. 

Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I’m Alex Baia, a humor writer, improv comedian, and long-time lover of funny writing. I also run Comedy Bizarre on Substack, a weekly newsletter about comedy writing. 

I’ll be your instructor and guide through this four-week foray into humor. Let’s crack right into it!

How This Course is Structured

What’s on the menu? A little bit of theory and a lot of writing. There will be a lesson every week, of course, with some principles of humor writing. But I want you to focus on applying those principles as quickly as possible. Discussing what makes something funny pales in comparison to just writing funny drafts and learning from those drafts.

So the course will be pretty heavily tilted towards actionable, weekly writing challenges. These challenges are designed to be accessible. They do not require hours of preparation, research, mindset work, outlining, chanting, and hiking to a writing cabin next to a waterfall. But if you have a writing cabin, use it! 

Anyway, every week we’ll have a specific writing challenge designed to work a humor writing muscle. Here are the writing challenges I’ve chosen for you.

Week 1 - Write a funny list, e.g. a comedic FAQ.

Week 2 - Write a humorous first-person essay based on a personal experience or viewpoint.

Week 3 - Write a character monologue or first-person flash fiction.

Week 4 - Write a short comedic dialogue.

These four challenges will allow us to flex our humor writing muscles in different ways. Today’s list-writing assignment will flex your joke-writing muscles. The monologue exercise will flex your comedic point-of-muscles. There are other muscles that we will flex too, but they are mysterious and scientists are still studying them!

Now that we’ve outlined the writing challenges, let’s dive into five core principles that will serve you throughout this workshop.

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Five Core Principles Of Humor Writing

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1. Overgenerate

A big rule of comedy writing is to 
write more than you need, then cut what’s not funny.

Most jokes and funny ideas you will come up with will not be super funny or even totally coherent. This is equally true for beginning writers and veteran comedy writers. Therefore, you want to write a lot of ideas, use the best, and cut the rest. Simple.

Here are some examples. Stand-up comedians don’t just use all of their jokes for a special. They write a ton of jokes then narrow down to the best of the best. Sketch comedy teams write more sketches than they need then only put up the ones that pass muster in the writers room.

Similarly, humor writers don’t just use every comedy idea or story concept. They brainstorm more than they need–maybe way more than they need—and go with the strongest ideas. 

If you want one joke in your writing, write five or more. If you’re writing funny dialogue, write 50-100% more than you need. Then cut everything that’s less funny.

If you’re coming up with a comedic premise for a piece or a story idea, write a bunch of ideas then pick the strongest. When my humor writing group is active, each of us pitches five comedy piece ideas every week. We rank each other’s ideas. I might only write my top 10-20%. Most ideas never see the light of day, and that’s a good thing.

Here are some good quotations from authorities on comedy and creativity:

“Use quantity to get quality.” - Scott Dikkers, founding editor of The Onion


"If you need 10 of something, make 30. Then pick the best." - Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

2. Get feedback

Yes, you can edit your own comedy writing. But this is hard. Becoming a good comedy self-editor takes years of writing and experimenting and building a comedy-pattern-recognizer in your cranium.

The issue is that we’re all trapped in our heads, unaware of whether our jokes are funny and clear. What you want is a test audience who can tell you if something is funny—or just confusing—before you self-publish it or send it somewhere for publication. This test audience can be a writing group or just a writing buddy.

Again, examples are helpful: Stand-up comedians have open-mics. These are great, honest test audiences. Sketch comedians have the writers room. They workshop the material with their fellow writers, and then, ideally, they put up a weekly or monthly show and see which sketches land well.

Humor writers need feedback too. Therefore, I recommend you bring your drafts from this workshop to your writing group, or to a friend who can give you honest feedback.

Hint: This feedback buddy can definitely be someone you connect with in the comments section here.

3. Write with your inner clown, edit with your judgmental editor

Being too critical and self-judgmental of your draft will hurt your humor writing. It makes you too reserved and afraid. Comedy comes from the wild and the uninhibited part of your brain, not the scolding and fearful part.

When you write a first draft of something funny, I encourage you to write with your clown brain. What does that mean?

Clown Brain is the mode of the circus clown: playful, creative, mischievous, and silly. The clown is never worried about consequences. The clown has no self-judgment. The clown never runs out of ideas or material because to be a clown is to play in the fully-present joy of infinite consciousness and freedom. It’s also the mentality of a good improv comedian, and it is the opposite of anxiety. When you write with your clown brain, you drop the judgment. You are free. This is the mindset to use when brainstorming or writing a first draft.

Editor Brain is the mode of the editor: nit-picky, scrupulous, judgmental, and perfectionist. Editors take wacky ideas, trim every ounce of fat (without stealing the magic that makes them fun), and turn them into publishable gold. Editors are wonderful, necessary people, if a bit inclined to live in dank caves. But when generating ideas and writing early drafts, editors need to stay the hell away and go clean their pen collections.

Let yourself be a clown when you brainstorm jokes and comedy concepts. Let yourself be a clown on your first draft. On your second draft, shift more towards being an editor. By your third draft, try going full-on editor and sharpen that puppy up. 

4. Write fresh jokes, rid yourself of clichés.

Comedy thrives on surprise. And familiarity undercuts surprise. The best humor is something unusual, perhaps a bit startling. It is definitely something your audience hasn’t heard before. It is something they weren’t expecting.

The worst version of using stale jokes is writing comedy clichés, e.g., “That’s what she said!” Here are a few more comedy clichés, familiar to anyone who uses the internet:

"Sir, this is a Wendy's."

“Thank you for coming to my TED talk.”

“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.”

“Hold my beer."

“Well, that escalated quickly.”

You could probably name many more. Bottom line: If you’ve heard a joke or punchline or funny idea before, even once, don’t use it. Don’t repeat jokes or humor that already exist, especially lines that people use on social media.

Zooming out a bit, even if your topic—or your piece as a whole–-feels too familiar, your piece won’t be as funny. Instead, explore under-explored topics. Or mine territory that’s personal and unique to you. Or, if your topic is familiar—say, you’re writing about how commercial airlines are unpleasant—give the reader a totally original take that she’s never seen before. Your code of honor is this: Be original and surprising. Never use a cliché!

5. If you want to be terrific, you better be specific.

An effective way to avoid the familiar is to ditch bland generalities in favor of interesting specifics. Imagine we’re drafting a humor piece, and we introduce a quirky character named “Sheila.” Now think about the difference between these two sentences:

“Sheila’s signature move was giving great birthday gifts.”

“Sheila’s signature move was giving great birthday cheeses, especially goudas.”

The second sentence is more interesting. Not only is the weird detail—birthday cheeses—amusing, but it’s also infused with more comedic potential. The specificity of the second sentence makes it easier to escalate Sheila’s quirkiness. 

Think about all the questions the second sentence raises: How do people react to Sheila’s birthday cheeses? What does she do when someone is dairy-intolerant? Is Sheila a cheese snob, or is she just a cheese lover who wants to spread the joy of great cheeses? You can answer these questions in all kinds of interesting and funny ways.

One of the easiest upgrades you can make to your humor is to replace a few bland generalities with interesting specifics.

How often should you make this upgrade? There’s no mathematical formula for it. It’s something you’ll develop by feel. However, remember that most beginning humor writers use far too many bland generalities and far too few interesting specifics.

I will post some example humor pieces below, in connection with our first writing challenge. Read these pieces and notice how all of them use specificity in their own clever way.

Alright, now let’s summarize the five principles:

1. Overgenerate: Write (and brainstorm) more than you need. Then use only the funniest stuff.

2. Write as a clown, edit as an editor.

3. Get feedback.

4. Write fresh jokes, rid yourself of clichés.

5. Be specific: Replace bland generalities with interesting specifics.

Now, onto the first writing challenge!

Week 1 Writing Challenge: Write A Comedic List

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As your first writing challenge, I want you to try writing a short, comedic list. The list is a great place to start with humor writing.

The list is among the time-honored and hyper-versatile humor formats. There is so much you can do with a list. The list can be a list of jokes, observations, comparisons, weird ideas, or anything really. Here are some funny and pretty simple lists.

• Guards’ Complaints About Spartacus by Jack Handey (The New Yorker) – a list of complaints.

• ​​Airplane Passengers as Explained by Their Pants by Wendi Aarons (McSweeney’s) — a list of funny predictions about airline passengers.

• 12 Tips For When the Town Elders Choose You For The Skin Harvest by Linton Lewis (Slackjaw) — a list of tips for a specific situation.

• Visiting Paris vs. Giving Me $20 to Throw Dirt on Your Floor and Dress Like a Pigeon by Maddie Weigelt (McSweeney’s) – a list of comparisons between visiting Paris and giving the narrator $20

We talked about comedic specifics above. Notice how well these four pieces use comedic specifics.

To write a comedic list, brainstorm some different ideas. Create a running list—a meta-list!—of 5 or 10 or 15 different list ideas. The topic or approach can be as far-out as your imagination will take you.

After you come up with several ideas, pick your favorite list idea and write it as a short draft. Typically, a list in the 300-600 word range will work well for a first attempt.

However, I know that some of you will like the idea of writing a funny list, but you may not know what type of list to write. No sweat. In that case, let’s make your list writing challenge even more specific: write an FAQ! 

Specific List Idea: Funny FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

An FAQ qualifies as a list, since it’s just a list of questions-and-answers. But here’s what I love about funny FAQs:

• FAQs are clear and instantly-recognizable list type. Every reader immediately understands what they’re looking at.

• They’re on the easier side to write. The list-like nature of FAQs—combined with the standard question-and-answer format—make them an accessible type of piece to put together.

• Comedic FAQs are hella versatile, topic-wise. They can be about almost anything. You can write funny FAQs about real people, places, products, common objects, sports, relationships, musical or film genres, or anything else. You could write an FAQ about a historical period or event, a fictional character, an emotion, or abstract idea. You could write an FAQ about something super weird that you invented just for the purpose of writing an FAQ about it.

Here are some comedic FAQ examples:

• Corn Maze F.A.Q. by Colin Nissan (The New Yorker)

• Frequently Asked Questions About 4% Jazz, The World’s Only Radio Station That Plays 4% Jazz by Allie Rubin (Slackjaw)

• FAQs About Mount Rushmore’s Enormous Underground Quadruple Penis by Daniel Williams (Slackjaw)

• Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Our Controversially Heavy Weighted Blankets by Adrienne Teeley (Points In Case)

• FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense by Luke Burns (McSweeney’s)

You can start by coming up with a list of at least 3 to 5 funny FAQ ideas. The more the better. No need to complicate your ideas. Just make the title of each idea look like one of these:

• “Frequently Asked Questions About _____”

• “FAQ: _____”

• “______ FAQ”

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Run your idea list by a couple of friends, or your writing group, or post your FAQ idea list in the comments section here for feedback.

Or, if you’re writing a more general, non-FAQ list, post those ideas in the comments section for feedback.

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Takeaways for Week 1

Try to use all five of the humor writing principles above—overgeneration, clown mode, avoid clichés, feedback, specifics—as you draft each of these weekly writing challenges.

Come up some comedic list ideas for this week, and pick your favorite one. If you’re not sure where to start, try writing a comedic FAQ.

Post in the comments section to introduce yourself, and to seek feedback on your list ideas. You can also find a writing feedback buddy in the comments section.

And obviously, fire away with any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer.

That’s it! It’s good to have you in the workshop, and I wish you fun and success.

p.s. Be sure to subscribe to Comedy Bizarre, my weekly Substack about comedy writing!