Notas del episodio
2025 New Year's writing resolution: spend 10 minutes a day getting words on the page.
Today's 10-minute writing exercise is focused on comedy! We're turning facts into punchlines, and as usual your anonymish host is writing along. She should have warmed up and stretched before taking this one on!
This is a no-homework podcast! Every episode, we build in ten minutes of time for ourselves to do the assignment, and the assignment is always to write write write.
You can write to our daily writing prompt, but you could also:
- journal
- brainstorm
- write for your work in progress
All that matters is that you do write and you don't cheat and you don't stop writing until the music comes in.
Gene Perret is a master of classic humor, and in Comedy Writing Step by Step he coaches the reader from a blank sheet of paper all the way to developing a standup routine. We're going to adapt a few exercises from the book this month, and today's exercise is one of them.
For today's ten-minute writing exercise:
- Select a topic that you would like to write a humor piece about, or just any topic you know well. E.g. the post office.
- Write 20 factual statements about that topic. The price of stamps has gone up to 73 cents.
- Now, treat each factual statement as the setup to a punchline. Write at least one punchline for each setup sentence. The postmaster had to raise the price of postage so he could afford to send out the new stamps.
- Repeat until time is up.
Our themes this month are:
- Love in all its forms
- Dialogue
- Comedy Writing Step by Step by Gene Perret
We will also write a complete work of flash fiction together in a week from Feb 17 - Feb 23. No pre-work needed, and as always, zero homework outside of our ten minutes a day. This month we'll use Dan Harmon's story circles method to plan out our stories.
Our themes this month are:
- Love in all its forms
- Dialogue
- Comedy Writing Step by Step by Gene Perret
We will also write a complete work of flash fiction together in a week from Feb 17 - Feb 23. No pre-work needed, and as always, zero homework outside of our ten minutes a day. This month we'll use Dan Harmon's story circles method to plan out our stories.