Product Description

Updated and revised, this new edition of the best-selling favorite enables readers to master the fundamentals of humor writing and better understand the demands of the comedic market. Comedy Writing Secrets now includes:

-Examples from comedy greats as well as cutting-edge contemporary comedians, including Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, and Tina Fey

-A complete spectrum of techniques, from writing one-liners and stand-up routines, to finding a market for one's work

-Step-by-step writing exercises accompanied with sample answers, so readers can practice and hone their skills

With this guide, aspiring comics can learn how to sharpen their comedic talent and turn it into a well-paying pursuit.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24285 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

Comedy Writing Review
The information in the book was very insightful but the print was too small for me personally.

I couldn't even finish this!
Perhaps this reveiw is a little unfair to the author. After all, I didn't actually get to finishing the book, but I've gone as far as I ever want to go with it.

I admit, this wasn't what I thought I was getting myself into when I first read the book; I wanted a book about how to write with an element of comedy, and what I got was a book about how to write comedy. Nonetheless, I figured that I needed a little more humor in my life, so I decided to start reading this...

...Three chapters later, I put it down.

Let's face it, if you're trying to teach people how to be funny, you need to actually be funny first. There is no humor in this book; not altogether bad, except that there sure are a lot of failed attempts at humor. That alone makes me question the effectiveness of the author in communicating these ideas, or at least his writing ability (which, I believe, is the main problem with this book).

In addition, there are a bunch of exercises which you're supposed to be doing along the way to help yourself learn these techniques. OK, good idea, but bad execution. One good example is the one on increasing the ideas you get when you look at something. You are then instructed to think of as many funny uses for a bar stool seat as you can. Me, I thought of none. The author came up with Elephant Slippers. Ha...ha...ha...?

Was that supposed to be funny? I certainly hope not.

But lets focus on what's really important here: does this book teach me to be funny? The plain and simple answer is that it might. It's just so downright unreadable that I'll never find out.

Excellent introductory book on the technical aspects of comedy
This is an excellent book on the technical aspects of comedy. After reading this you will be able to analyse how the pros do it - and why some jokes are funny and some are not. Of course, it takes a lot more than this technical ability to become a good comedy writer, but this is not a bad place to start. There are numerous comedic examples sprinkled throughout the book, which range from the hilarious to the very lame - interestingly the worst jokes are the ones by the author Professor Mel Helitzer, which I guess reinforces the dictum that those who can't teach.