Writing Funny: Comedy Writing Workshop

You can be funny! In fiction, knowing how to craft a joke will let you write authentically funny characters and dialogue. In nonfiction, you can use humor as a powerful tool for getting and keeping your readers’ attention. We can even bring humor into our poetry.

Led by The Tonight Show alum Simon Taylor, Comedy Writing Workshop explores what, exactly, makes something funny, giving you concrete tools to write humor in any medium.

“Simon is one of the top comedy writers out there.”
—Jay Leno

You’ll get a clear introduction to comedy writing: the shared formula of every joke, and how we can apply that formula in our work. This is the foundation to the course, which we’ll build on with specific joke writing techniques.

Well explore twenty-eight linguistic devices—or “tools”—with examples, explanations and opportunities to practice them. You’ll learn how to apply these tools to your own writing, and a step-by-step process to write a joke on any topic.

Finally, you’ll learn fifteen different comedy styles, with examples included. You can use these for writing characters in a novel, writing for film or television, developing a persona in standup comedy, and much more.

You’ll go from seeing humor as an abstract ability that either some people have or don’t, to understanding the nuts and bolts of comedy writing and feeling confident crafting jokes on any topic.

What You’ll Learn

Writing Funny will teach you:

• A series of easy-to-implement humor writing formulas
• A systematic approach to writing humor on any topic
• Detailed examples on how mind-maps can help in humor writing.
• How to write in a variety of different voices
• How to integrate humor into any medium
• How humor can be used to communicate complex ideas effectively

What This Course Includes

You’ll get:

• 6 video lectures that guide you through the craft of comedy writing.
• An introduction to the concept of comedy in writing.
• The fundamental formula for every single joke.
• 28 linguistic “tools” to craft effective jokes, with examples and opportunities for practice.
• 15 different comedy styles and explanations of each style.
• Mind mapping strategies that you can use to write humor about anything.

Student Testimonials

“Simon is an excellent teacher. Easy-going and approachable (even in recordings), and able to communicate his complicated expertise clearly and concisely. He breaks down humor writing to a greater degree than the craft books or other instructors I’ve encountered and shows writers (of all stripes) how to do the same.”
—Ann Jacobus Kordahl

“Simon Taylor is not just extraordinarily funny, he is truly generous. He provided exceptional feedback on each homework assignment. The course exceeded my highest expectations. Truly game-changing for my fiction writing!”
—Dorothy Sewell

About the Author

Simon Taylor is a Melbourne-born comedian, who by the age of 24 became a writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Since then he has appeared on Just for Laughs, and became the first ever Australian to perform stand-up on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

He has also written a number of books including the novel One-Night Stand, which received critical praise for its humor and heart.