Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook: More than 100 Practical Writing Exercises to Develop Your Comedy Writing Skills

.Reviewed by C J Singh (Berkeley, CA)."Self-Taught Is the Best Taught": Perrets' WorkbookFew years ago, I read Gene Perret's "Comedy Writing Workbook,"published in 1994. The COMEDY WRITING SELF-TAUGHT WORKBOOK, published in 2014, retains only a few of the exercises of the earlier book. This co-authored book is a briefer version,The WORKBOOK presents its exercises in five parts:Part One, General Joke WritingPart Two, General Stand-Up WritingPart Three, Writing for Your MentorPart Four, Sketch WritingPart Five, Sitcom WritingHere are a few sample exercises.General Joke Writing. "A one-liner often is a factual statement with a joke attached to it. It's a straight line and a punchline: `Ronald Reagan is one politician who never lied, cheated, or stole. He always had a agent who did that for him" (Exercise 4, page 7).General Stand-Up Writing. Suppose you are doing gags about mean bosses and "are on the subtopic of `just how mean he is': `I work for a mean boss. The guy has a black belt in management. Once he was out sick and the people in the office sent him a bouquet of Venus flytraps'." (Exercise 32, p 40).Sketch Writing: Sketch introduces a premise (what's the sketch is about), has fun with the premise, and ends with more fun. Beginning of a sketch: " Two friends are walking along the street. Suddenly a mugger threatens them and demands all their money and their wallet. The second one, though, takes some money from his wallet, hands it to his friend, and says, `Here's that $20 I've owed you for a while.' Then he hands his wallet to the thief." The exercise is to develop the sketch by coming up with other events. (Exercise 81, page 84)Sitcom Writing: Sitcom has a similar structure as a sketch, but differs in being longer and has established characters. As an example, the book presents an episode from The Big Bang Theory: "Penny wants to throw a surprise birthday party for Leonard, who has never had one. That's the A story. The B story is that Howard has to find some way to keep Leonard out of the apartment until the time of the party. The C story is that Penny has to take Sheldon to buy an appropriate gift for the birthday boy. All of these plots are related to one another" (Exercise 88, p 94).Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook is an excellent introduction for beginning comedy writers with many sparkling jokes included.

Even as a working stand up comedian it helps keep my brain agile and always moving forward. I love waking up, having a cigarette and a cup of coffee and going through a couple of exercises. I would recommend having a notebook just for the exercises, it will come in handy so you're not mixing up whats an exercise and whats a joke idea you came up with during the day. Highly recommend! PS Don't smoke kids.

Really dull book it’s solid information wise if you’re like me and want something that’s a little lighter/entertaining to learn writing comedy I would recommend the comedy store writing work book by Sandy C Shore.

I'm enjoying the exercises, but the writing isn't great. Things are said 3 to 4 different ways and over explained. It feels insulting and like he needed to extend the page count. I thought about returning it for that reason alone, but I won't because the exercises are new to me and I think they will get me trained up the way I want.

A great way to get the creative juices going in writing comedy

You want to learn how to write comedy? You want to be pushed? Then this is the book for you. Many challenging assignment!

Love having this workbook to follow the book itself.

I love the simplicity of the layout and the assignments provided. Definitely increased my skills.

This a workbook that is just that - a workbook intending for the reader to work the lesson plans. It is well written, easy to understand and leads the aspiring comedy writer gently along the path to knowledge. There are one hundred and fifteen exercises and they aren't designed to be done in a day. In fact the first exercise you are given could take weeks of research to complete. This book is a case where the journey is as important as the destination.The book is la arge format and a larger font so it is very easy to read. It is written in a conversational manner which is quite pleasant to follow along with.Anyone truly serious about written or vocal comedy should purchase this book.

Still reading but I like it a lot

Really helpful

I am very happy with the book. It's funny, informative and useful and i would recommend it to any aspiring comedy writers