Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • How to Write Funny

  • Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint for Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing, Book 1
  • By: Scott Dikkers
  • Narrated by: Scott Dikkers
  • Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (31 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
How to Write Funny cover art

How to Write Funny

By: Scott Dikkers
Narrated by: Scott Dikkers
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Little Book of Sitcom cover art
How to Write Funny Characters cover art
The New Comedy Bible cover art
Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy cover art
Mastering Stand-Up cover art
You Are (A Comedy) Special cover art
Save the Cat! cover art
Story Structure: The Key to Successful Fiction cover art
Do You Talk Funny? cover art
Creating Character Arcs cover art
Finding Your Comedic Voice cover art
28 Stand-ups cover art
Impro cover art
How to Write Your First Novel: The Stress-Free Guide to Writing Fiction for Beginners cover art
Bookkeeping and Accounting cover art
The Nutshell Technique cover art

Summary

The definitive joke-writing handbook

Learn comedy writing and how to write a joke with a simple comedy-writing and joke-writing formula you can use right now to write your own jokes. See why Amazon reviewers call How to Write Funny "one of the best books on humor writing."

Author Scott Dikkers will tell you how to write jokes. He’s a master joke writer, founder of the world’s most popular humor site TheOnion.com, number one New York Times best-selling humor author, professional public speaker, and successful cartoonist. Scott created and leads the “Writing with The Onion” training center at the famed Second City in Chicago. His students have been hired for the top comedy writing jobs in TV and won dozens of Emmy Awards. He’s consulted with top entertainment companies like NBC, Comedy Central, and Pixar.

This easy-to-follow guide lays out a clear system and simple formula for how to write a joke that will get big, milk-coming-out-of-your-nose laughs, reliably and repeatably. You'll learn...

  • The three sure-fire ways to generate funny text
  • The 11 different “Funny Filters” and how to use them to write jokes
  • The secret to getting rid of writer's block - permanently
  • And many more humor writing tips, tricks, and techniques

Create any joke using the Funny Filters, the 11 fundamental building blocks of humor:

Funny Filter 1: Irony

Funny Filter 2: Character

Funny Filter 3: Shock

Funny Filter 4: Hyperbole

Funny Filter 5: Wordplay

Funny Filter 6: Reference

Funny Filter 7: Madcap

Funny Filter 8: Parody

Funny Filter 9: Analogy

Funny Filter 10: Misplaced Focus

Funny Filter 11: Metahumor

If you've wondered how you can start writing jokes, how to tell jokes to your friends, how to add humor to your writing, how to add jokes in a speech, or how to add humor to your presentation, this book spells out the simple joke writing formula professionals use.

How to Write Funny is for you whether you want to find a comedy writing job or just want to learn how to tell a joke.

©2014, 2018 Scott Dikkers (P)2018 Scott Dikkers

What listeners say about How to Write Funny

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    20
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    19
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    17
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

For those who know zero about comedy

Though it was a short and sweet book. It was more for people who know nothing about comedy. For those who understand comedy in general the information adds nothing more than an explination of what you have been doing or what others do.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Good How to.. book

This is a very informative how to.. book. Good break down of the art of writing funny.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Really useful guide for complete beginners

After deciding to work on comedy writing at the age of 33 for no other reason than why the hell not, and some encouragement by the fact that I think I hate my career, I picked this book to get me started. I listened and took notes throughout, and will probably now buy a physical copy for reference too. It really helps to break down what makes a joke funny, and how to approach comedy writing. It's brutally honest about how difficult and competitive it can be but also provides some comfort by describing how even seemingly unfunny jokes can still be super useful to help you home your craft, provided you just don't give up!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

extremely practical book about writing funnv

this is a book I need to go back to again to note down all the learnings it's pretty incredible - highly recommend this one

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Unfortunately no useful advice for a writer

I had the impression that this book would discuss humorous writing in a theoretical viewpoint. Unfortunately, "theory" was too light to help in actual writing process. I got the impression, specifically from the part regarding SF that the writer had not read enough in SF field, although it did not seem to prevent him from taking an authoritative approach in discussing this branch of literature. All in all, I was unsure how the writer had arrived at his conclusions. I wish this book had had something real to offer. I would not have given this negative feedback if I had felt the writer had really tried his best with this book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful