How to Write Funnier: Book Two of Your Serious Step-by-Step Blueprint for Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

by Scott Dikkers

Can you learn how to write comedy? Absolutely—anyone can.
Scott Dikkers will tell you how. He’s co-founder and longest-serving editor-in-chief of The Onion, the world’s most popular humor publication, and founder of The Onion Training Center at the Second City in Chicago. He’s also a #1 best-selling humor author and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
In How to Write Funnier , he tells you everything you need to know to start writing funny stories, how to write funny scenes, and how to write funny sketches. But that’s just the beginning. How do you get a job in comedy? How do you write for The Onion? How do you write for the New Yorker? How do you get published in McSweeney’s? How do you write for money? How do you become a career comedy writer? It's all in How to Write Funnier, the followup to How to Write Funny. Writers Scott has mentored, trained, or hired for their very first comedy-writing job have gone on to win several Emmy Awards, written movies nominated for an Academy Award, and become best-selling authors themselves.
One student said this about How to Write Funny (Book 1)
“This book is one of my very favorite books on comedy. It's helped me get published on satire sites like Reductress.com and helped me get admitted to comedy festivals. The fact that all comedy writers don't know about this book is (1) unfortunate but also (2) fantastic, because it will give the people who do read it a big advantage.”
How to Write Funnier gives you the step-by-step writing process professionals use for creating hilarious comedy articles, prose pieces, and stories that will jump off the page, grab readers by the sphincter and make them LOL, spit-take, make other passengers on the bus look at them like they’re crazy because they’re laughing so hard reading your story.
The first book in this series, How To Write Funny, showed you how to write a joke. How to Write Funnier (Book 2) shows you how to stack up those jokes the right way to make funny articles, stories, listicles or prose pieces that will make people remember you.
• The 13 Most Common Mistakes in Humor Writing • The 11 Different Ways to Structure a humor piece • How to get ideas for writing a great story • 8 steps for how to get feedback on your writing that will truly make it funnier

Genres: Writing, Comedy, Humor, Nonfiction, Stand Up

254 pages, Paperback

Published February 2, 2019

About the author

Scott Dikkers is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “How to Write Funny.” He's also the founder of TheOnion.com and The AV Club.

Scott sends out a daily tip on Substack:

https://scottdikkers.substack.com/

Be sure to follow him on BookBub for insiders deals on his books!

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/scott...

Reviews

[Jack Ruhl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish i had read this back in high school, but thankful i read it now. Great understanding of longer form comedy (not long form but that good middle ground where sketch comedy is). Rereading this as soon as I’m done the third book!

[Roozbeh Daneshvar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an informative book to read about comedy and appreciate a good piece: dissecting a good comedy writing and realizing what pieces it has and how carefully it is crafted, brings an appreciation of the other good comedy pieces (and a sort of dissatisfaction with poor comedy).

I was more impressed with the first book in the series (How to Write Funny). I believe that the content in this book was somehow diluted and was not as concrete as the first book. I also had the impression that the book was somehow written in haste (and the numerous typos and grammar mistakes in this book were somehow a sign).

I took many good notes from this book, which I am sharing a few here:

It takes experience to know how to balance the opinions of others with your own inherent sense of what’s working.

When so much of a writer’s future is invested in one idea, it’s almost impossible not to take criticism personally.

If you love an idea, especially if it’s your only idea, do not immediately select that idea.

Readers are far more disinterested in your material than you might imagine. By putting yourself in their shoes, the harsh light of objective reality will show you which ideas have merit and which don’t.

[Frederic · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title should be "How to Write Satire", which is the book's main focus. Author Scott Dikkers was a founder of The Onion and sees satire as humour's highest calling.

Less useful material for stand-up comedians than for authors, but still relevant on satirical writing, career advice, selling published material to generate income, etc.

Dikkers is a decent writer, although there were far too many typos in this book. That's disappointing, as he's a cut above many stand-up comedians, some of whose self-published how to books look like they dictated them into an iPhone, without ever reading their own horrible prose.

[Nicholas Ball · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid follow through from the previous instalment, this one covers expanding a single joke to a longer piece of text (think short article/Onion style article).

The work is competent and has good exercises, worked examples and feedback/discussions of the craft.

It also has a lot of typos. I've always been skeptical of negative Amazon reviews on books for typos but in all the books I've read (physical books, specifically here), I've never seen a printed typo before. I expected this would probably be an aspect of the publish-yourself Kindle market but ... No, this physical book that was (presumably) reviewed and edited before it was printed in paper form using an actual printing press has a ton of grammatical, spelling and other errors. Sentences and paragraphs that end unexpectedly, words that don't exist, they're all here and they all undermine your confidence in the final product.

However in good faith I won't take more than a star off for this - despite the Mystery of the Missing Paragraph endings, Scott makes most of his teachings clear and concise and it's all solid and reliable, inspiring work.

[Jason Cady · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Write Funny was about how to write a joke, or a funny premise. This, the second book in the series, is focused on executing the premise as a sketch or short prose piece (like in Shouts and Murmur's, or The Onion). The form these are written is escalation of the concept until ending with a button, as opposed to the dramatic structure of longer works.

My only criticism is that I think important distinctions can be made between dramatic structure and long-form comedy. Yes, there are many comedies that just insert lots of jokes into a story that is otherwise a drama (in fact that's why many comedies stop being funny by the third act); but what about the older comedies, 0f Moliere, Shakespeare, Aristophanes, et al. Aside from the traditional end of a marriage (instead of a death, as in tragedies), there were tropes, such as disguises, misunderstandings, servants overcoming their masters, etc. Those plays may seem old-fashioned today, but I do think there are contemporary long-form comedies that sustain their comedy throughout. I'd like to learn more about how those comedies function.

[Vitaly Kirkpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read "How to Write Funnier: Book Two of Your Serious Step-by-Step Blueprint for Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing" by Scott Dikkers and was thoroughly impressed. As a writer, I was looking for practical tips to improve my comedic writing skills and this book delivered. The author, a founding editor of The Onion, provides a step-by-step blueprint for adding humor to writing and includes examples from his own work and other comedic writers. The exercises in the book helped me practice and build my confidence in writing comedy. I highly recommend this book to any writer looking to develop their comedic writing skills, regardless of experience level.

[Flailing Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides some pretty good writing advice not only for comedy writers but all types of writers. As an aspiring screenwriter, I think it's vital to practice the techniques and tips in these books, not necessarily to enrich your work with comedy, but to avoid sullying your work with unfunny 'comedy.' I have no intention of writing comedy pieces, but I'll keep in mind that for a joke to be potentially funny it must use one or more of the 11 funny filters, which was explained in the first book. There's also more funny tips to add from the previous book. Now, on to the next one 'How to Write Funniest.'

[Anne Libera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott Dikkers knows his stuff and there is enormous valuable advice and information throughout this short book about how to write short comic pieces in prose or dialogue. His insistence on the value of the title/headline for a short comic piece is no surprise based on his history with The Onion (I agree that it is essential for parody but would happily argue with him about whether it is as important or necessary as he posits here).

[Maarten Vissers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gaat verder waar deel 1 eindigde. Één legt uit hoe je een goede oneliner a la De Speld schrijft. Twee legt uit hoe je dit uitbouwt tot een langer stuk. Nuttig, praktisch, met goede voorbeelden. Aan de andere kant focust het op één vorm/formule. Deze werkt en zie ik nu ook terug in veel comedy. Maar deze wordt gepresenteerd als de heilige graal. Daarin is het boek toch wel beperkt.

[Lauren LoGiudice · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a great guide to writing consistently funny articles. Builds on the lessons of How to Write Funny.

I read it with the intention to use it that way and the first resulting article was published in The Satirist.

[Gordon Bagshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt his first book addressed more directly the need I was looking forward as this follow up goes deeper into how to write longer comedic pieces. But I think I want to reread this one. So much to take in and work through.

[Susan Laliberte · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent part of the How To Write Funny series

This series is fantastic, not just because it will teach you to write comedy, but also because you will learn how to have fun writing comedy. I highly recommend the entire series.

[Alastair Motylinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful. Need to do all the exercises next.

[Joy Perrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a great follow up to the first book in the series. I enjoyed the section on how to write long form comedy, even if that was a small portion of this book. Lots of good advice and sugestions.

[Daniel Erickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The detailed manner and method to become a humor writer - way harder than you might think. Critical writers reference but maybe not for everyone.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Created more for someone who wants to write for the Onion or the like, expanding on the previous book that focused on creating the one liner, this book is all about short form comedy. I find his obsession with titles a little weird. Personally, I always find titles from the writing, not the other way around. Although definitely a must read if you are a humourist.

Some excellent recommendations for further reading and research too. For instance, he introduced me to the quick read, Steve Martin's book Cruel Shoes, which is an hilarious collection of micro stories and poems.

Best thing about this book was the introduction to me of Chekhov's Gun and Spielberg's raft. After I read these theories, so brilliantly explained, I see them pop up in everything.

Looking forward to the 3rd book.

[Lori Puma · Rating 5 out of 5]

The chapter of draft pieces is GOLD

I took a couple pages of notes on the theories presented in this book. But I’ll be coming back to the chapter showing multiple drafts of the same pieces repeatedly. It was so helpful to see the process of taking a first draft and making it funnier. (I had to show the fake lost dog posters to my roommates. So funny!)