Top Selected Products and Reviews
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1.
Comedy Writing Secrets: The Best-Selling Guide to Writing Funny and Getting Paid for Itby Mark Shatz- In Stock.
List Price: $17.99 Price: $11.30 You Save: $6.69 (37%) "Thank you for sharing your secrets!" - By Amazon Customer
Comedy Writing Secrets very much deserves a five-star rating. I have always enjoyed comedy but never felt personally capable of writing my own. After reading this guide, I now have the tools to give it a try. I am so glad I chose this book. The author structured the chapters in such a way that kept my interest all the way through. I was pleasantly surpised by how often I laughed out loud! While comedy writing is a subject that requires particular interest, I think it is fair to assume almost everyone is interested in adding more laughter to their life. Comedy Writing Secrets has given me a roadmap to just that. I recommed this book.(12) -
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Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook: More than 100 Practical Writing Exercises to Develop Your Comedy Writing Skillsby Gene Perret- In Stock.
List Price: $15.95 Price: $12.53 You Save: $3.42 (21%) "Excellent Exercises to Complement COMEDY WRITING SELF-TAUGHT" - By C J Singh (Berkeley, California, USA)
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Reviewed by C J Singh (Berkeley, CA)
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"Self-Taught Is the Best Taught": Perrets' Workbook
Few 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 Writing
Part Two, General Stand-Up Writing
Part Three, Writing for Your Mentor
Part Four, Sketch Writing
Part Five, Sitcom Writing
Here 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. ... full review(6) -
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Comedy Writing Self-Taught: The Professional Skill-Building Course in Writing Stand-Up, Sketch, and Situation Comedyby Gene Perret- In Stock.
List Price: $16.95 Price: $12.84 You Save: $4.11 (24%) ""Self-Taught Is Best Taught": Gene Perret's Proof?" - By C J Singh (Berkeley, California, USA)
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Reviewed by C. J. Singh (Berkeley, CA)
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"Self-Taught Is the Best Taught": Gene Perret's Proof?
As a young engineering staffer at General Electric Corporation in the early 1960s, Gene Perret began doing "chores as an emcee" at the company's retiree and anniversary roasts. To prepare his scripts, Perret interviewed the roastee's colleagues, family, and other friends. The audience's enthusiastic responses encouraged him to become a full-time professional comedy writer.
Of the many humor-writing books Perret has published in his 50-year career, I have studied three earlier books. "The Comedy Writing Workbook," published in 1994, with its 192 pages of workouts; "Damn! That's Funny! Writing Humor You Can Sell," published in 2005, includes several examples of Perret's magazine articles as well as tips for writing humor; “The New Comedy Writing Step by Step: Revised and Updated," published in 2007, shows the detailed process of writing humor ... full review(3) -
4.
Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV: How to Write Monologue Jokes, Desk Pieces, Sketches, Parodies, Audience Pieces, Remotes, and Other Short-Form Comedyby Joe Toplyn- In Stock.
List Price: $24.95 Price: $24.93 "Pretty straightfoward." - By Matthew P. Riddle (NYC)
It really demystifies the whole monologue joke process. That seems like a simple and short review, but you'd be surprised what a lack of information there is in the world about proper joke writing from people who have actually done it.(84) -
5.
- May take an extra 1-2 days to ship.
List Price: $17.00 Price: $15.58 You Save: $1.42 (8%) "Good read" - By mwright
Breaks down stand up comedy from Lenny Bruce forward. I found it interesting and entertaining. I enjoyed reading about the evolution of stand up, and about individuals who made up and continue to make up that world.(33) -
6.
- In Stock.
List Price: $17.95 Price: $10.30 You Save: $7.65 (43%) "Great tool for improv and acting" - By P. T. Connelly (Chicago, IL)
Truth in Comedy starts off with a rather immodest amount of name dropping and self congratulating, but after those first few chapters, things take off.
The book is intended to be a rough guide to teaching and performing "Harold," the signature improvisation form of the Improv Olympic theater in Chicago. While the text focuses heavily on the structure of the form, it also holds page after page of advice and tools for any improviser or actor. The lessons in agreement, trust (in yourself and others), and teamwork can be used in any improv form (shortform or longform). And it definitely can teach us actors a thing or two about performing a scripted show.
One of my few complaints about the book is it lacks concreteness. The author alludes to the phenomenon of group mind, the beauty of connections, and the wonder of "finding Harold." Despite ... full review(129) -
7.
- In Stock.
List Price: $19.98 Price: $17.98 You Save: $2.00 (10%) "Not Just for Stand-Up Comics!" - By George Pappy (Redondo Beach, CA United States)
Greg's book has really helped me on 2 independent fronts: The effective performance of stand-up comedy, and COMEDY WRITING! This is an important point for those who are writers, not performers. Of all the books I've ever read on comedy, this is the first one to actually outline a concrete process for quickly generating a significant volume of humorous material. This should be very useful for anyone doing any kind of script writing.
Naturally, the writing methods described in the book are also quite helpful for performers, as are the in-depth instructions for actually doing stand up comedy. I've used this book as a constant source of inspiration in rehearsing and to raise my spirits right before performances. It's literally the kind of book that I can open to just about any page, read for 10 minutes, and come away with renewed energy and enthusiasm.
full review(103) -
9.
- In Stock.
List Price: $27.95 Price: $17.87 You Save: $10.08 (36%) "A few more tools for the toolbox" - By Tim
This was definitely worth the read! Chock full of great information and techniques about comedy writing for TV, film and web series. Comedy writing for TV and film is different from stand-up. It's not setup joke, setup joke. It's a more organic, character driven process. When you start writing anything, you'll get stuck eventually. Steve introduces you to some very helpful tools that you can whip out when you're stuck that will help get you unstuck and on your way. The only con to it is there aren't any exercises to help reinforce the material. Other than that,an amazing book.(139) -
10.
- In Stock.
List Price: $16.00 Price: $11.44 You Save: $4.56 (29%) "Wow! I redid my act in one week with this" - By Sarah
Taking a class taught by some Dude called Big Kenny funny but ducky comedy teacher, going on stage in a week and a half I order this book and read it cover to cover, applied what it told me to do and I killed with less than 5minutes of material, would've been longer had I found the book sooner. Gonna try stage again open mic, gonna work on 10 min.(86) -
11.
- In Stock.
List Price: $24.95 Price: $16.90 You Save: $8.05 (32%) "Excellent purchase for anyone who wants to write or act ..." - By Stephen
Excellent purchase for anyone who wants to write or act in comedy. The brilliance of the book is that it's all stuff you know on some level, but Sedita does a great job of bringing it to the fore of your mind and making you think about comedy a bit more methodically.(76)
