The Shittiest Humor Piece I Ever Wrote

Let’s deconstruct a bad humor piece and talk about why it’s bad.

Welcome to issue numero uno of Comedy Bizarre.

Today I want to deconstruct the shittiest humor piece I ever wrote.

Wait, “THE shittiest”!? Okay, I don’t actually know which precise draft is THE shittiest humor draft I ever wrote. That’s hard to say. You have to write a lot of crap to get to something good—especially when you’re new to the game.

What I do know is that this draft I’m going to show you was pretty bad, and I think we can all learn from deconstructing it. I’ll share the entire draft with you, then I’ll break it down.

Before that, I’ve got a short & specific comedy writing idea for you, and a reader question about headlines.

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Short & specific comedy writing idea: Change your valence.

Say that you’re writing a monologue—or any comedy piece that’s character-driven or largely voice-driven. You’ll sometimes feel that your first draft just isn’t quite hitting. Maybe your central idea is good. Maybe you feel like there’s some real potential there. But the piece isn’t quite coming alive… yet.

A simple way to breathe life into a half-working piece is to flip the dominant emotional valence of the main characters. Just take whatever dominant emotion your narrator or main character has, and flip it or give it a left turn.

Here are a few of the most common emotions that I find in comedic narrators (or characters) that float into the Slackjaw inbox: