Workshop
A Writer Walks Into a Bar: The Nuts and Bolts of Writing Humor
with Kristen Arnett
May 19 • 1:00 PM (EST) - 3:00 PM (EST)
Dates
May 19 • 1:00 PM (EST) - 3:00 PM (EST)
Duration
2 hours
Location
Online
Price
US$75
About the workshop
What makes people laugh? How many ways can you tell a joke and still glean something interesting from the premise?
Details
This workshop is a fresh look at everything you need to know about unpacking - and subsequently repackaging - the way comedy sits inside of fiction and non-fiction.
In this generative two-hour workshop, we'll specifically take a look at repetition, self-deprecating humor, copycatting, absurdism, and a slew of other techniques and processes that help us understand why the hell something is funny.
Attendees will spend time in this session discussing the craft of humor in narrative works, essays, and pop culture/media.
This will be a collaborative process; one that allows us to consider (and reconsider) how authors work comedic effect into their creative work.
You will generate work in-session and take home prompts when the workshop is complete.
What you will learn
• To hone the craft of writing humor • To hone the craft of reading humor • To explore the nuances and intersections of how comedy works in various types of creative writing and pop culture/media
Workshop takeaways
Students will leave with generated work, further reading, further writing prompts, and a better sense of how to read comedy as well as how to effectively embed humor into their own work.
Additional info
If you can't attend this class live, it will be recorded! Students will receive a recording the day after the class, and it will be available for 30 days.
About the instructor
Kristen Arnett is the queer author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her next novel, CLOWN, will be published by Riverhead Books (Spring 2025), followed by the publication of an untitled collection of short stories. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.
Learn how to hone the craft of writing humor