The EVERYTHING GUIDE TO COMEDY WRITING

This week I almost finished a text book which I had been extending for over a month.
Almost? Yeah! I reached the maximum limit of extending the due date and finally I was forced to return it.
Text-book? Ummm... yupp! It was a text book of 260 pages with more than 30 pages dedicated to Index and lot of Appendix.

Well! It just happened; I was walking through Library's Non-fictional section and saw a book with title something like "Comedy writing..."

I reached to book and saw the cover - "The EVERYTHING GUIDE TO COMEDY WRITING"

It sounded more like a S\W book "Learn JAVA in 21 days" and I whispered - What the fuckkkk...

How can someone think of teaching comedy…?
How would you connect to readers without using body language…?
Does this book contain address of 'Funny bone' markets…?

I decided to pick up this yellow cover book to find the answer of my questions rather than with the intention of becoming a stand-up comedian or penning script for prime time sitcoms. In addition, I'm a self claimed numerically strong mathematician, so 230 pages (total -Index - Appendix) with 50 pages per week gave me kinda confidence of finishing it before due date.

Before writing anything about the book, let me accept the fact that this book exceeded my expectation in all aspect and it proved my whisper "what the fuckkkk..." as nothing but a cynical reaction which can assumed to be influenced by my pseudo-intellect view on comedy writing profession.

I was amazed to see the explanation used to describe the basics of comedy writing, the anatomy of humor and entire construction flow of the jokes. Breaking down comedy into a scientific method is not an easy process. Plus, there's a lot more to it than just understanding the core structure of comedy.

With that being said, I think you'll find a lot of gems in this book that will open your observant skin pores and help explore the various range of comedy formats.

There are some techniques like the usual what-if, topical jokes, dealing with emotions in comedy and using surprise as a tool in stand-up format of comedy. Sometime, audience find something funny because they are generally surprised by the punch line or have a feeling of superiority whether it is from solving the puzzle of a joke or by  decoding a high context David jokes.

It covers the various techniques used in different formats of the comedy like stand up, sitcoms, late night talk show, sketch comedy and many more.

If you observe the most famous sitcoms such as Office Office, Shriman Shrimati, FRIENDS or The Simpsons, the longest-running sitcom in US history, everything reflects a defined technical pattern.

Even Late show with David Letterman or half boiled comedy talk show “the Tonight show with Jay Leno\Conan O'Brien (I personally feel Jay leno and Conan need to learn some facial expression from David) reflects certain comedy pattern.

Having said these, there was one thing I still expected out of this book which remained just an expectation and that was, despite of talking about comedy, somehow this book lacks the humor in itself.
It won't make you Laugh out loud forget a single opportunity of rolling on floor laughing.