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Humor Writing: How to Think, Write, Speak, and Be Funnier! (Udemy.com)

Great for Writing & Public Speaking: Learn the Techniques Professional Humorists Use to Create Consistently Funny Comedy

Created by: Dave Fox

Last updated May 2021

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What you will learn

  • Master the techniques professional humorists and comedy writers use to create consistently hilarious material
  • Learn how to find humor in nearly any situation
  • Discover how to take something that is funny, and stretch it to make it a lot funnier.
  • Understand how subtle tweaks of word choice, word order, and pacing can make a profound difference in whether or not something is funny.
  • Learn how to observe comedic masters and learn from what they do.
  • Learn how humor can be used in nearly any form of writing or presentation to make it more captivating.

How it compares

Against the other 503 rated Udemy courses in Teaching & Academics on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.1 out of 5higher than 4% of them
  • Reviews1,019#145 of 504 by number of reviews
  • Length4 hourslonger than 52% of them
  • Last updatedMay 2021earlier than 68% of them

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Course Description

Contrary to popular belief, a “sense of humor" is not a magical “gift" a few special people are born with. Humor and writing are skills anyone can develop.

In this online workshop, award-winning humorist and bestselling author Dave Fox teaches you how! 

Discover the techniques professional comedy writers use to write consistently funny material. You'll learn how to think, write, speak, and be funnier. 

Each lesson includes specific writing techniques and exercises to  incite maximum laughs. We'll focus on writing humor columns, personal essays, and creative non-fiction, but the skills you learn can be applied to writing genres of all sorts -- fiction and non-fiction -- as well as stand-up and  sketch comedy, cartooning, movie scripts, and more. 

Full-blown comedy might or might not be your goal. Perhaps you want to take more serious forms of writing — fiction, feature articles, blog posts, travel writing, children's stories, personal memoirs … even office memos, cover letters, or devilishly sexy personal ads — and sprinkle in some giggles. Whatever genres you write in, this class will help you infuse more laughter into your work. 

This course is also wildly useful for people who do any kind of public speaking, who want to keep their audiences awake and riveted to what they are saying.  

So come join us in this fun and inspiring (and occasionally weird) workshop, and stretch your comedic potential to cackle-inducing new levels! 

Some of the topics we'll cover include:  

  • The universal element present in all humor

  • Proven tricks to create or strengthen your comedy

  • Giving your jokes maximum impact with the right words and timing

  • Stretching your punch lines to make them punchier

  • Streamlining your phrasing so your punch lines don't get swallowed up in flabby verbiage. (Mastering this skill will make a vast improvement in all of your writing.)

  • Learning from your favorite professional humorists

  • When and why to throw away your best joke

  • Publishing your humor

  • How to not be that annoying guy at the party with the lampshade on his head

What's Included:

  • Lots of fun and super-informative video lessons.

  • Links to lots more videos on YouTube that illustrate specific concepts you've learned. (That's right! You can watch "Saturday Night Live" sketches and a clip from the iconic "Soup Nazi" episode of "Seinfeld" ... and call it studying!

  • A free e-book of humor essays referenced in the videos

  • A teacher who's a best-selling author, an award-winning humorist, and a professional writing and life coach who loves helping people become hilarious.

I am utterly positive you will not find a humor writing course of this quality anywhere for such a low price! (And if you disagree after checking it out, Udemy offers a 30-day, no-hassle, money-back guarantee.)

So hey! What are you waiting for? Dive in today and start making people laugh so hard, milk will come out of their noses ... even when they're not drinking milk.


"[Dave Fox is] the best writing teacher I have ever had. Talented, funny, approachable, and structured."

– Leslie in Surrey, England


"Dave Fox is an amazing teacher who will give you online feedback as if you were sitting right next to him."

– Joan in Bakersfield, California


Also check out my other courses on Udemy:

  • Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals (and still have time to enjoy your trip!)

  • Travel Writing: Explore the World and Publish Your Stories

  • Deep Travel: Have Adventures No Guidebook Can Tell You About

  • The Writing Mind 1: Defeat Writer's Block & Write Confidently

  • The Writing Mind 2: Overcome Distractions & Get More Written



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Instructor Details

Dave Fox

  Dave Fox is on a mission to help people tell scintillating stories. He's a professional travel and humor writer, a writing and humor coach, a chronic storyteller, and the author of two bestselling books. Dave thrives on stepping outside of his cultural comfort zones in search of adventures and misadventures. He also makes really good sandwiches if you ask him nicely. 

                       Originally from the United States, Dave started travel journaling at age seven when his family moved to England for a year. During that time, he developed an obsession with foreign cultures, which eventually morphed into his travel writing career. He also developed a British accent, which eventually morphed back to a mostly-American accent, but he respects your right to spell "humour" with that extra "U" if it makes you happy. 

    Dave's love for humo(u)r writing evolved in early adulthood when he discovered office memos didn't have to be boring. He fled nine-to-five life in 2001 on a mission to expand beyond office memos, and published his first book of travel-humor essays three years later after winning the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Book Proposal Contest. He has been teaching writing workshops for more than 20 years. He has been making sandwiches even longer. 

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Reviews

4.1

1,019 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Ken Altfather on 12/26/2020

I like the technical aspects of this course - the video scripts, the comedy techniques, the narration. The problem is most examples are the author's own work and almost all fell flat with me - not well written, only mildly amusing and lacking inspiration. So, it causes me pause .... are these techniques any good? EDITED. Just dropped the rating another star because I couldn't get a refund. Apparently I watched too much.

By Yazeedkamal on 12/4/2020

My friends thought I was joking when I told them that I was watching a joke-writing course But in fact it is something important to every person. The speaker's voice was calm, relaxing, and humorous as well But as an Arab person I followed this course through Google Translate Because I do not know English well, and there are many examples that I did not understand just because I did not belong to the culture of the speaker !! In any case, thank you. I will give the course five stars, and I give the speaker 15 stars.

By Dean Burkey on 11/8/2020

Funny and fun course about humor writing. Lots of great techniques and tips with lots of great examples. I highly recommend this course to help you improve your humor writing. Thank you Dave Fox!

By Dawid Sadie on 10/26/2020

Only 2 videos in. So far it seems promising

By Claire Rudyj on 10/24/2020

Thanks, thoroughly enjoyed the course, a lot of good pointers picked up to improve my writing and my travel blog going forward :)

By Peter Mack on 10/15/2020

Ver interesting and useful course. Entertaining and fun!

By NIPEN BALA on 10/13/2020

overall nice

By Alex T. Steffen on 10/12/2020

Great insights and techniques.

By Michael Knoll on 9/13/2020

I'm writing a memoir and I want to interject some humor into it. In fact, I have already included some funny experiences I've had in the memoir, but I would like to refine and polish them.

By Tatjana Argamante on 9/7/2020

Great !

By Ryan Damon on 9/7/2020

This is a very specific situation, as I'm already a professional comedy writer. Therefore, all this explaining and setup is about what I expected, however I'm watching through the whole thing in case the earlier videos can teach me something.

By Raquel Llanes on 8/12/2020

Very good. He explained things clearly and I understand why things are funny a little better.

Showing 12 of 178 reviews

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Overall Score : 82 / 100