If you like humor writing, we have the editor of Slackjaw, Alex Baia, teaching a course on it for our Forever Workshop this month.
The first two lessons are free and here:
Lesson 1 - Premise & Escalation - Learn: What a premise is and how to make a good one. The carinal sin of comedy writing. How to escalate and build upon an idea. The minimum requirements of a viable humor piece.
Lesson 2 - Writing From a Headline - Learn: Why a headline is the perfect starting point for a humor piece. How to tell if your headline is actually good. Common headline pitfalls to avoid. A lightly structured approach to the drafting process
Yes, they are free. Try them out here:
And, if that’s not your style of humor, Doug has the perfect essay for you. I find myself more and more in Doug’s camp, but have personally learned so much from Alex that it’s toss up for me.
Also, Doug went ahead and made today’s list by observing all of the magazines who publish humorous pieces without the same structure what you see in McSweeny’s, Slackjaw, or Points In Case.
→ You can read and download Doug’s list as a spreadsheet here. ←
I launched Witcraft last year because I believed there was a market out there of people who want some daily relief from the gloom and doom that seems to pervade the news and the web.
I love humour, wit, absurdity, wry social commentary, and people’s funny moments in their lives. I love writers who know how to craft their submissions to reach the audience they crave. The problem for them is finding a site that meets that need.
One of the major issues is that what passes for humour on many sites, especially on so many US ‘humor’ sites, is headline driven clickbait, consisting mostly of put-downs and snark.
As an Australian, I grew up in the Anglo-Irish tradition of humour, wit, and absurdity that didn’t necessarily have a punchline and didn’t always generate belly laughs, but made you smile and make your day more human.
In my view, the best stand-up comedians are great storytellers. They are stand-outs because they are crafters who don’t rely on four-letter words. (I find it almost impossible to believe that younger audiences still think a comedian saying ‘fuck’ is innately hilarious).
Turns out a lot of people agree with me, especially Americans who are tired of sledgehammer ‘wit’. Since launching, Witcraft has received over 800 submissions from around the world and published over 250 of them. The subject matter has ranged from household appliances to dress codes to creative accounting to giants to the remains of a cake on the roadside and many more. Each brings an individual voice and approach but the feature that unites them is the craft and imagination of the writer.
So, as the Editor of Witcraft, what do I look for when deciding what to publish?
Craft – Pieces that don’t look like they were slapped together over a coffee (or something stronger). Literary snobs that look down on humour fail to understand that the best humour writing demands as much skill as any soul-searching ‘high art’.
Originality – For example, if you’re going to send a piece about the generation gap, it better have a take on it we haven’t seen a thousand times before.
Imagination – So many submissions have the core of a humorous idea but then fail to craft it in a way that makes it accessible and fresh.
A sense of the absurd – I have a real soft spot for absurdity. Examples of beautifully crafted absurdity include Monty Python’s ‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’ and John Clarke’s ‘The front fell off’ (available on YouTube).
Respect for our publication – So many submissions have obviously never been through a spelling or grammar check or the writer clearly doesn’t know that their computer will tell them at the bottom of the page how many words they’ve written. Mind you, these are also usually the ones that have entirely ignored all the other guidelines, despite ticking a box that says they have read them and understand them. I save my best withering responses for these occasions.
Finally, as difficult as it is to believe, my tastes in humour are not the be-all and end-all on the matter. There are many other litmags to provide outlets for skillful writers of humour but searching aggregation sites doesn’t always help. For example, some publications say they accept humour (along with a laundry list of other categories) but there is no recent evidence that they do.
So I’ve put together a list of over 100 specialist humour sites and mainstream sites where humour writers can submit their work. It, of course, includes the usual suspects when you do a web search but also includes many entries drawn from my own research and experience, along with the help of our readers and writers.
Doug Jacquier writes from the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. His work has been published in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and India. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways and is the editor of the humour site, Witcraft.
Thanks so much for providing this Doug!
I'm looking for one that will take a 9k-er.