Comedy Writing Secrets, 2nd Edition: The Best-Selling Book on How to Think Funny, Write Funny, Act Funny, And Get Paid For It

The information in the book was very insightful but the print was too small for me personally.

Perhaps this reveiw is a little unfair to the author. After all, I didn't actually get to finishing the book, but I've gone as far as I ever want to go with it.

I admit, this wasn't what I thought I was getting myself into when I first read the book; I wanted a book about how to write with an element of comedy, and what I got was a book about how to write comedy. Nonetheless, I figured that I needed a little more humor in my life, so I decided to start reading this...

...Three chapters later, I put it down.

Let's face it, if you're trying to teach people how to be funny, you need to actually be funny first. There is no humor in this book; not altogether bad, except that there sure are a lot of failed attempts at humor. That alone makes me question the effectiveness of the author in communicating these ideas, or at least his writing ability (which, I believe, is the main problem with this book).

In addition, there are a bunch of exercises which you're supposed to be doing along the way to help yourself learn these techniques. OK, good idea, but bad execution. One good example is the one on increasing the ideas you get when you look at something. You are then instructed to think of as many funny uses for a bar stool seat as you can. Me, I thought of none. The author came up with Elephant Slippers. Ha...ha...ha...?

Was that supposed to be funny? I certainly hope not.

But lets focus on what's really important here: does this book teach me to be funny? The plain and simple answer is that it might. It's just so downright unreadable that I'll never find out.

This is an excellent book on the technical aspects of comedy. After reading this you will be able to analyse how the pros do it - and why some jokes are funny and some are not. Of course, it takes a lot more than this technical ability to become a good comedy writer, but this is not a bad place to start. There are numerous comedic examples sprinkled throughout the book, which range from the hilarious to the very lame - interestingly the worst jokes are the ones by the author Professor Mel Helitzer, which I guess reinforces the dictum that those who can't teach.

- I had found this book first in my local library. In all spheres of my professional endeavours, this book has been a godsend. I had to get this book from Amazon because, months down the track, the library was wondering what had happened to their copy.

- It is not just a hand-/text-book on writing 'funny', it is an instruction manual as deep and as robust as Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People", AND it's about the 'funnies', too. Learn and laugh, wince and chuckle, laugh and learn again. A wonderful textbook and a font of relevant, witty, and incisive observations about the 'why's and 'how's of people and their behaviour, and how to use their foibles to your advantage... "Oh Lord, we beseech thee, never let politicians find this book! (Amen)".

- More effective, and a damn sight funnier than John Edward, Tony Robbins and Germaine Greer rolled into one - like Sun Tzu, but without the dignity.

The reason there are no good books on comedy is because it is an inherently impossible field to "break down" and "explain." These guys do an okay job of relaying the history of comedy, but they do nothing to actually explain anything.

Besides that fundamental flaw, these guys are simply too old and the book reads like my grandfather's "1001 Polish Jokes." This advice would have been pretty helpful is honing your standup routine for Ed Sullivan but in 2007 it just seems pathetic and lame.