Sunday, October 11th, 2026

Live Seminar via Zoom from 2:00PM - 5:00PM Eastern 

A recording will be provided if you cannot attend live.

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PDT): 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM / Chicago (CDT): 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM / New York (EDT): 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM / London (BST): 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM / Berlin (CEST): 8:00 PM – 11:00 PM

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us. 

Elissa Bassist is the editor of the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus and the author of Hysterical, a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. As a founding contributor to The Rumpus, Elissa has written cultural and personal criticism since the website launched in 2009. INSIDE JOKES, a humor writing craft book, co-written with Caitlin Kunkel, is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in 2026. Elissa teaches humor writing at The New School and elsewhere, and she is probably her therapist’s favorite. 

Who is this class for?

This online writing class is for anyone who wants to write funnier, whether you're already funny or aren't funny yet. It's open to writers of every level and every form: nonfiction and fiction, long-form and short, tragedy and comedy. All levels are welcome.

What to expect:

In this three-hour seminar, we'll turn regular sentences into jokes using comedic and stylistic tools. To write funny, you don't need to write about something that's funny or someone who is funny — because you can write jokes if you can use a dictionary.

Comedy writing isn't writing joke after joke. It's a series of syntactical decisions and rearranging sentences until they end on a punch line. It's also learning and practicing comedic tools like wordplay, profanity, absurdity, contrast, contradiction, and neologism, alongside style tools like diction and syntax, imagery and figurative language, rhythm and punctuation, voice and tone. Humor writing — and its tools and hacks — is a skill, not an innate talent, so we'll practice to perfect it.

Expect an informative and entertaining lecture style (think TED Talk but make it stand-up), no-fail brainstorming exercises, and the longest handouts in the game. We'll write from scratch and "punch up" a work in progress by pushing sentences to their full potential. The endgame is to write more specifically, and to write more specifically like you. Our goal is to say goodbye to clichés, generalities, and purple prose, and to rewrite every boring line so readers get one surprise or treat per sentence. This creative writing workshop delivers one semester of an MFA in three hours.

What are the writing goals?

In this course, students will generate new material through a series of in-session comedy writing exercises and leave with many new jokes to fold into works in progress. Each writer will also bring one work in progress to "punch up" live in class, leaving with a funnier, more specific draft. Students are invited to share what they write during the session; this is a generative seminar, so there is no formal written critique.

Readings

Readings may include excerpts from INSIDE JOKES: A Comedy and Creativity Guide for All Writers by Elissa Bassist and Caitlin Kunkel (Grand Central Publishing). The book publishes October 20th, 2026 — just after our seminar — so this class is your first look at the material. Excerpts and handouts will be provided by the instructor; no purchase is required to participate.

COURSE OUTLINE

This three-hour seminar is built in four parts:

Part One: Lecture — the comedic and stylistic toolkit, including wordplay, profanity, absurdity, contrast, contradiction, neologism, diction and syntax, imagery and figurative language, rhythm and punctuation, and voice and tone.

Part Two: In-session writing exercises — no-fail brainstorming and generative prompts designed to produce new jokes on the page.

Part Three: In-session revising — bring a work in progress and "punch up" it live, pushing sentences to their full potential.

Part Four: AMA — an open conversation about comedy, craft, and the writing life.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Learn concrete comedic tools — wordplay, absurdity, contrast, contradiction, neologism, and more — and how to deploy them at the sentence level
  
• Practice style tools including diction, syntax, imagery, figurative language, rhythm, punctuation, voice, and tone
  
• Generate a batch of new jokes you can drop directly into works in progress
  
• Leave with one funnier, punched-up work in progress, revised live in class
  
• Replace clichés, generalities, and purple prose with specificity — one surprise or treat per sentence
  
• Take away the longest handouts in the game for reference long after the seminar ends