Event Description
Seminar
WRITING HUMOR — All the way to the Bank!
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Laughter is the best medicine, they say. Many IWOSCans say laughter is also lucrative. Humorous writing is not one-line jokes — it is setting up the humorous premise and giving your audience/reader the humorous payoff.
Mark Miller will show you how to craft humor for general and specific audiences. He will highlight humor’s various forms and how to craft humorous writing. He will walk us through what works, what doesn’t, and why. He will discuss the markets, resources and New Media possibilities for humorous writing.
Mark will also show a DVD of humorous situations and address what made them successful in tickling our funny bones.
Since this is an interactive seminar, following his presentation, Miller will invite attendees to read a sample of their work aloud. So if you are interested reading your work, bring a sample — no more than two pages or less than 2 minutes of reading — to the seminar. No one-line jokes, please. Miller and attendees will give you invaluable advice on whether your work stands or needs a wee twist to make it funnier.
Because of time constraints and number of attendees, Miller will determine the number of readings.
A well-rounded humorist, MARK MILLER started his comedy career in the San Francisco stand-up comedy scene where he wrote and performed his own act and shared stages with Dana Carvey and Robin Williams.
Encouraged by Jay Leno to move to Los Angeles, Miller became a stand-up fixture at the Comedy Store and Improvisation nightclubs. Miller became the first 4.0 perfect-score-from-all-three-judges winner on TV’s “Star Search.”
He created special stand-up material for Roseanne, Rodney Dangerfield, Joan Rivers, Jimmie Walker, Gallagher, Jay Leno, Garry Shandling, Jim Carrey, among others.
He also survived a series of TV sit-com staff positions from staff writer, story editor, executive script consultant to producer on “The New Odd Couple,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” “She’s the Sheriff,” “The Munsters Today,” “The Carol Burnett Show (her more recent come-back attempt), and Dana Carvey’s HBO Special. Warner Brothers bought a couple of his feature comedies.
He has been a nationally syndicated humor columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate; a staff humor writer for seven CBS Radio stations nationwide named Jack FM; written humor essays for national publications and websites, and for five years was a featured correspondent of “Weekly World News,” the humor tabloid.
Miller has written an interactive, weekly comedic relationships feature for AOL; a produced episode of TV animation, game shows; game show pilots; celebrity roast material, humorous greeting cards; and contributed to three nationally-syndicated daily newspaper cartoon strips.
Currently, he is working on an edgy youth movie script, “Brokeback Daycare Center,” and sincerely hopes “both for world peace and for Salma Hayek to respect his restraining order.”