Can you learn how to write comedy? Absolutely - anyone can. Scott Dikkers will tell you how. He's co-founder and longest-serving editor-in-chief of The Onion, the world's most popular humor publication, and founder of The Onion Training Center at the Second City in Chicago. He's also a number one best-selling humor author and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. In How to Write Funnier, he tells you everything you need to know to start writing funny stories, how to write funny scenes, and how to write funny sketches. 

From one of the world’s most celebrated humor writers, this easy-to-follow, step-by-step book lays out a clear system for producing living, breathing comedy characters that audiences will fall in love with.

This entertaining and sharply written guide - for both beginners breaking into comedy and professionals seeking to improve their sets and advance their careers - examines the work of great comedians such as Louis C. K., Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Izzard, Moms Mabley, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor, and more as a means of illustrating the most important techniques of performing and writing stand-up.   

The New Comedy Bible is a step-by-step, no excuses manual for writing, performing, and launching your career as a stand-up comic. Written by Judy Carter, the author of The Comedy Bible (2001), which was called by The Washington Post and Forbes as a “Comedy Essential”. This new book, penned in classic Carter’s style - part career coach and part comedy dominatrix - has 100 percent new content.

Action explores the ways that a modern-day writer can successfully tell an action story that not only stands apart, but wins the war on clichés. Teaming up with the former co-host of The Story Toolkit, Bassim El-Wakil, legendary story lecturer Robert McKee guides writers to award-winning originality by deconstructing the action genre, illuminating the challenges, and, more importantly, demonstrating how to master the demands of plot with surprising beats of innovation and ingenuity.

Most screenwriting books tend to focus on story structure, scene writing, navigating the business, and other parts of the craft that come after the initial choice of the central concept for a story. Multiple Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning writer/producer Erik Bork (HBO’s Band of Brothers) takes a different approach. His experience in the industry and as a screenwriting professor and coach have led him to recognize that it's the selection of the initial idea that is the most important part of the process - with the most impact on the project's chance of success.

Laugh Tactics is full of strategies that dissect, break down, and analyze all of the types of humor that you'll encounter in daily conversation - stuff you can really use with people you talk to. We're not all trying to become standup comedians, and this isn't a book about ha-ha jokes with setups and punch lines. Learn to simply make a better impression on people, put them at ease, charm them, and make them smile with you.

In this essential guide to acting, internationally renowned directing coach Judith Weston demonstrates what constitutes a good performance, what actors want from a director, and what directors do wrong. She also goes over script analysis and preparation and how actors work, and she shares important and helpful insights into the director/actor relationship.

Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost 30 years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of 50 short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the best loved books on writing available. This new edition includes five brand-new, never-before-shared tools. 

In Dialogue, Robert McKee offers in-depth analysis for how characters speak on the screen, on the stage, and on the page in believable and engaging ways. From Macbeth to Breaking Bad, McKee deconstructs key scenes to illustrate the strategies and techniques of dialogue. Dialogue applies a framework of incisive thinking to instruct the prospective writer on how to craft artful, impactful speech.

Bringing together the imaginative strategies of fiction storytelling and new ways of narrating true, real-life events, creative nonfiction is the fastest-growing part of the creative writing world. It's a cutting-edge genre that's reshaping how we write (and read) everything from biographies and memoirs to blogs and public speaking scripts to personal essays and magazine articles.

Maria Bamford is a creative genius. But the process of creating is not something that “comes easily” or “is enjoyable” for her. So, over the years, she’s invented a number of helpful techniques for tricking, shaming, coercing herself into doing things. You Are (A Comedy) Special is 15-step comedic send up of a self help guide that examines Maria’s approach to stand-up in a hilarious fashion.

The Second City has launched the careers of celebrated comic performers such as Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert and produced award-winning content. But it's the actual improvisational process developed and honed over the years by The Second City that has become its legacy. Players master an ability to cocreate in ensembles using philosophies that celebrate a "yes, and" approach.

Divided into four sections - "Status", "Spontaneity", "Narrative Skills", and "Masks and Trance" - and arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the audiobook sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an audiobook of ideas and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

Do you want to successfully self-publish in eBook, print, or audiobook formats? There are thousands of new books being published every day, but many self-published books quickly sink to the bottom of the pile. Many authors are frustrated because there are so many options for self-publishing, and they don't know which one to choose or what will be best for their book. Others spend thousands of dollars to publish and end up brokenhearted with the result. But it doesn't have to be this way.