Stand-Up Comedy Writing is a 10-week workshop, which includes lectures, exercises, and the critiquing of student projects. It’s for beginners or anyone who wants to brush up on the fundamentals. Farther down, you can view a syllabus for this course. As a bonus, the course culminates with an optional performance at an NYC comedy club.
Comics say it’s the greatest high. You step into the light, take a swig of water, pick up the mic, then reduce a crowd of people to a mass of helpless laughter. Sure, the risks are great—silence, heckling, humiliation—but on a good night a stand-up feels richer than Notaro and Rock combined.
You “kill” or “die” depending on your material. Here you will learn techniques for writing and performing stand-up comedy, as well as how to market yourself.
Whether you favor shtick or sophistication, we’ll show you how to write standup material that makes ‘em laugh, and laugh some more.
This course gives you a firm grounding in the basics of fiction craft and gets you writing a short story (or two) or a novel. Course components:
- Lectures
- Writing exercises
- Workshopping and rehearsing material
New York City/Zoom classes
- The syllabus varies from teacher to teacher, term to term. Many topics will be similar to those covered in the Online classes.
About
- Zoom classes happen in real time.
- The Zoom classes unite students from all over the world at Gotham—New York City’s most well-established writing school.
- The Zoom classes happen on videoconference, in “real time.” Very much like an in-person class except everyone is on a computer or device in their own space. The Zoom software is free and simple to use.
- You can take a Zoom writing class from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. The majority of our Zoom students are located in the U.S. but we also draw students from practically every country in the world.
- Tech support will be available. Out of respect for everyone’s privacy, the Zoom sessions are not recorded.