Ten-Minute Writing Exercise #35: Noun vs Noun

2025 New Year's writing resolution: spend 10 minutes a day getting words on the page.

Today's 10-minute writing exercise is focused on comedy! We're matching up nouns for fun, and as usual your anonymish host is writing along. The Pink Panther is tooooo tempting, she had to cut herself off.

This is a no-homework podcast! Every episode, we build in ten minutes of time for ourselves to do the assignment, and the assignment is always to write write write.

You can write to our daily writing prompt, but you could also:

• journal
• brainstorm
• write for your work in progress

All that matters is that you do write and you don't cheat and you don't stop writing until the music comes in.

Gene Perret is a master of classic humor, and in Comedy Writing Step by Step he coaches the reader from a blank sheet of paper all the way to developing a standup routine. We're going to adapt a few exercises from the book this month, and today's exercise is one of them.

For today's ten-minute writing exercise:

• Brainstorm a numbered list of nouns, leaning towards specificity when you can. Rather than a lamp, write a Tiffany lamp. Rather than a girl, write Red Riding Hood.
• When you have a list of fifty, close your eyes and pick a random number less than 25. Now, write a joke about that noun, but you must also incorporate a noun of your choosing from the second half of your list.
• Repeat until time is up.

Our themes this month are:

• Love in all its forms
• Dialogue
• Comedy Writing Step by Step by Gene Perret

We will also write a complete work of flash fiction together in a week from Feb 17 - Feb 23. No pre-work needed, and as always, zero homework outside of our ten minutes a day. This month we'll use Dan Harmon's story circles method to plan out our stories.

Our themes this month are:

• Love in all its forms
• Dialogue
• Comedy Writing Step by Step by Gene Perret

We will also write a complete work of flash fiction together in a week from Feb 17 - Feb 23. No pre-work needed, and as always, zero homework outside of our ten minutes a day. This month we'll use Dan Harmon's story circles method to plan out our stories.