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 dialogue! We're writing Dad jokes swiftly, and as usual your anonymish host is writing along. It got substantially easier once she decided to work a little blue.

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, and today's exercise is one of them.

For today's ten-minute writing exercise:

A "Tom Swiftie" is a classic joke form that exploits a second meaning for an adverb to make a punchline. A few examples are:

• "I dove into the pool and cracked my head," he said shallowly.
• "I can't march anymore," the soldier said haltingly.
• "I have a bigger piano than this," she said grandly.

For ten minutes, write as many Tom Swifties as you can. Starting with the adverb can help.

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.