One Funny Line Humor Challenge Wrap Up
Featuring some thoughts, jokes from you, and quick polls
Thanks to everyone who participated in the first annual One Funny Line challenge (be it for one day or all 14 days). I got some good lines in, got back into more of a joke-writing habit, and even worked on a short humor piece that had been on the back burner for several months.
If you didn’t have time to participate you can always go back and check out all the prompts when you do have time or just use one when you are looking for some humor writing inspiration. Thank you to all the writers who contributed prompts!
I feel like it was a bit of a learning curve to figure out the best way to run the challenge and so I’m pondering what I might change if we do it in the future. If you participated and have a few minutes to answer the polls at the end of this post I would appreciate it.
Here are just *some* of the jokes that people shared during the challenge:
“Things that count as working from home: putting on my business sweats.”
“Parents driving through my kids’ school drop-off are like toddlers learning to share: no one listens, they only think about themselves, and sometimes there’s an accident.” John Sucich on Threads
“Academia: where you can write like no one’s reading.”
Mary Flannery
“Things that count as a cold plunge: Dipping my pinky in a martini.”
“While I never forget a face, I have zero recall for names and my family is used to my tendency to refer to people by their attributes, such as "monobrow dude", or "McSpitty", or "Mr Garlic". Turns out it's a little problematic for my job in HR.”
“I’m not good at gardening. It makes me feel like a bad parent. Once the initial pride of planting my progeny subsides, I become far too comfortable with watching it die.”
“Stepping out into freezing temperatures in Phoenix is like eating exotic fruit – you have no idea where it came from but it can be quite refreshing once you get past the weird, bumpy skin.”
“COVID is like ‘American Idol’: we may not talk about it as much now, but it's never going away.”
“Sometimes, I wish there was a manual for being a parent. Something like the pamphlet that comes with IKEA furniture. Something I could thumb through, think I understand, and get frustrated with because I skipped a step on page 2.”
(who also rounded up all the jokes he wrote here
“Things that count as being social: I charged my phone.”
“Sleep experts: Dark room, avoid caffeine, listen to white noise, no screens an hour before sleep
Me sitting in my bed with the light on, eating dark chocolate, hearing my 3yo roar like a dinosaur over the baby monitor, reading a 4000-reply Twitter argument: Sounds good”
on Twitter.
“Uggs are coming wayyy back in this year. I bought 3 pairs to wear during nuclear winter!” — Amos in the chat.
“Things that Count as Being Financially Responsible:
Taking Dry January to its limits—No alcohol, no humidifier, no water bottle, no moisturizing cream. Just your wilted corpse clinging to the $5.45 in your Venmo account.”
And you can still check out many more funny lines in the chat.
There were so many I did not manage to keep track of them all, and sharing jokes was not required, so I know there are many more good ones out there!
If you have a few minutes to spare, please take the below polls to weigh in on future challenges:
How did the challenge go for you? Feel free to chime in in the comments with thoughts or to elaborate on a poll response on what might work well in the future.
ACK! I was a terrible subject for this experiment. 😂Just couldn't get to the prompts each day - HOWEVER - I have saved all 14 posts and plan to visit them whenever I need a humor writing jumpstart. I do think the fact that this was happening in the background for me knocked loose a pesky block I was having with humor writing in general. It had been MONTHS since my last bit of snark on Stock Fiction. And I finally broke the seal last week: https://stockfiction.substack.com/p/viva-virality
Thank you for doing this! I will absolutely sign on to do another one with you and your readers in the future. It's been a fantastic way to meet other funny people in addition to being a creative boost for me. 💜
Loved doing this, thanks for putting it together and getting me back in a humor writing mode. (And thanks for sharing my joke!)
I'll add to the poll above - if I could have selected both in that third question I would have. 100 words a day seems perfect for 14 days...the other one could be a shorter period of time. What's that? 1 challenge a month in 2025? Seems like a lot of work but it's a great idea...