Funny / Terrible Writing Advice

An internet comedian who tells you how to not write a good story with nothing but sarcasm is sure to have a few laughs.

In General

• The Running Gag with Love Triangle.
  • In "Urban Fantasy", the first thing that is established right after the setting (take the modern world but slap some magic on it) is the love triangle! It even gets expanded into a Love Dodecahedron as it recruits as many mythical creatures as possible into its cast. Even a fire hydrant is involved.
  • "Love Interests" advises that writers use as much Unresolved Sexual Tension as possible to prolong the conflict without actually resolving it. When JP runs out of ideas, he entertains pulling up a Running Gag to keep it going, but doesn't come up with anything as he pushes aside the Love Triangle symbol.
  • Even How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is not safe from the love triangle. No kidding!
  • In "Noble Houses", JP's noble house motto is the comically bad Latin phrase "Amor Triangulo".
  • When "Cosmic Horror" segues into Lovecraft Lite, it's the power of the Love Triangle that is used to fight off the otherworldly abominations.
  • "Franchise Reboot" inevitably lampshades how a romance plot and love triangle gets shoehorned into the story.
  • The grimdark premise outlined in the middle of "Revenge Plots" finally reaches its fruition when the protagonist meets the one who wronged him... and it gets consumed by a love triangle, even if uncalled for.
  • In "Filler" he doesn't even want to spare the effort to write a love triangle, and suggests that the filler love interest be erased via a "filler black hole" which also gets used to erase other temporary elements like neighboring countries and MacGuffins.
• In the sponsored content at the end, the hooded conspirator (speaking through a hologram) is regularly mistaken for a ghost by his interlocutor.

Episodes by Year

2016

Welcome To Terrible Writing Advice

Dystopias

Mary Sue

• "Let's start adding strengths! Like how she's young and immortal because she's a half-dragon half-vampire half-angel half-elven princess." The character herself also adds that she's half-Vulcan.
• "Are the villains ruthless and supremely powerful? Not compared to Mary Sue! They should crumble before her in the most anticlimactic way possible. Just like the story's narrative stakes! It's not like any of the readers actually want to see a close contest!"

Fantasy Races

Environmentalism

Alien Invasions

Urban Fantasy

• The second thing the video establishes, after the setting (take the modern world and slap on some magic), is the Love Triangle. And of course, it doesn't even hide that it's taking a potshot at The Twilight Saga, as the first two possible suitor choices are vampires and werewolves, while gleefully tossing aside the usual flaws that each mythical creature type would suffer from.
• "Now I understand that some urban fantasy stories do detail their settings and magic systems, so go ahead and indulge in worldbuilding at the cost of romance, unless you want to make money!"

Slasher Films

2017

Marketing and Promotion

Magic Schools

Evil Empires

Writer's Block

Post Apocalyptic

Chosen Ones

Beginning a Story

War Stories

Taking Criticism

Alien Ecosystems

Antiheroes

Finishing a Story

Cyberpunk

Survival Horror

Fantasy Battles

Giving Criticism

2018

Intrigue Plots

• When JP talks about how part of the only way for The Conspiracies plan could succeed is if they frame numerous senators, the response of the senator is "Joke's on you, Conspiracy! My approval rating can't get any lower."

Dark Lords

Action Scenes

Worldbuilding Cultures

Character Development

Steampunk

Rivals

Science Fiction Weapons

• He suggests ignoring proper tactics so that the battle can turn into a messy brawl for the hero to dramatically swoop in and sort out. Bonus points if the protagonist uses a sci-fi-themed sword in a setting with primarily ranged weapons.
  "*snickering* What author is dumb enough to do that?" (he displays the cover of Aeon Legion: Labyrinth, a book he wrote)
• With a powerful military equipped with cutting-edge technology, superweapons, and superior tactics, who could possibly stand up to them? Apparently alien primitives, armed with sticks and stones. "Can't bomb them into the Stone Age if they're already there."

Grimdark

• Everything the "hero" says is hilarious.
  "I don't understand. I'm wearing a belt made out of skulls. Why aren't people taking me seriously?
  "I'm so conflicted! Should I wear a giant skull pauldron or a giant pauldron made of skulls?
• The Running Gag of J.P. killing cute animals to distract audiences from how awful his setting is.
  "How does such a woefully inefficient system cope with the logistical nightmare of endless total war? Because I murdered a baby seal and yes, you should feel bad!

Plotting A Story

• "Never mind that the plot is so awful that it resembles a trainwreck that collided with a bus full of screaming clowns. And the clowns are on fire."

Cosmic Horror

Noble Houses

Holiday Specials

• JP starts the episode waging war on Christmas. Why? He's worked in retail before and the endless Christmas songs drove him mad.
• As a Shout-Out to A Christmas Carol (like many other Christmas stories) he gets haunted by three ghosts. The third is the Ghost of Christmas Presents. No, he's not here to deliver a moral about the spirit of Christmas, he's here to exchange gifts because he enjoys that part of Christmas.
• The episode ends with JP realizing that his war on Christmas was ultimately futile, and like many other Christmas-based references, his heart grew three sizes that day as he learned to embrace how the holiday theme has brought in profits. And then he keels over and dies from cardiomegaly.

2019

Spies

Love Interests

• Why should the story feature a love interest? Because... every story should have one, regardless of the genre! But because writing romance is hard, he recommends just minimizing the love interest's screentime, making her the character equivalent of a MacGuffin rather than a legitimate character.
• Why is Unresolved Sexual Tension used to excess to keep a couple pining for each other without actually starting a relationship? Because it will then need to involve writing a proper romantic relationship, and [the author] can't maintain one in real life!
• The reason why relationships are kept in limbo is because the writer doesn't want to anger fans. JP suggests just never resolving anything even by the end of the story, or haphazardly wrapping up relationship plot lines which would send the fanbase into neverending civil war.

Megacorporations

Characterization

• J.P. ironically pointing out his Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist nature in a hilarious Continuity Porn moment:
  "After all, it's not like over the course of MANY TWA episodes I have been characterized as petty, greedy, self-serving, insensitive, shortsighted, mean, ignorant, ruthless and all around as trustworthy as a used-car salesman trying to sell you time-shares on Neptune."

Comic Relief Characters

• JP almost breaks character at many points when describing the comic relief character, with clear disdain in his voice.

Giant Monsters

• At one point in the video JP takes on a form reminiscent of Godzilla, with pencils as his claws and love triangles as the spines on his back.

Avoiding Scams

• The fine print on the "The Book Existence Award" page:
  "We reserve the right to display your work on our site forever. Also, we own your firstborn child now."

Myths, Legends, and Gods

• The secret of magic:
  J.P.: Are your expectations subverted yet?
  Reader: Yes. I expected a good story.

Alpha Heroes

• When describing the typical "alpha hero" as a "compulsive blackmailing stalker with control issues, a short temper, and equipped with near-unlimited resources at his disposal", J.P. has to pause and check his script to make sure he didn't get the episode mixed up with one on supervillains.
• On a meta level, this is funny because for once, he's not exaggerating. Many people who read romance books can tell you that if anything, he's actually toning it down.

Franchise Reboots

• Rather than sarcastically "helping" to support unskilled writers, this video is dedicated to "rich media moguls looking to exploit our ever-shrinking pool of nostalgia", and his disdain for the questionable directive decisions with reboot movies shows.
• Near the start of the video is a graph showing a projection of reboots over time. At some point past 2025, Disney manages to buy all of pop culture, pushing the future into a reboot singularity.
• Instead of re-imagining a classic story for a modern audience to enjoy, he suggests developing an interconnected multiverse "even though only Marvel pulled that off". This also means instead of writing a self-contained story, the film would involve teasing several future stories that will never get adapted because the first movie bombed.
• "Art direction is for children's coloring books the same way themes are for eighth-grader's book reports."
• When confronted with elements in an original work that may come off as problematic in the current day, JP suggest to just ignore them, and pretend they were never there. After all, "we need room for a fresh set of problematic tropes", he says while holding paint cans reading "Industrial Grade Cast White Wash"
• With the iconic characters, JP suggests either exaggerating them into shells of their former selves, getting them sidelined by an original character, spitefully killing them off (even if it's done off-screen) to make the show "edgier", or simply go with an original cast and setting so that you can do whatever you want while still getting to profit off brand recognition.
  "I can't be bothered with understanding the source material that should be held in contempt by the entire production staff."
• The video ends with a diagram showing a life cycle of franchise reboots. Starting with "Reboot announced", it progresses through stages such as "hype train", "release", "rage over changed elements", "YouTube Video Essay Postmortem", before returning to "Reboot announced."

Zombie Apocalypse

Ending A Story

• "Themes help structure a story, and the only structure we need is the house we are going to make out of money thanks to your amazing ending."

Villains

2020

Military Science Fiction

Power Fantasy

Dungeon Master's Guide

• "Let's see how the world's doing today!" (Dumpster fire with toilet paper in the background) "Nope! Still terrible."

Mentors

• JP realizing that, as he's giving advice to the viewers, that makes him a mentor, and all that implies. So he starts trying to pad out the video to delay his inevitable death, as the Grim Reaper looms closer and closer.

Killing Off Characters

• JP is still dead since the previous episode and points out it's a rare instance of actual continuity in the show.
• JP dressed as the Grim Reaper. The scythe's handle is a giant pencil.

2021

Isekai

• The episode begins with JP getting hit by Truck-kun (a truck with big anime eyes) and waking up with Anime Hair and eyes.
• JP notes that a lot of isekai stories also feature elements of the Harem Genre, and begins with a grim historical description of harems before realizing that he's reading off his history notes.
• JP demonstrates how shallow the harem cast is by presenting a table with an assortment of physical attributes. Just roll dice to mix and match the physical attributes of each character and your harem is done! Personality? They have none other than "is in love with the protagonist."
  "The important thing to remember is that it's not an isekai story until it has hentai search terms on it!"
• The isekai protagonist themselves is described as "with a character as flat as the loli's chest" and "whose nationality and culture is as interchangeable and deep as the cardboard box the Blu-Ray arrives in".
  • He later adds that there is a way to expand on the protagonist's character to make him more sympathetic: by contributing to slavery. JP stumbles a bit as he double-checks his script.
• When discussing how political figures react to the protagonist tearing up the setting, one example he throws out is the baron bribing the hero with a harem that he can actually sleep with and won't assault him when he sees their underwear by accident.
• With writing the beginning, he notes a strange trend of killing the character in his original world via traffic accident to set up his reincarnation into the fantasy world, instead of the billion other ways you can establish such a story. The Long List of ideas he brainstorms is something he's done in two minutes, and there's a note saying "Surely isekai writers could have done better if they actually tried?"
  • One idea involves a Science Hero teleporting into the fantasy land, with every instance of "Science!" announced with reverb. Also the hook lampshades how cool it would be "to see Dr. STONE science around in Fantasy Land."
  • "A wardrobe leads to Jesus lion" is a blatant Narnia reference — it's basically an isekai story anyway.
  • The last item on said long list deserves note: namely, the protagonist getting hit by a dragon while trying to avoid an out-of-control truck.
• When all else fails and the author risks expending effort to write, he suggests taking an existing template and adding a gimmick to it, such as the protagonist getting to fantasy land with his cellphone! That has no reception.

Revenge Plots

• When pondering what to do after stuffing a love interest into the fridge to start the story, JP suggests reveling in over-the-top grimdark violence and placing it at the beginning of the story even though the rest of the book might be a light-hearted action-adventure tale. Since he can't actually show the violence without getting demonetized by YouTube, he puts up an "unrelated ad saving puppy".

Fan Fiction Original Characters

• After one derail too many, JP "rewards" JC (an "idealized" version of JP) by literally taking him behind the woodshed.
• In a scene where JP talks about the possibility of monetizing his original character, he's standing in front of JC, who is smiling and carrying a sign that reads "Original Character: Do Not Steal!" JP's Inner Critic is not amused.
  Inner Critic: JP, surely people only use that phrase ironically.
  JP: You vastly overestimate the intelligence of the average internet user.

2022

Lovemaking Scenes

• The topic at hand forces him to age-restrict this video, seeing that his series sometimes gets used in classrooms. He sighs and gets on with it, taking solace in that he won't have to work too hard on the graphics as it will be mostly black censor boxes.
• The "level of spice" for a lovemaking scene is illustrated in a chart. It stars with -1: Real JP's love life, then goes up in explicitness, putting hardcore porn at number 13 of 17 and the more depraved things higher up. The top of the list is anime handholding.
• When a scene that reads like it's from a pornographic work won't do, he instead suggests Ikea Erotica or Purple Prose Porn.
  Beige: He then inserted tab A into slot B and repeated. He finished assembly quickly in under 2 minutes, but his partner was unsatisfied with the results and they had to return the bed back to the store.
  Purple: They were joined in a single act of decadent expression. Like a birth of a bright shining star, or existing in the eye of a tropical storm. The tempestuous sea of desire that their souls navigated, joined in lascivious ambrosia, could only be cast about in the endless dephts of aching pleasure.
  JP: So, what just happened? Did they make love? Are they on a sailboat or something? Did they just buy a car? Who knows!

Shipping (Yes, he's going there!)

• JP is utterly brutal in several scenes, all but calling out some writing crews and fandoms by name.
• When he goes into talking about shipping etiquette and Ship-to-Ship Combat, he sets up a hypothetical example of shippers who are fans for a show made for children. From the way he says "show made for children" you can already tell how much shipping such characters repulses him. It's such a prevalent phenomenon that the comments cannot agree on which show he's talking about!
• Aang and Harry Potter are at a "Canon Characters Support Group" meeting taking about the Character Derailment that happens to their friends in shipping fics. Harry especially complains about how every other week Ron turns into a Death Eater. Special points to Aang whose discussion is a sly Take That! to How I Became Yours.

Dinosaurs

• JP using the similarities in initials to have Dr. Gran— er, a paleontologist suggest to the makers of Jurassic Park that yes, a little research and realism would be appreciated by those most likely to consume dinosaur-based media.
• After talking about not trying to have your dinosaurs fight intelligently and just mashing them together like toys, he proceeds to do just that, using dinosaur analogues for Optimus Prime and Megatron.
• After dismissing the idea of writing from the Dinosaur perspective, saying nobody wants to read the Dinosaur equivalent of Watership Down, he immediately pauses, realizes that is a good idea, and proceeds to write it onto a list of future ideas. Among such bangers as Urban Fantasy vs Cyberpunk, Men and Women literally being from Mars and Venus, and Daria in Muv-Luv Alternative.

Deconstruction

• JP explains the "best" motive for deconstructing something is petty spite of a genre you don't watch or understand to show off how smart you are, as opposed to actually telling a story - you know, being a bully. This is represented by his avatar shaking J. R. R. Tolkien by the scruff of his collar and demanding his lunch money.
• The running gag of something being hit with a big red [DECONSTRUCTED] stamp whenever JP does his Shallow Parody Darker and Edgier advice for various topic. The Brick Joke hits when he accidentally describes the premise of his show as a deconstruction of advice channels, and his avatar is knocked over by the stamp.

2023

Evil Lackeys

• JP talks about adding Elite Mooks to the story. Only the word "Elite" is framed by enough quotation marks to stretch to both sides of the screen.
• He says that even if the Elite Mooks are effective, they won't appear again after they manage to capture the Hero. This is over a scene of Aang being told by an Earth Kingdom soldier that he hasn't seen any archers in the enemy ranks.
• When talking about the Dark Lord's Zero Tolerance policy for failure, he shows the Dark Lord Neck Lifting a mook next to a sign reading "(0) Days since the Dark Lord shot the messenger".
• A man in a suit is joining the Evil Lackeys:
  Boss: "You have an impressive resume, but why leave Tech Support?"
  Applicant: "Because working Tech Support has left me with an infinite well of hatred for Humanity! So I figured changing jobs to Evil Lackey would be at worst a lateral move."

Dungeon Crawl

• JP recalls a tabletop story of an adventuring party reaching a fork in the road. Their first choice leads them to a troll cave. They're not interested, so they double back and take the other path... which leads them to a troll cave. They get frustrated and go back the way they came... and come across yet another troll cave.
• He takes a bit of liberty with the term "Troll" and frames the need to go into the troll cave because the king, ignoring the saying "thou shalt not feed the trolls", set out a bounty for the troll's head after it left some inflammatory comments on the royal missive boards.

Worldbuilding Governments and Politics

• This moment:
  JP: "Now, JP," I hear you ask, "Surely you don't need to cover the U.S.' system of democracy! Are you suggesting that your majority American audience doesn't know how their own government works?"
  (Beat)
  JP: So, anyway—
• JP’s section on “Power and Influence of States” has a segment featuring Generic News Network with the headline “United Nations suddenly highly competent and evil!”, while the newscaster delivers what’s seemingly a spoof of the Left Behind series, saying that a coalition of nations including “Iceland, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Kansas and The North Pole” invaded Israel, and all their leaders say “Because The Book of Revelations says so. Glory to The Beast”!

LitRPG

• JP starts the video reading off his character sheet which is rife with Self-Deprecation.
• JP's contempt toward the harem trope (yes, it's even found its way into Western LitRPGs) is made clear, especially when he describes how the Unresolved Sexual Tension stays unresolved either from plot contrivances, or because the Vanilla Protagonist has no characterization whatsoever.
• What if the audience doesn't want a harem? He suggests starting with a small romantic plot before expanding it into a whole harem later in the story. This is illustrated by him sneaking a love triangle into a story.
• JP adds that a power fantasy isn't a bad thing — the audience wants to see a strong protagonist, but what matters is the journey to obtaining and mastering their power. After all, a shortcut to power is like taking a cab to an end of a marathon — it defeats the point, and would that even be fun? Well, it sure is fun for him!
• Now that he's established the characters of a LitRPG story, he needs a setting, and what better setting than the Tolkeinesque Medieval European Fantasy? Don't worry, it's not a lazy copy-paste, because he's added catgirls!
  "Pushing the originality there!"
• On the concept of using the game mechanics in the story, he gleefully tosses aside the brainpower needed to spin them into an interesting story and just uses it because it's cool. The result is a combat log where a normal rat hits the protagonist for an erroneous amount of damage that kills him, then spills out and injures the party, the game world, and the multiverse.