Comedy Writer James Breakwell Has a Million Followers. Here’s His Strategy for Writing About His Family Online.
Comedy writer James Breakwell aka @XplodingUnicorn has a few rules when it comes to writing about his kids online.
Growing up, James Breakwell never had to think about what jobs he wasn’t allowed to pursue. But now, as the father of four girls — one of whom recently said she wants to be a construction worker, and another who asked if she could be the Pope — he’s constantly putting himself in the shoes of the females surrounding him at home.
is a professional comedy writer and “the amateur father of four girls,” and is internet famous for being the personality behind @XplodingUnicorn, a parenting humor account with more than one million followers. He is known for his viral tweets depicting hilarious snippets of conversations with his daughters.I asked James to join me on the Startup Parent Podcast in June 2021 to talk about how he navigates building a public persona based on his family life — including how much to share and what to withhold. It turns out, despite being prolific (and hilarious!), he does have a few rules for what he posts.
“It’s like these tweets are about us. But they’re not us.”
When creating content based on his home life, James thinks about the world he creates on Twitter like “a made-for-TV movie based on real-life events.” He explains, “the things happened, but they’re a step removed… they’re punched up, there’s drama added, there’s humor added.” In other words, it’s not 100% real, but it’s based loosely on real-life.
Another distinction: “It’s like these tweets are about us. But they’re not us.”
He isn’t opposed to distributing pictures of his kids. But in his writing, he uses pseudonyms for each daughter so that random people can’t Google them and figure out where they go to school or live. Though photos aren’t off limits, he says he’s careful to omit identifying information like street signs.
In this interview with our first-ever startup dad to join the show, James gets real about how he navigates building a public persona based on his family life — including how much to share and what to withhold.
Creating a professional writing career—especially with children to care for—is not always simple or easy
In this episode, we also talk about his career as a writer and how he’s navigated the field of journalism as jobs shrink and newspapers go under around the country. Plus, he talks about having a day job, and why it’s so important to have a job in his field—and why it allows him the creative freedom he needs to do all the work he does. We call him a startup dad because he’s navigating a full-time career with a professional writing career that he’s had to create from the ground up. In our world, building something from nothing is part of the entrepreneurial ethos.
He also opens up about having a stillborn baby, how it affected him, and how as a child, James also had a brother who passed away shortly after birth. We talk about what it’s like to have more kids than it appears at first glance, and how hard it was to go through for him and his family—and how the family coped without a support network nearby.
Tune in to Episode #168 to learn how James and his wife, Lola, got through that difficult period, what a typical day looks like in their household, and how he built a writing career that complements his family life and parenting responsibilities. Read more hilarity from James in his newsletter, his books, or his Twitter account.
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— Sarah Peck
CEO & Founder
Startup Parent