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How Do Comedians Write Jokes?
Writing a good joke is a genuine art form. The idea that a joke just springs into being, conjured from thin air, couldn’t be further from the truth in most cases. However on the surface it may appear simple, a joke is a complex beast and will have been tweaked and endlessly rewritten, tried on audiences and refined some more before it is finally ready. Here we are about to share the secrets of how some of the biggest and brightest talents on the comedy scene go about writing their jokes.
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During a discussion with one comedian, They said that they write 15 new jokes per day on a postcard. What method does he use to generate so many one liners? He also indicated that he often works backwards, writing from punchline to set-up. “I hear punchlines in everyday conversation and think, ‘How could we get there in a different way?’ If someone says, ‘Serves him right,’ I’ll think, ‘Right, OK… A friend of mine’s got a left arm missing. Serves him right.’”
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Once perfected on paper, they will then test there jokes on an audience until they are at their most potent. “I know it sounds daft, but sometimes you think to yourself, ‘Which way round shall I put it?’” “‘I’ve got a friend who’s a tent peg. He’s driven himself into the ground.’ It doesn’t really get much. But you could do, ‘I’ve got a friend who’s driven himself into the ground. He’s a tent peg.’ It may never get beyond a weak laugh and I’ll drop it. Or I’ll tell it and shout, ‘Come on!’ after it.”
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Sometimes the writing process: “In stand up, the important stuff goes on before any actual writing happens. I’ll have a strong emotional response to something, an incident, something I’ve seen or heard. If it dances about in my head bothering me, I get on a stage and say it in front of an audience. If I’m relaxed enough, a punchline will eventually arrive. Then I write it down, do it again better, write that down. Each time I tell it, it becomes sharper.” Then I would go one step further than most comics and actually uses the live environment to discover your jokes, relying on your comic brain to find the punchline. The process of refinement then begins.
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Typical Joke: “The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.”
Another comedian started his joke writing while at work, stealing seconds to play with material: “sit there and open a word document and just put like jokes and the date and then start writing. And I think in the very beginning I found pieces of paper in my old notebooks that say, like ‘S’ colon, ‘P’ colon. It was for setup and punch line. So I think I was really trying to get it down to exactly where the joke itself shifts, like what word becomes the punch line. I always liked trying to make things have the fewest words possible. It seems more interesting and kind of more elegant to tell these short ideas.”
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An understanding of the basic mechanisms of a joke seems to be part of many comedians development. As well as this, One comic soon realised the need for jokes to be concise, even when working within a larger narrative. “I like to take out as much as possible…My building blocks are little jokes and short ideas. I think that even when I try to write longer things, I still tend to think incrementally, and it almost gets kind of fractal in a sense, where you have the larger structure, and it has a certain arc to it, and then even if you cut the thing in half, you’d have the same structure, and so on.” When it comes to his stand-up performances, Try using a system that allows you to develop and refine your newer material while it still is getting guaranteed laughs.
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GREAT TIP IDEA I will have different columns on a post card up on stage with me. On the far right were the jokes that were brand new—boiled down to a single word or idea. If I’m doing the set correctly, it should all be from that column. The only problem is, a lot of those jokes really suck, and if I stay in that column, I’m gonna bomb and the audience loses confidence in me. One column over, in the middle of the page, those are jokes that work half the time, and I continue to rewrite them onstage. The topic will be something like “revolving door,” and maybe tonight’s the night I figure out how to get it to work. If I do, then I move it to the far left of the page. Those are jokes that I know work something like 90% of the time. The show is kind of a failure if I just stay on the far left of the page, because I already know those work, rather than moving forward. A success would be if I did everything to the right of the page and it worked, then I suddenly have 5-10 minutes to add to my act. Sometimes I just write onstage, though. I’ll have this rambly thing and the audience helps me figure out how to make it work.”
Joke-writing can be difficult, one thing you can do is to just be yourself which will make the process easier. “In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you’re just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z.” Like many comedians, sometimes they will stumble upon and hone in on material in the live environment: “Sometimes you can write down notes about what you want to talk about and start trying it out at a open mic, but it’s still tricky. It’s so much easier to find that on stage.
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Typical Joke: “Went to see the owls at the zoo today, dressed as a mouse. Turned a few heads.”
Some comedians established themselves by doing numerous appearances on live facebook shows and youtube channel. Also having regular Twitter feed's that are full of hilarious Tweets can bring a huge following.
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One comedain told me “My style is quite conversational, so the best stuff usually comes out of me having that conversation – actually talking – out loud. But, that said, a lot of stuff is written on stage, because you go into this weird zone where the panic of having to get a laugh forces something out of you, from somewhere. So it’s a mixture of all things.”
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Its also important that a successful show needs honesty: “It doesn’t necessarily mean that all your stories are exactly what happened in a certain scenario, but your opinion must be your own. Don’t just give an opinion that you think the audience want's to hear.” When speaking to me another comic revealed how he takes an initial idea and develops it until it is ready to become part of his stand-up set: “He will make an observation when out and about; then jot it down on there phone; then go through those observations and think ‘what scenario might this fit in?’. Then draw spider diagrams. That becomes a comic routine possibly, or it doesn’t. Those that do have potential, to try at new material gigs…”
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When it comes to observational comedy, Jerry Seinfeld has been leading the way for decades. As the above video highlights, Seinfeld develops his material in a labour-intensive hand-written process – something he’s done since the Seinfeld show on which he worked with Larry David. Rather than ad-libbing on stage, he uses a pen and paper and a longhand method to hone his material. Like many of the best comedians, Seinfeld understands the importance of rhythm in comedy, to the extent that the words must be the right length with the correct number of syllables. He also focusses on finding the “connective tissue” that allows the jokes to fit together and work within a larger set.
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“A lot of the time it’s just sitting down and thinking of ideas. That’s the boring answer. Very rarely do you walk past something in the street and something pops into your head. It’s just an imagination. It’s just the way you’re wired really. The more you do it the more weird you become in that sense.” On the other hand: “Stand-up is so immediate. You can have an idea in the morning and get a laugh for it in the evening. No one else can tell you what to do, apart from the audience. The audience is the ultimate arbiter.”
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How to Write Jokes – In Summary
– Find a writing method that works for you.
– Write as much as possible – not every joke has to be good.
– Pay attention to every word, even syllable, as well as the syntax, grammar, rhythm and even the length of pauses in your joke.
– Test material on a live audience – work as many open mic nights are perfect for honing your jokes.
– Allow yourself to pursue tangents, ad-lib, interact with audiences when live on stage – you never know where it might take you and what material you may discover.
– Be honest – write about your own opinions and experiences as much as possible – don’t deliver material that doesn’t feel like you.
– Try and connect your material – work on how each jokes fits with the next and the overall set.
– Always try to be brief and clearly express your main points – remove anything that is unnecessary from your joke until you have the bare bones.
– Constantly refine and rewrite your material.
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