Joke Writing - What You Need To Know

Joke writing in the world of stand-up comedy is largely misunderstood. Many novice comedians believe that they are required to develop their comedy material from writing jokes from a blank piece of paper.

I want to give you a different perspective. There is a huge difference between developing stand-up comedy material for the stage and trying to make jokes written on paper work in front of an audience.

Let’s look at the problems with “writing jokes”:

1. It is difficult at best to “craft” something that “reads” funny from a piece of paper, much less something that is funny when presented to an audience.

We write far differently than we talk. Not to mention the fact that when we talk to anyone in person, we communicate not only with words but with our own natural delivery—body language, facial expressions, voice inflections and tone variations that give our words their intended meaning.

2. It is difficult to stay on any particular topic for an extended time. It’s hard enough to craft a single joke, much less a string of jokes that are some way related and are equally funny.

3. Many people believe that they can apply some sort of joke writing “formula” to sentences written on paper and they will somehow be funny.

The reality is that if the “formula” you try to use in your paper written jokes doesn’t match your natural laughter “formulas” that you use in everyday communication, then the chances are great that material won’t work on stage.

A Radical Approach To Joke Writing

I propose a different approach to developing stand-up comedy material that does not follow the conventional paper driven, joke writing formula approach:

1. Forget writing one liner and two liner jokes. Focus on identifying topics, ideas, opinions, observations and such that have some sort of meaning to you.

I have told my comedy students in the past: if what you want to talk about on stage is worthy of telling a friend at work about, then it is suitable for stand-up comedy.

2. Don’t be afraid to talk about entire topics, as long as they amaze, frighten, anger, frustrate or otherwise touch you emotionally.

Hint: The longer you can stay on any particular topic in your stand-up comedy act, the less set-up (and less words) you need to get to the punchlines.

3. Structure your material the way you would say it naturally—as if you were telling a co-worker a story about [your experiences, observations, opinions, fears, etc.]

4. Use paper (or your word processor) to edit out any unneeded words or sentences and to restructure the order of your material as needed.

5. Try to react to each line of your comedy act using your sense of humor. This is how punchlines are developed.

Final Thoughts

Joke writing as it is known today is the hardest way to develop high impact, big laugh stand-up comedy material. Structuring what you really want to talk about on the comedy stage the way you communicate and make people laugh already is a whole lot easier.