How to Write a Joke. How to Structure a Joke. How to write stand up comedy.

okay we're in for the good stuff now how to structure a joke by the time we're done with this lesson you're going to be writing jokes joke structure is actually really easy there's a setup and a punch line that's it and it comes in that order i can't tell you how many times people will start with punchline and provide a set up what you'll learn in writing or what you've learned in writing in like essay writing is you make your statement and then you support it what we're saying is provide your support so that you can give us your statement does that make sense we want to surprise you we want to provoke that involuntary response we want to create the tension some people say that there is a premise a set up and then a punch line and i would say that we can go right to setup and punch line and if there's a premise that hangs out we can talk about that at another time so a setup you're providing the least amount of context necessary to create enough tension so that when you deliver your punchline there's a laugh so here's a joke this is the joke that i've used for a long time that i open with many times especially in front of audiences where i'm not sure what i'm going to get i get up on stage i cheer for everybody thank you so much uh for having me tonight uh i'm fat yeah um i blame my father mostly you might have met him his name's papa john that's the joke that's it it works it's worked for years you might have chuckled you might have groaned it's a little bit of a groaner but it works and it's a nice opener so let's talk about the structure of that joke there's not a lot to it right i'm fat that is part of my setup or some people would call the premise i'm fat i blame my father mostly i blame my father mostly you might have met him those two things right there are your setup right because what can we tell from this joke i'm fat so we're talking about me being fat and obese i blame it on my father so where does your brain go from here you are thinking well he's going to talk about genetics or he's going to talk about my upbringing or my diet based off of how my dad fed me fed me you might have met him okay well you might have met him maybe my dad's famous or uh so there's there's something that's that's steering us in a slightly different direction his name is papa john okay there's your punch line his name is papa john why do we laugh at this joke well we release the tension because i've been critical of myself and my father and we're also creating a little bit of a quick story for you to try to figure out what's happening so when i rip off the band-aid and i reveal that his name's papa john well papa refers to father and uh but the name papa john is pizza right yes we are beating this joke like a dead horse but it's really important as you look at your own jokes and you look at other people's jokes why they're funny what's the setup my particular joke involves something called misdirection you're expecting for something to go a particular way and then a sudden misdirection release tension immediately pop that balloon and hopefully made the audience laugh so [Music] what if i told that joke in a different way i blame my father mostly for being fat his name's papa john that works right his name is papa john is the punch line that works i've tried it that way before the way that i do it seems to get the most laughs what if i started with my dad's name is papa john i blame him for being fat yeah maybe it works but anytime you put the punch line in the front you've given away your direction and everything you're providing after that is just support you might as well just say it was so funny or you had to be there things that people that aren't very good at telling stories say a lot so the hardest thing to do as a joke writer is to remove as many words as possible to provide enough context for there to be a punchline because you want to have as many what we refer to as laughs per minute as possible one comedian a long time ago told me it had to be seven laughs per minute right so that would be one laugh every eight or nine seconds certainly a hard thing to do i think comedy has evolved since then and that's more in the the days of one-liners like a mitch hedberg or a stephen wright or dimitri martin who's also a very good one-liner comedian people are coming to a comedy club to laugh not to learn so if you can provide just enough information for them to feel the tension and to laugh that's a great thing so if we go back to the original joke of i'm fat i blame my father mostly you might have met him his name's papa john what if i started by saying i'm overweight i really need to go to the gym and and work out i'm not eating right and i went to college and when i started college i weighed 175 pounds when i graduated i was 250 pounds and i blamed my father mostly you know he just because of the nature of who he is and where he came from and he's a you know he's a good guy and everything and he's really responsive and everything and you might have met him um because his name's papa john does that make sense did you fall asleep while i was telling that joke to you if we can remove as much context as possible that would certainly help the best way i can compare it to is when you're telling a story to a friend and you're providing way too much information up front so the the the story the gist of the story is you won't believe this we got in the car we almost got into a car wreck we thought we were lucky but then a storm hit us and pushed us onto the side of the road and we were stranded for three hours before someone pulled us out of a ditch we almost died okay that's your story however most people when they tell a story tell a story like this oh my god brandon remember marsha we went to grade school together and marcia she was like skinny but then she got fat and then she got skinny and then she got fat okay well let me back up um so marsha call me because we could see what i'm doing here we haven't even talked about the interesting part of the story the interesting part of the story is we almost got in a wreck got back in our car i thought that was the end of it a storm pushed us into a ditch and we almost drowned until someone got us out of the ditch right that's it that's the story not looking for humor there but that's the story stop providing so much information provide the least amount of information possible to get to your punch line and the only way you know how to get there is to write everything that you can possibly think of out of your brain write it all down without editing write it all down right every single thing that you can possibly think of down the editing is where your joke will find its way out of so um sculptors will always tell you that the sculpture is inside of the mound of clay they just have to dig it out that's your job create a mound of words and then your job is to carve it out of those words that make sense editing is not that important your audience will do that for you if you've written a basic joke that you think is enough to try on stage try it the worst thing that you can possibly do is edit a joke over and over and over again before ever putting it up on stage if you do that it's still probably not going to work it's still probably not going to be funny in fact 10 of the jokes that you put up on stage are usable and of those 10 percent you might find that 10 of those end up staying in your set for any significant amount of time jokes constantly change and evolve but you should let the audience dictate how they change and evolve if that makes sense let the audience change and evolve your jokes for you if you're filming your sets if you're up in front of an audience on a regular basis and filming your sets they will tell you how your jokes go because all we care about is that thing that makes people laugh and if you can find that then you're in great shape here's a here's some other things that you can play around with if you're having a tough time getting your joke to put itself together this is a quick writing exercise i'm fat can also be said i'm obese i'm overweight i eat too much i need to diet i'm grotesquely overweight i have the opposite of bulimia i'm chunky there's a list of different ways that i can convey to you that i'm fat and i've tried a lot of them on stage but for whatever reason in this particular case delivering i'm fat is the best way to deliver that information so use synonyms use antonyms use alliteration rhyming homonyms puns try as many different ways as you can to get it up on stage and try that joke and when you film it and you go to watch the playback then you'll be able to see where the audience laughed and then also as a performer if you're doing your homework and watching netflix and youtube and going out to comedy clubs and watching comedy you'll begin to predict what people are about to say and then when you're watching your own set you'll be able to pay attention to what they're saying it's really important for you to understand that no matter what your style of writing is every single thing you say has a setup and a punchline every time somebody laughs there is a form of a setup or a punch line there's a few comedians that are out there that are known as like story comedians like dane cook and dane cook is constantly beat up publicly for not having standard setup and punch lines the thing is the way he tells his story he creates a bunch of tension in the story so when he gets to the end of his story or when he gets to the middle part of a story that has a a beat or an end to it he's very very very uh uh direct and energetic and that energy kind of pops that tension balloon if that makes sense remember this you need to write every single day and starting right now your homework is to write 10 jokes a day every single day they don't have to be funny jokes they don't even really have to be jokes they just need to be 10 lines of material that you can look back on at the end of the week and edit and do something with or try to put up on stage if you'd like to tell a funny story then maybe my recommendation is 250 words a day the bottom line is you should be writing somewhere between a thousand to 1250 words a week or writing somewhere between 50 and 70 jokes a week so it's something you can edit jerry seinfeld said that if you're writing 10 jokes a day every day you'll have 3 650 jokes of those maybe 10 are worth just trying to put up on stage so 365 jokes that you put up on the stage and of those 365 maybe 10 of those stay in your set so you have somewhere between 35 and 50 jokes created a year that go into your permanent set and if you do the timing of it that equates to about 30 minutes a year so you can see that it's going to take a very long time for you to put together a respectable set you're going to need to spend a lot of time working on stuff you've already written and editing stuff you've already written but you also need to spend a lot of time generating new ideas and new material so your homework between now and the next time you start another module just write 10 jokes and it can take 10 minutes to do it so for example you can look in your room like right now i'm looking at a a light so my joke could be um what was what was the world like before lights that must have been that must been hard probably able to have sex with a lot more people than we do now you know because nobody would have to look at me funny not funny i don't know i just made it up but that's one that i could write down and i could move to the next thing so you could do some observational comedy you could tell a joke about something that happened at your job at your work something happened with your family or your friends we don't know if it's funny until you start to write it out so explore it write it don't edit it don't judge it it's fine we can find funny in everything do you find that you're having a tough time doing the homework do you find that you're not motivating yourself to write the jokes or get yourself up on stage we actually offer one-on-one coaching and we can do it virtually and if you live locally we can uh do it face-to-face virtually works just fine we have clients all over the country and we recommend some face-to-face time either by skype or by you sending over your material to us but we do one-on-one coaching and if you're interested email us at woof sickpuppiescomedy.com and we were more than happy to work with you one

Channel: Casey Casperson

Views: 68,852

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Id: TEYTHIeEFC4

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020