Playfully Inappropriate: The Fun Way To Write Comedy [Paperback ed.] 1098949323, 9781098949327

Table of contents :
Introduction......Page 7
Joke Telling vs. Storytelling......Page 9
Joke Formulas and Authenticity......Page 11
Storytelling and Authenticity......Page 12
The Rules Are Wrong......Page 14
How Brainstorming Hurts Creativity......Page 16
Comedic Conflict......Page 20
Benign-Violation and Comedic Conflict......Page 21
Practical Examples of Comedic Conflict......Page 23
Why Children Are So Funny......Page 24
Safety, “The Anti-Violation”......Page 25
Psychological Safety......Page 26
Violations......Page 28
Comedic Tension vs. Comedic Conflict......Page 32
Laughter Psychology......Page 36
How Punchlines “Create” Humor......Page 37
Stage 1: Constructing......Page 39
Stage 2: Reckoning......Page 41
Stage 3: Resolving/Juxtaposing......Page 43
Stage 4: Relating/Judging......Page 45
Stage 5: Responding......Page 47
How To Make Anyone Laugh: Understanding How Audiences Judge Jokes......Page 49
Relief Theory......Page 51
Superiority Theory......Page 52
Comprehension-Elaboration Theory......Page 53
Managing Comedic Conflict......Page 62
Exploration Questions......Page 63
Conflict Questions/Phrases......Page 67
But Statements......Page 68
Elaboration Possibility......Page 70
Creating But Statements......Page 71
Exploration & Conflict Making......Page 74
Stepping Stones......Page 76
Highlighting The Problem......Page 80
How Listeners & Storytellers Use The Why Problem......Page 83
Premise......Page 88
The Goal of a Joke Premise......Page 89
Experts vs. Beginners: Why Premises Matter......Page 90
Using “What If…?” Questions......Page 92
Magnifying Why Problems......Page 93
Recontextualizing Why Problems......Page 94
Troubleshooting The Magnify Step......Page 100
How To Write The Punchline......Page 102
Listener’s Path vs. Comedian’s Path......Page 104
4 Parts of a PIJ-Q......Page 106
Two Types of PIJ-Q’s......Page 108
The PIJ Chart: Make Your Own PIJ-Q’s......Page 110
Conventional Jokes vs. Storytelling Structure......Page 117
Applying New Tools To Conventional Joke-Writing......Page 127
Norm-Based Violations......Page 129
Embarrassment......Page 130
Insults/Put-Downs/Comeuppance/Retaliation......Page 131
Self-Depreciation......Page 132
Puns......Page 134
Meaning-Based Violations......Page 136
Analogies......Page 137
Misunderstanding Jokes......Page 139
Sarcasm......Page 142
Parody......Page 143
Callback Lines......Page 144
Meta-Jokes......Page 145
Broken Assumptions......Page 146
Exaggeration Jokes......Page 150
Specificity Jokes......Page 151
Compare & Contrast......Page 153
Broken Prediction Jokes & The Rule of Three......Page 155
Omitted Punchline Jokes......Page 156
Contradiction / Paradox Jokes......Page 157
Making Your Punchlines “Pop”......Page 159
Triggers and Confidence......Page 160
3 Types of Triggers......Page 161
Shifting From Serious to Playful......Page 162
Putting Everything Together......Page 164
Delivering Material: Act-Out vs. Commentary......Page 168
How To Polish Your Material......Page 169
Your Ultimate Goal......Page 170
Troubleshooting......Page 173
Common Issues With Comedic Tension......Page 174
Four Strategies For Weak Tension......Page 182
Wal-Mart Bit......Page 188
Joke 1: Applying To Wal-Mart......Page 190
Joke 2: Career......Page 193
Joke 3: Cashier......Page 195
Joke 4: Metabolife......Page 200
Conclusion......Page 206
Rules and Performance Anxiety......Page 208
Rules of Writing......Page 209
Rules of Creativity......Page 210
Glossary......Page 211

Citation preview

Playfully Inappropriate The Fun Way to Write Comedy

Jared Volle, M.S. CreativeStandUp.com

© 2019 CreativeStandUp All rights reserved.

Table of Contents Introduction Joke Telling vs. Storytelling Authenticity Joke Formulas and Authenticity Storytelling and Authenticity The Rules Are Wrong How Brainstorming Hurts Creativity Comedic Conflict Benign-Violation and Comedic Conflict Practical Examples of Comedic Conflict Why Children Are So Funny Safety Safety, “The Anti-Violation” Psychological Safety Violations Comedic Tension vs. Comedic Conflict Laughter Psychology How Punchlines “Create” Humor Stage 1: Constructing Stage 2: Reckoning Stage 3: Resolving/Juxtaposing Stage 4: Relating/Judging Stage 5: Responding How To Make Anyone Laugh: Understanding How Audiences Judge Jokes What Determines The Quality of Laughs? Relief Theory Superiority Theory Comprehension-Elaboration Theory Managing Comedic Conflict How To Balance Exploration & Conflict Making Exploration Questions Conflict Making Conflict Questions/Phrases But Statements Elaboration Possibility Creating But Statements Exploration & Conflict Making Stepping Stones Highlighting The Problem

How Listeners & Storytellers Use The Why Problem Premise The Goal of a Joke Premise Experts vs. Beginners: Why Premises Matter Using “What If…?” Questions 2 Ways of Using Why Problems Magnifying Why Problems Recontextualizing Why Problems Troubleshooting The Magnify Step How To Write The Punchline Listener’s Path vs. Comedian’s Path PIJ Questions 4 Parts of a PIJ-Q Two Types of PIJ-Q’s The PIJ Chart: Make Your Own PIJ-Q’s Conventional Jokes vs. Storytelling Structure Applying New Tools To Conventional Joke-Writing Norm-Based Violations Embarrassment Insults/Put-Downs/Comeuppance/Retaliation Self-Depreciation Word-Based / Linguistic Violation Wordplay Puns Meaning-Based Violations Analogies Misunderstanding Jokes Sarcasm Parody Irony Callback Lines Meta-Jokes Broken Assumptions Scale-Based Violations Exaggeration Jokes Understatement Specificity Jokes Logic-Based Violations Compare & Contrast Broken Prediction Jokes & The Rule of Three Omitted Punchline Jokes Contradiction / Paradox Jokes

Making Your Punchlines “Pop” Triggers and Confidence 3 Types of Triggers Shifting From Serious to Playful Putting Everything Together Delivering Material: Act-Out vs. Commentary How To Polish Your Material Your Ultimate Goal Troubleshooting Common Issues With Comedic Tension Four Strategies For Weak Tension Wal-Mart Bit Joke 1: Applying To Wal-Mart Joke 2: Career Joke 3: Cashier Joke 4: Metabolife Conclusion Rules and Performance Anxiety Rules of Writing Rules of Creativity Glossary

Introduction Welcome to Playfully Inappropriate. You’re about to be introduced to a radically different way of writing comedy. Whenever I have to introduce myself to students for the first time, I like to open the same way, and it gives a lot of my students a mini-panic attack. At the Comics Rock Convention in Los Angeles, I took the stage and opened my Creativity For Comedians seminar by telling an audience that I really didn’t care what they expected from me… and I also told them that they were going to f****** love me because of that fact. “I’m not going to try to ‘meet’ your expectations… I’m not going to try to exceed your expectations either. If I do my job correctly, your expectations won’t matter. Here’s what I know. You’ll gladly give up what you think you want right now when I show you what you can have. My job isn’t to rack up points playing your game or anyone else’s game. My job is to play my own game and to set up the rules in a way that you’ll be dying to play it. That sounds egotistical, but it’s actually quite selfless. When I play my own game, everyone is happier. It lets me work from a position of strength. I can give the audience the best of who I am. So not only does the audience get treated to something unique, fun and different, but they also get to experience me at the top of my game. That’s my job as a speaker and it’s all of our jobs as creators. This is my promise to you as well. If you give up what you expect a “how to write comedy” book to be like, I’ll show you a radically different way of understanding and writing comedy. You’ll find that at almost every opportunity, this book chooses to go the exact opposite direction as conventional wisdom. It’s not that conventional wisdom is wrong. It’s that this book has entirely different goals. I believe that conventional joke-writing formulas result in jokes that (to borrow a phrase from the late Douglas Adams) sound “Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike you.” Joke formulas are just one of several cornerstones of comedy training that this book largely ignores. I care far more about your natural sense of humor and unique personality. I want you to be able to get on stage and feel like the real you. When you sit down to write, I want you to feel like you're doing what you love NOW, not like you're doing what you “must do” so that you can have fun telling jokes to an audience later. In this book, you’ll learn how comedians are able to tell stories that flow naturally, create material that feels authentic, and still pack them full of amazing punchlines. You can use this book as a stand-alone guide or as part of another writing system. You can use it to write stand-up comedy, but you can just as easily use it to write a sitcom, improve your improvisational comedy skills, or be funnier in everyday life without coming off like your telling corny jokes.

While the strategies in this book are very different from conventional comedy writing strategies, they can complement each other nicely. You don’t have to “choose one way and stick with it.” What works well in one situation might not be ideal for the next. Many of my past students find the best results by mixing and matching the ideas from this book with more conventional strategies found elsewhere. Comedians who desire more structure in their writing will appreciate how this method can improve their existing joke-writing skills while comedians who desire flexibility will find that this method gives them an unparalleled range of options. Throughout this book, I’ll argue forcefully for my beliefs. I’ll explain what I believe is wrong with conventional strategies as well as why I think the ideas in this book are useful alternatives. The purpose of these passages is to allow you to make good, creative decisions based on the pros and cons of a situation. This book isn’t about replacing the old paradigm of comedy writing, it's about expanding it in a meaningful way.

Joke Telling vs. Storytelling There’s a misconception in stand-up comedy that storytellers are merely joke tellers who organize their material to flow in a logical, story-like fashion. This can mimic what great storytellers do, but it can never duplicate its authenticity and natural flow. Joke telling and comedic storytelling create humor in almost entirely different ways. Joke telling structures emphasize surprise and misdirection. Most are designed so that the setup will lead the audience to generate a false assumption, bad prediction, or some type of misconception. The punchline then surprises the audience by breaking that false assumption. Whether we are talking about a Three-Count/List Joke, a Broken Assumption Joke, a pun, or one of the many other types of jokes out there doesn’t change the fact that the setup and the punchline are in opposition to each other. What’s true in the setup becomes false in the punchline. This opposition is what gives joke structures their power. I refer to these as Misdirection Punchlines because they require some form of misdirection to work properly. Notice how the punchline of this Mitch Hedberg joke relies on misdirection. The opposition is so easy to see that you could point to the exact set of words that introduce the misdirection.

I know a lot about cars, man. I can look at any car's headlights and tell you exactly which way it's coming. - Mitch Hedberg In this book, I will introduce you to Storytelling Structure. I call it Storytelling Structure because practically every funny story uses it. It doesn’t matter if the funny story comes from stand-up comedy, improvisational comedy, sketch, or a conversation with a funny friend. Storytelling doesn’t require any broken assumptions, bad predictions, or misdirections. It simply refers to the natural way we communicate with each other in daily life. It places a heavy emphasis on how a problem occurs and what happens as a result. It typically works in the exact opposite direction as conventional jokes. Instead of breaking an assumption, the audience’s correct assumptions actually enhance the humor by allowing them to empathize and identify with the comedian or the characters of a story. Despite being called “Storytelling Structure,” you can use it to create any type of joke, including one-liners. In fact, a surprising number of jokes from one-liner comedians use this same structure. Notice how the following joke, also written by Mitch Hedberg, doesn’t require misdirection. I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, 'You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit.' As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run! If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit. - Mitch Hedberg

These two Hedberg jokes use entirely different strategies to create humor. In the car joke, the setup and the punchline are in opposition to each other while in the casino joke they are cooperative. At no point in the casino joke did Hedberg require that you make a false prediction or bad assumption. Both Hedberg and the casino manager are behaving in ways that we’d find completely normal. You’ll also notice that it would be much easier to explain why the car joke is funny than the casino joke. The difference between Misdirection Punchlines and Storytelling Punchlines is like the difference between hearing a funny joke and having a funny friend. A funny friend can have you laughing until tears are rolling down your face, but they do it in a way that feels natural and authentic. They never feel “jokey.” If someone were to ask you why that person is so funny or how they might become as funny as your friend, you’d struggle to put together any kind of sensible explanation. Attempting to explain why some comedians feel so natural and authentic on stage is what originally inspired this book. Several years ago, I was creating a compilation video to show new comedians how various AList comedians used the first 1-2 minutes of their stage time. While watching Brian Regan’s opener for “I Walked On The Moon,” I noticed that Regan had a weird habit of telling the audience what he’s about to do. If he says something is weird in the setup, the punchline never changed that fact. What he hated in the setup, he still hated in the punchline. What’s more, he practically never told you a punchline without first giving you some kind of hint in the setup. He went out of his way to give you information that would undermine the surprise inside the punchline, as if he was literally daring you to beat him to the punch. He was simultaneously breaking two of comedy’s unbreakable rules: Make sure the setup and the punchline are in opposition to each other and hide the surprise until the very end of the punchline. It… Was... Weird.

Authenticity Your personality and uniqueness matter throughout this entire process. This not only makes writing an absolute pleasure (you get to be your natural, playful, funny self), but it allows you to perform with a confidence that is nearly impossible to fake. You’ve used your natural sense of humor throughout your entire life. It’s apparently so good that you want to write comedy. Why would you trade that when you need it most? Let’s take a look at authenticity from both a joke-telling and storytelling perspective.

Joke Formulas and Authenticity Conventional joke structures harm authenticity by requiring that jokes fit into a specific format, which leaves very little room for “the real you” to come through. To take an extreme example, it’d be like trying to find the most authentic and real way of telling a “Your Momma So Fat” joke. There’s simply too much structure for the real you to come through. Your only options are to either tell the joke with almost no personality or come off like an over-zealous used car salesman by trying to force personality into a joke where it doesn’t belong. There’s no way of performing this type of joke that captures your real personality. The structure over-powers your personality. Joke formulas have a similar problem. The “real you” is stripped away while completing steps that have nothing to do with your unique sense of humor. Broken Assumption joke formulas typically require these steps:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Begin with a topic. Brainstorm a list of possible assumptions that the audience will create. Choose an assumption and then invert it. Write the setup so that it forces the audience to create the safe assumption from step 2 and write the punchline to break that assumption using the inverted assumption from step 3.

At exactly which step are you supposed to be unique and different? It can’t be step 1, that’s just about finding a topic. Nothing unique there. Step 2 is all about creating a list of assumptions that you think the audience will make. Not only does this ignore your unique sense of humor, but it actually has more to do with the audience than yourself. What I think the audience will assume will be nearly identical to what you think they’ll assume. There’s nothing unique or interesting about this step. Step 3 requires that you invert the assumption. What’s black becomes white. Slow becomes fast. Boring becomes interesting. The answer from step 3 is the opposite of the answer from step 2. This could literally be done by a computer. It doesn’t even matter whether you’re writing from a happy, sad, or angry mood. You feel silly right now? Ok, the opposite of “I don’t like waiting in airport security lines” is still “I like waiting in airport security lines.” Step 4 has almost no personality either. The first half of step 4 simply asks you to write a sentence that assumes the broken assumption. While this is the most “creative” part of the entire process, it actually has more to do with problem-solving than anything else. You and I might choose a

different reason why we like airport security lines instead of hate them, but neither of our punchlines will actually be authentic. Your punchline might sarcastically say that you enjoy the security guard’s pat-down while mine might sarcastically say that I like people behind me in line that stand way too close to me. Neither punchline is the real us. The same is true for the second half of step 4 where you write a setup that leads the audience to believe a false assumption. The task is essentially to find a short, concise way to make the audience believe the false assumption. You and I might use different words to achieve this goal, but the goal determines almost everything ahead of time. There are only a handful of reasonable options to choose from if you want to find a short, concise way of making the audience think that you enjoy airport security lines. Again, this has more to do with problem-solving than anything else. Some teachers have attempted to get around this problem by adding a final step where you can add your personality, POV, attitude, etc. This is basically the same thing as trying to add attitude to a Your Momma So Fat joke. You’re taking a joke that was designed without personality and trying to force personality into it either by revising the wording of the joke or by performing it in a specific way (e.g., saying a line quietly or using gestures). While this adds some personality, it’s hard to argue that it’s your personality. It’s much more likely that the personality that is added will be whatever seems to support the individual joke. Yet again, the most common outcome is one that requires little to none of your unique sense of humor.

Storytelling and Authenticity Storytelling Structure also has its unique challenges with respect to authenticity. Storytelling draws a lot of its power from the audience’s ability to empathize and relate. The ability to get laughs using storytelling depends heavily on a comedian’s ability to be real. Rational responses are hilarious while irrational ones leave the audience confused and unable to relate. This is a major change for most comedians who have been taught that they should be constantly telling jokes or breaking assumptions. As we go through this book, you’ll see how humor can naturally arise out of situations without being forced. It’s very easy to see Storytelling Structure inside improvisational comedy because the “setups” and “punchlines” of improv jokes are cooperative instead of in opposition. In fact, cooperative punchlines are a natural result of improv comedy’s #1 rule: “Yes, and…” The rule of “Yes, and…” means that improv comedians should always accept and build off of what has already been said. If you say that you’re a nurse then I can’t say “No you aren’t. You’re an astronaut.” I must accept that you are a nurse in this scene and build on it from there. Anything else would leave the audience confused about whose reality is the real one. Thus, my reaction must be cooperative instead of in opposite and any humor that comes from that reaction must also be cooperative. This is how improvisational comedians create humor on the spot. They don’t need to tell jokes or say funny things. They just need to fully commit to their own character and the rules of the scene. No one needs to tell a joke or try to force the humor. Doing so would be counter-productive. They just need to fully commit to the character and trust that the other player’s character will naturally create conflict… which is what ultimately happens.

This is how improvisational comedians can think so quickly. While they are funny, they’re never responsible for being funny. Their job is essentially to be true to their character and the set of rules for the improv game. For example, when playing the game Questions Only, improv comedians can only speak in questions. Instead of trying to say funny things, the comedian must focus on creating a question in response to another comedian’s question. If the comedian cannot think of a question fast enough then they lose, so speed is important. The game ultimately becomes funny because either the comedian fails to think of a question quickly enough, accidentally says a statement instead of a question, or happens to say the perfect question. If a comedian cannot think of a question, the humor comes from watching the comedian trip up or get out-witted by the other comedian. If they accidentally say a statement instead of a question then the humor comes from an honest mistake. If the comedian says “the perfect question” then the humor comes from the comedian quickly finding a question that makes complete sense given the situation. The speed at which the improv comedian thought of this question adds to the audience’s enjoyment. None of these scenarios require that the comedian say anything funny. They require that the comedian be authentic and real to their character. It is only from the audience's perspective that the scene is funny. The characters within the scene are typically dead-serious. All three of these options for humor are based on authenticity, not joke telling. The reason improv comedians can be funny so quickly is because they’re not actually trying to be funny in a conventional sense. They’re just trying to be their character without violating any of the game’s rules. It just so happens that the character and/or the rules of the game naturally create a humorous conflict. Improvisational comedians absolutely hate teammates that try to force jokes into a scene. When an improvisational comedian attempts to force humor, they bring the entire scene down with them. They make themselves and their teammates look bad. Hogging the attention just doesn't work in improv. Improvisational comedy only works when there’s trust. I agree to fully commit to my character and the rules of the game because I believe that you will too. If I freely violate the rules or break character to force a joke into the scene then you have a big problem. The scene can no longer be “naturally funny” because we don’t have a shared reality. You’d either need to continually run around fixing or explaining away my irrational behavior or decide to abandon the scene and try to get laughs by also being irrational. This is analogous to how Storytelling Structure works in stand-up comedy (or any other comedic art form). Life, as you might have noticed, is actually quite funny. As long as I remain authentic and rational, I can naturally create humor in a way similar to improvisational comedy. However, once I abandon rationality and violate what the audience knows to be real, I’ve essentially become my own attention hog. I've sacrificed what could have been an amazing and relatable story for one or two cheap jokes. This is why Storytelling is fundamentally different than joke-telling. Joke tellers can organize their jokes into a logical sequence that “tells a story,” but those jokes will still be in opposition to each other. Needless to say, it’s incredibly difficult to have a story flow naturally when every few sentences need to break some part of your reality.

The Rules Are Wrong It is extremely rare for me to state something as a hard rule. In fact, it’s practically guaranteed that at some point in this book I’ll refuse to state a rule that you think should be stated. You’ll want me to draw a line in the sand and say that you “should do this” or “not do that.” The reason I refuse to do this is because it would deny all the amazing creative ideas that lie beyond the arbitrary wall I would have created. Every rule you believe about comedy is false on some level. Like playing a board game, rules only make sense relative to each other. The rules of Monopoly only makes sense when we’re playing that game. The moment you decide to play your own game, other people’s rules no longer matter. When someone says “You can/can’t do X,” then what they’re really saying is “You can/can’t do X if you’re playing by my/our rules.” For example, I could tell you that all your jokes need to make logical sense, but I’d have to pretend that Steve Martin and Albert Brooks never used anti-comedy to become famous. I could try to make my rule even vaguer and say “a good joke is anything that the audience finds funny,” but I’d then have to deny the work of Andy Kaufman and his practical jokes that the audience often saw as either bizarre or offensive. Even the rule “Don’t do another comedian’s jokes” has been (ethically) broken by both open-mic and A-list comedians, such as when Jerry Seinfeld and Louis C.K. performed snippets of each other’s jokes for fun. There are no rules in comedy that you cannot find an exception for. “I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. - Steve Martin Saying “You can/can’t do X if you’re playing by my/our rules” is incredibly stupid because it assumes that there is one “community game” that all comedians (or people within any creative industry) are playing. This simply isn’t true. We don’t have a common set of rules. No creative industry does. Creative success stories are almost always based on creative people ignoring “community rules,” not by out-competing others in the same field. Picasso’s paintings weren’t “slightly better” than other paintings in the same way that Henry Ford’s cars weren’t simply new and improved versions of existing cars. They played by different rules, got different results, and then allowed the public to decide whether their contribution was meaningful. Once the public accepts a creative idea then it no longer matters what the old rules were. Richard Pryor isn’t ranked the #1 comedian of all time (as ranked by Comedy Central) because he told the funniest jokes. If you measure the laughter he received and compared it to other comedians then he’s hardly a legend. But that’s not why he’s so important to stand-up. Pryor is ranked #1 because he shattered the community rule that said jokes should be light and fun by discussing dark topics, such as his own drug problems. He let the audience into the darkness of his personal life in a way that the community of comedians had (understandably) assumed couldn’t be

done. Before Pryor, it was “obvious” that you couldn’t talk about your own darkness in a comedy show. Once Pryor broke this rule, it then became equally obvious that audiences loved comedians who were more than a joke-dispensing machine. “I know all the tricks. I assume everybody does. But people like me because I won’t use them, and if I do they can tell.” - Richard Pryor Here’s the most bizarre, inexplicable part. When a creative person breaks one of our deeply held beliefs in an industry and skyrockets to stardom (or designs an incredibly profitable business idea or discovers a new scientific principle) then we react by claiming that that creative person was a genius. We celebrate how the creative person broke a rule but fail to realize that we have that same right. Instead of taking the contributions of the genius as proof that we don’t have to live by the community rules or as inspiration to find our own uniqueness, we react by saying, “The old rules were wrong. These are the new rules.” Which does nothing but set the process back in motion. The new rules will be “obviously correct” for a brief time before ultimately failing. The old king is dead. Long live the king.

How Brainstorming Hurts Creativity Brainstorming is one area where I don’t believe in a difference of opinion. I spent two years getting a Master’s Degree in Creativity and Innovation, I’ve been doing stand-up comedy since 2007, and started improvisational comedy in 6th grade. If any topic is "in my wheelhouse,” it’s the intersection of creativity and comedy. Creativity researchers have done hundreds of studies examining the average effectiveness of brainstorming within all kinds of creative industries and have come to the same conclusion… brainstorming exercises just don’t work. Brainstorming is one of the worst possible ways of generating unique, interesting, and effective ideas. In fact, creativity researcher Dr. Mark Runco goes so far as to say that “It is a bit surprising that it is still used.” I first started doing creativity seminars at Colorado Free University. In the seminar, I had students go through a brainstorming exercise to make a point about how ineffective brainstorming was before discussing the psychology and the mechanics of creativity. I gave each student one minute to brainstorm as many words associated with the word “Ireland” as possible. We then compared everyone’s answers to see how many unique answers were in the room. As each student read their answers aloud I had other students cross out any duplicates. What I love about this exercise is how quickly students realize that their answers aren’t nearly as unique as they originally thought. It’s not uncommon for a student to lose 75% of their answers within the first round and be entirely out of the game by the second. The students who were still standing after two rounds had a decent chance of surviving until the end, though usually with just a single word left on their list. As the last few students read their answers aloud you could hear audible sighs of relief from those who hadn’t yet been eliminated as well as outburst of disbelief from students who were confident they’d be the last ones standing (i.e., “You wrote Lucky Charms! F***!”). When I’d question the winners about how they created their “unique" answers, they’d almost always mention some type of personal experience: They had been to Ireland, had friends who had been there, or had some other unique knowledge from their personal life. Basically, the students who had unique answers arrived at their answers through personal experience, not because they were brainstorming. The students who had relied solely on brainstorming for their uniqueness were always the first to lose the game. Brainstorming is only used because people think it works… not because it actually works. It’s only after you put the tool down and try a different method that you realize how much harder it made everything. Eventually, you’ll realize that you came up with your great ideas despite brainstorming exercises, not because of them. This book will purposefully avoid brainstorming exercises. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much fun the alternative can be.

Flexibility When faced with a choice between being too flexible or too strict, this book will always choose flexibility. You’ll find plenty of places where I recommend that new comedians make small

adjustments to the process as a way of either improving a specific skill or making the overall process more straightforward. Think of them as self-imposed limitations. This way, new comedians don't have to feel overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities of a blank canvas, while veteran comedians don’t have to try to force their natural sense of humor and uniqueness into a pre-defined box.

Overview Our journey will begin with an exploration of the mechanics of humor. In section one, we’ll first discover what makes people laugh before learning the process that the audience goes through in order to understand a joke. These basic mechanics work whether you’re using a Misdirection or Storytelling Punchline. In fact, they even work regardless of what industry you’re writing comedy for. In section two, you’ll learn how you can use one single process to write any type of joke, whether that joke is conventional or uses storytelling. We’ll discover the way that “naturally funny” people are able to recognize comedic opportunities and respond to them in a way that makes people laugh. In the process, we’ll learn why such a deceptively simple process naturally leads to so much diversity and uniqueness. The final section will give you a holistic view of this process by walking you through the various steps for an entire bit. I’ll also explain a lot of the hidden strategy and thought process that went into creating it.

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Comedic Conflict Understanding Humor On and Off-Stage Introduction Once I noticed that great storytelling comedians didn’t require misdirections to create humor, I set out to explain how and why they could be so funny. I looked for a way to explain both Misdirection and Storytelling Punchlines using the same theory. I found my answer in the form of Benign-Violation Theory (BVT). Unlike other theories of humor, BVT was able to account for all types of humor without requiring that I twist myself into knots trying to rationalize why a specific joke could fit the theory. There weren’t any “exceptions to the rules.” It was simple and elegant in a way that made me slightly horny. While BVT is an amazing tool for analyzing humor, it fell flat when it came time to write comedy because it was too vague. It didn’t tell me how to start or what ideas to try. This is where Comedic Conflict comes in. This chapter will introduce you to the basic mechanics of Comedic Conflict. Future chapters will extend this idea to teach you a writing process that can be applied to both conventional jokes or comedic storytelling.

Benign-Violation and Comedic Conflict A benign-violation is the overlap between safety and violation. Safety refers to any idea that is correct, expected, assumed, mundane, or normal. A violation is the “abnormal half" of the Comedic Conflict. It breaks away from what's normal, expected, or safe. Warren and McGraw, the creators of BVT, define a violation as “any stimulus that seems threatening, wrong or negative.” It might threaten someone’s personal safety (e.g., slipping on ice), dignity (e.g., an insult), or it might break a social norm (e.g., loudly farting in the elevator), a moral norm (e.g., sexist remarks), or a linguistic norm (e.g., a pun). Whatever its form, a violation always stands in contrast to how things “should be.” In his TED talk, McGraw used tickling to illustrate how safety and violation come together to create laughter. Imagine three different tickling scenarios: 1. Total Safety: You try to tickle yourself. Since you’re 100% in control, the situation is entirely safe. There’s no violation because you’re doing it to yourself. 2. Total Violation: You are tickled by a creepy stranger. This wouldn’t be enjoyable either because you would feel extremely unsafe and out of control. The tickling is no longer playful or fun because there’s no safety. 3. A Mix of Safety & Violation: You’re tickled by someone that you trust. Getting tickled is only funny when you’re not 100% in control, but the person doing it is not an actual threat. This overlap of safety and violation is called a “benign-violation.”

Both safety and violation are required to create humor. A violation by itself is too threatening, but a completely safe space has no conflict. It’s too mundane and boring. If I told you a story that never introduced a violation then everything would be entirely expected. It’d be completely safe. Nothing violated your expectations, assumptions, etc. But the opposite can be a problem as well. If I tell you a story that you clearly don’t believe is true then there’s too much violation. It might be so unbelievable that I won’t be able to create a safe space to get a laugh or gain your trust. Stories on either extreme lack Comedic Conflict because there needs to be a balance between safety and violation. Importantly, humor requires that both safety and violation be present at the same time. The audience must perceive something as both harmless and threatening. These two contradictory interpretations of an event create the humor.

Imagine an overweight plumber showing up to your house to fix your sink. He bends over to look down the drain and accidentally reveals a rather large butt-crack. Upon noticing this violation, your first thought would be “That's not OK.” But there’s no real harm to the situation either. The plumber clearly isn’t trying to be mean or make you uncomfortable. He hasn’t even noticed that his pants are sliding down. Since there aren’t any real consequences to the violation, you can think "That's OK.” It’s a benign-violation because it's both “OK” and “Not OK” at the same time. Then you notice that the plumber has a tramp-stamp tattoo saying “Eat. Pray. Love.” Once again, you’d have to admit that the experience was both “OK” and “Not OK” at the same time. You’re happy that he’s found inner peace, but find yourself with far more questions than answers.

Practical Examples of Comedic Conflict Let’s take a look at two conventional jokes to see how Comedic Conflict works. Here’s a popular pun: ‘I went to the zoo the other day, there was only one dog in it, it was a shitzu.’ The humor comes from shifting the audience member from safety into violation. The setup creates or implies the first circle (usually safety) and the punchline breaks the audience’s assumptions by pushing them into the second circle (violation). The second understanding reveals the Comedic Conflict. There’s an overlap between safety (Shitzu) and violation (s*** zoo). The humor doesn’t come from either interpretation, it comes from the juxtaposition of both. More specifically, the humor comes when the audience realizes why the juxtaposition matters (represented by a star in the diagrams). Once the audience realizes that it’s a pun, the safety and violation both make sense. All the information goes together. However, if the audience is unable to figure out how to put everything together, the joke will lead to confusion instead of laughter. A businessman has just completed registering at a hotel desk and as he turns to leave he says to the clerk, “Oh, and I thought I should mention that I prefer that the porn channel on the room television be disabled.” The clerk replies, “We only have regular porn, you sick bastard!” This joke functions in a similar way to the first. The humor comes from a misunderstanding about how to interpret the word “disabled.” The safe/normal interpretation of the sentence is that the businessman doesn’t want any porn in his room. However, from the front desk clerk’s perspective, the man was only interested in watching porn featuring disabled people. As the listener, we get to witness both interpretations at the same time. We get to see how the man’s request is simultaneously “OK” and “Not OK.”

Why Children Are So Funny Children can get away with saying some horrific (and hilarious) things. Their innocence provides a HUGE amount of safety while they say something that, if it came from an adult, would be a clear violation. When a child breaks a social rule, we get treated to a juxtaposition. We get to appreciate the inappropriateness of the comment without feeling guilty. In this example, the humor comes from the juxtaposition of knowing what the child meant to say vs. what the child actually said. Child: Why do people dress like hamsters? Mom: You mean hipsters? Here is an example of a comment that’s funny because the child says something horrible, but adults understand that the child didn't know that it was horrible. This creates Comedic Conflict because the comment is both horrible and innocent at the same time. It’s “not OK” because the comment is horrible, but “It’s OK” because the child didn’t know any better. [5-year-old talking loudly in a grocery store] “That man is using a walking cane because he’s old and about to die!” Comedic Conflict doesn’t just explain why we might laugh at this comment. It also explains why the child doesn’t think it's funny and why the mother might be horrified at the time, but think it's funny later. To the child, there's no reason to laugh because there's no violation. From his perspective, all he did was state something he thinks is obvious. It’s pure safety. From the mother’s perspective, the comment is too big of a violation to be funny, even though she also realizes that her child wasn't purposefully being rude. The mother will most likely attempt to bring more safety into the situation by either apologizing to the man or by showing her own embarrassment/displeasure at the comment. As time passes, the event becomes safer and safer. The embarrassment and worry of the situation fade away, and what began as a stressful event eventually becomes a funny story.

Safety Safety refers to the “normal half” of Comedic Conflict and is usually found in the setup. Safety without a violation is normal, everyday life. There’s a match between your expectations and reality: Your car is still where you parked it, your bank account has the same amount of money, and your friend still has the same haircut. Understanding “what is normal” helps the audience recognize, understand, and relate to violations. The safety will either be inside the setup or implied by it. In our earlier example, when the child said “That man is walking with a cane because he’s old and about to die,” we recognized the safety and the violation at the same time. It would be both awkward and unnecessary to explicitly say “You know how people generally don’t mention that old people are going to die soon? Well! …” The setup doesn’t have to explicitly tell the audience what’s acceptable or normal because it’s either implied or common knowledge. Safety has two separate, but related meanings.

Safety, “The Anti-Violation” Safety is whatever is being contrasted with a violation. Think of safety as some type of rule about what “should be” that eventually gets broken by the violation. In the grocery store example, the safety is what’s considered normal, acceptable behavior in public. There are always unspoken rules in society about how people should act. You shouldn’t drive slow in the fast lane. Unnecessary eye contact is creepy. Some parts of your body should be covered in public. As a society, we’ve “agreed” on these unwritten rules, so anything that breaks one of those rules is a social violation. Social violations are incredibly fun to play around with as a comedian. You can use a social violation to prove why a rule is important and should be kept or why it’s stupid and should be thrown away. You can have endless fun exploring the gray areas between what’s OK and not OK. The biggest challenge is recognizing a social rule. We are so immersed in our society’s rules that we rarely notice them. For example, the gym near my house has an odd poster explaining their dress code. Instead of focusing on what clothing is encouraged, it explicitly states what isn’t allowed. Instead of common sense advice like “Please wear tennis shoes,” it says “Don’t wear high-heels or dresses” and “No tuxedos.” My first reaction was “Why say this? I never would have thought of that.” Then the comedian in me kicked in and I began imagining what breaking that rule would actually look like. It also made me think about all the clothes that weren’t explicitly ruled out… such as scuba diving gear and a sombrero. I never realized that I had been conforming to a social rule until the gym’s poster explained what clothing would break that rule. We also have personal rules. We share many rules with other people, but some are very unique or weird. For example, one of my pet peeves is when someone turns around while they’re talking to you but they speak with the same volume instead of talking louder. In my view, that person should have realized that they needed to speak louder as they turned around or walked into another room. I consider it a violation because my rule about what “should have happened” was broken. Sometimes we even have a rule that contradicts another one of our rules. These lead to internal conflicts. You want to eat chocolate, but you want to lose weight. You want to exercise, but you’re

tired. You know you should be confident, but you know you shouldn’t act fake, either. You want to be open and honest with people, but not too honest. Internal conflicts lead to indecisiveness, which can be a very interesting way of creating humor in any situation. Humor cannot exist without these rules. You cannot laugh at your friend’s bad haircut without knowing his original hairstyle or without having a general rule for what is considered a good haircut or a bad one. You must know the rule before you can know that the rule was broken. You must always compare violations to something. You can have safety without a violation, but you cannot have a violation without safety. By definition, every violation automatically creates a contrast. This is why I sometimes refer to safety as an “anti-violation.” Thinking of safety as an anti-violation also helps you identify exactly which “safety” is important at any given moment. If you wrote down everything that you’d consider normal about your best friend, it’d be a huge list. It’d include his height, weight, eye color, hair style, personality, etc. Like the setup of a joke, this prepares you to understand the humor by implying what’s normal. However, until you see the violation of your friend’s bad haircut, you won’t know which safety is relevant to the joke. While there might be 500 different “safe” characteristics for your best friend, there’s only one antiviolation (his normal haircut). The distinction between safety and anti-violation might seem like simple wordplay, but being able to clearly identify the conflict in a situation makes your writing more effective.

Psychological Safety The second definition of safety is closer to psychological safety. Unlike the first type of safety, psychological safety is different for each individual. One of the easiest ways to play with psychological safety is by playing with psychological distance. There are four types of psychological distance: spatial (you care more about your neighbors than people in other cities), social (you care more about your friends than non-friends), temporal (you care more about recent events than events from years ago), or hypothetical (you care more about real events than imagined ones). Playing with psychological distance is a very subtle way of influencing how an audience relates to a joke. You can make a joke feel more or less safe simply by playing with these variables. In stand-up, we can use psychological distance to make stories more engaging. This is why so many comedians’ stories begin with “Last week I was…” or “Recently I noticed…” instead of “12 years ago my cousin was…” People naturally care more about the recent past than events from long ago. People also care more about their own city than a generic one. This is why local humor (jokes that require unique knowledge about the actual area) is such a popular way of opening a show. While playing with psychological distance can be fun, it doesn’t guarantee that a joke will create enough psychological safety. It’s easiest to see psychological safety at work in political or religious humor. To many people, politics and religion are strongly tied to their sense of self. When you insult something so important to them, the violation is much more personal. Unlike the mother in the grocery store, time won’t heal this violation. If a joke attacks who you are as a person, you won’t look back on the joke a week from now and think “Oh… NOW I get it! I guess people like me really are ***holes… What fun!” Someone

with no psychological safety might be able to appreciate a joke or what the joke is trying to do, but the lack of psychological safety will overshadow everything else and the humor will be lost. We’ve already seen how psychological safety worked in our grocery store example. Every adult that heard the boy’s comment would have instantly recognized the social violation and understood the potential consequences (hurting the old man’s feelings). However, nobody would have laughed until there was enough psychological safety. The mother was panicked and apologetic. Not much psychological safety there. The old man might have thought the comment was cute or extremely hurtful. Onlookers would start with more psychological safety than the panicked mother or the old man, but even they would wait until there’s enough psychological safety to start laughing. Few people would risk laughing out loud before they’ve had the chance to see if the old man was hurt. All the old man has to do is let out a small chuckle to restore everyone’s psychological safety and trigger their laughter. Once it becomes socially acceptable, all the tension built up from the situation will come flooding out as laughter. Psychological safety doesn’t just refer to using dirty topics or vulgar language. One of the most important ways comedians keep or break an audience’s psychological safety is with inauthenticity and breaking the audience’s trust. Playing with the safety/violation balance often feels like a game of table-top football. You want to get as close to the edge as you can without falling off. Comedians are rewarded for pushing the envelope because the closer they get to that edge, the more tension they can create. You don’t need formal comedy training to know that embellishing the details of a story can turn a slightly awkward situation into something hilarious. Embellishing a story is seriously fun. Nobody saw you slip and fall? No problem. Now three people saw you and one of them was your high school crush. Did you sneeze in line at the grocery store and think “I’m glad snot didn’t land on the lady in front of me.” Well, it turns out that it did. And you spent the next two minutes trying to pick it off her coat without her noticing. You would have succeeded if it weren’t for that 5-year old loudly announcing your secret to the entire checkout line. In comedy, this is using your creative license to make stories more enjoyable. How much you can get away with depends entirely on how you present your story to the audience and how much they trust you. It works the same way as trying to see how vulgar you can be, but it’s way more powerful and has less chance of backfiring. Maxwell Smart: At the moment, seven Coast Guard cutters are converging on us. Would you believe it? Mr. Big: I find that hard to believe. Maxwell Smart: Hmmm . . . Would you believe ‘six’? Mr. Big: I don't think so. Maxwell Smart: … How about two cops in a rowboat? - Get Smart!, 1965-1970

Violations Violations are defined more by what they DO than by what they are. They always break away from what is considered normal, expected, or acceptable in some context. Some of your rules are so important to you that you’d be willing to fight if someone broke that rule, but most violations are simply inconvenient, embarrassing, or frustrating. Other violations, like hearing a bad pun, might make you roll your eyes in disappointment. Oddly enough, comedy makes no distinction between these violations. Whether a violation enrages you or makes you roll your eyes makes no difference. It’s still a violation. Seinfeld finds small violations and blows them up while Richard Pryor took huge violations (like his near-death experience) and made them feel playful. There is no such thing as a violation that is “too big” or “too small.” The only important factor is the safety/violation balance. This means everything depends on the context. How you set up a story or introduce a violation is often more important than the violation itself. Violations are very subjective. What irks you and frazzles another might not even get my goat. While there’s no singular definition of a violation, they always leave a person with two pieces of information that don’t fit together quite right. When someone is listening to safety, they think “Yes, of course” because whatever is being said matches their expectations. A violation always represents some type of interruption to what’s normal or desired. It’s like a red flag pops up in your mind and you think “Wait! That’s not right!” Anything that makes you pause like this can be considered a violation. They can be small and inconsequential or they can be huge, obvious, and consequential. They can be real or imaginary. We will be diving deep into the various categories of violations and listing examples of each toward the end of this book. For now, I’ll include an example for each major category. 1. SOCIAL VIOLATION: A. SAFETY: A socially acceptable response B. VIOLATION: A socially unacceptable response “There was a point in time when we were in (Disneyland) where I lost my daughter. But I knew eventually I would run into her again, so I took that time to get on rides she couldn’t get on. When I saw her she was crying. I was like, ‘It’s not your birthday. Today’s not about you.” - Kevin Hart 2. WORD-BASED VIOLATION: A. SAFETY: The first/normal interpretation of the word B. VIOLATION: The second/surprising interpretation of the word (On America’s incarceration rate) In the land of the free, you have the least

amount of free people. - Jim Jefferies 3. MEANING-BASED VIOLATION: A. SAFETY: The original meaning B. VIOLATION: The reinterpreted meaning A friend of mine has a trophy wife, but apparently, it wasn't first place. - Steven Wright 4. SCALE-BASED VIOLATION: A. SAFETY: A usual amount of something B. VIOLATION: An unusual amount of it “Last night, it was so cold, the flashers in New York were only describing themselves.” - Johnny Carson 5. LOGIC-BASED VIOLATION: A. SAFETY: A logical conclusion B. VIOLATION: An illogical conclusion Pie can’t compete with cake. Put candles in a cake, it’s a birthday cake. Put candles in a pie, and somebody’s drunk in the kitchen. - Jim Gaffigan

Comedian Examples Look at Lewis Black or Sarah Silverman and you can see that even though they might appear to be very aggressive or offensive, there is still a lightheartedness in the way that they present their material. Lewis might shout at the audience, but the audience understands that he’s actually being playful. At no point would the audience ever think he’s actually mad. Sarah Silverman can get away with a lot of material that really pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable. The reason that she can do this is that her personality on stage creates a safe place in which we don’t feel like we have to take her words as threatening. She creates Comedic Conflict by saying awful things in cute ways. The audience laughs at the juxtaposition because what she is saying feels OK (benign) but clearly isn’t (violation). Another comedian that’s great at pushing this boundary is Anthony Jeselnik. Like Silverman, his laughs usually come from how far into a violation he can take the audience while still being liked. But

throughout the set, there’s a calmness to the delivery that helps create a place where the audience feels safe laughing at what many of them probably consider to be horrible things. I met a girl at a bar. She said she was a brain surgeon… I don’t know if this makes me sexist, but I was really impressed… Most women… can’t pull off sarcasm. - Anthony Jeselnik The same is true for Jim Jefferies. He creates safety within the delivery of his material even though the material itself is often a clear violation. My one skill in life is being able to say horrible things and still be ‘likable.’ If you take out the whole (sarcastic dance)… And just READ my material…It’s a BAD READ! - Jim Jefferies Another comedian who excels at creating a safe space even with edgy material is Amy Schumer. In this bit, she does material on a topic that most open-mic comedians would fail at, pedophilia. But she does two things that make the topic acceptable to the audience. First, she brings a playful, lighthearted innocence to the story. Anything overly creepy would have likely been rejected by the audience as too much of a violation. Second, she doesn’t go into any specifics. Even with a playful comedian, the audience still has boundaries. Keeping the topic vague makes it feel safer. This is especially important if you’re talking about uncomfortable topics. Demetri Martin used this very same idea to create humor. “You can say ‘I love kids’ as a general statement. It’s when you get specific that there’s a problem… …‘I love 12-year-olds.” - Demetri Martin It’s important to create some kind of a safe space early on so that the audience doesn’t need to feel psychologically threatened, even if the humor gets dark. Comedians only succeed when there’s a balance between violation and safety. Jeff Foxworthy’s violations are very different from Anthony Jeselnik’s, but both have found a way to create an effective balance for their audiences. If you go to an open mic and witness a particularly dirty set of jokes by a comic, you’ll see the audience get very uncomfortable. A dirty joke that bombs often fails to get a laugh because it throws the audience too far into violation without creating enough safety. When this happens, the audience will eventually try to create their own safety. The tension created by the violation must go somewhere. Sometimes, the audience will try to release some tension by letting out a nervous laugh. Other times you’ll see people checking their phones or doing some other activity that helps them disengage from the uncomfortable situation. The inattentiveness is not caused by boredom. It’s the

audience’s attempt to relieve psychological discomfort by creating their own safe space.

Comedic Tension vs. Comedic Conflict Throughout this book, I will be using the terms Comedic Tension and Comedic Conflict. Think of Comedic Tension as a watered-down version of Comedic Conflict that is used in the setup instead of the punchline. Comedic Tension uses violations that are either too small or not surprising enough to create laughs. It is an excellent way to begin a story or move toward a punchline. Comedic Conflict is always used for punchlines. These violations are typically big, fast and specific. Comedic Tension (CT): The juxtaposition between safety and a violation that is small, slow, or generic. CT is used in the setup to begin stories or prepare for a punchline. Why Problem (Why Tension): A specific reason why the Comedic Tension matters. Comedic Conflict (CC): The juxtaposition between safety and a violation that is big, fast, and specific. CC is used in the punchline to get laughs. Why Problem (Why Conflict): A specific reason why the Comedic Conflict matters. Think about tension like it’s a horror movie. Screenwriters start building tension long before a monster jumps out of the shadows and scares the audience. The writers build tension by giving the audience small hints at an upcoming conflict, but they keep the audience guessing how and when (the specifics). The tension created is small, slow, and ambiguous. When the monster finally jumps out and attacks a minority member, that’s conflict. It’s big, fast, specific, and there’s a very clear before and after.

Tension (Horror Movie): Tension slowly increases. The audience can see a conflict coming soon. Tension (Comedy): Tension slowly increases. The audience can see a conflict coming soon. Conflict (Horror Movie): Monster suddenly jumps out and attacks. The audience responds by screaming. Conflict (Comedy): Comedian surprises the audience with a punchline. The audience responds with laughter.

Comedic Tension is important because it mirrors your everyday sense of humor. When people say “I’m funny in conversations.” or “I’m good at making quick, sarcastic remarks.” What they’re really saying is that they are good at recognizing Comedic Tension (an opportunity for humor) and responding with Comedic Conflict (a punchline). Here’s a common example: By adding “That’s what she said!” to the end of a sentence it’s very easy to make something innocent sound dirty. It doesn’t take a genius to make this type of joke, but it does require that you recognize the opportunity for the punchline. Imagine being with a group of friends and then one friend innocently says “Wow. This thing is hard.” One of three things will happen:

1. Someone quickly says “That’s what she said!” 2. There will be an awkward pause because people noticed the Comedic Tension (the opportunity to convert the awkwardness into a laugh), but nobody actually released that tension with the obvious punchline. 3. Nobody notices the opportunity for a perverted joke and the opportunity for the punchline fades away. Everyone in the group goes on to do great things with their lives, even Scott.

Finding Comedic Conflict without Comedic Tension can be difficult (another reason why I don’t recommend brainstorming exercises). If you were having a conversation with a friend and that friend suddenly said, “Make me laugh. You have 15 seconds.” It’d be a challenge to do it. Even if you have made your friend laugh 10,000 times in the past, you’d still struggle. This is because when you are being funny in a conversation, you ALWAYS have a Comedic Tension to work with. As you will discover later, being able to identify and respond to Comedic Tension is the skill that makes you so funny in everyday life. When you master that skill, that same effortless and effective sense of humor can be used to write stand-up, sketch, sitcoms, or improve your improvisational comedy skills. Comedians often think they have a punchline problem when they actually have a Comedic Tension problem. As you’ll see later, when the Comedic Tension is right, the punchlines snap into place almost effortlessly… just like your natural sense of humor off-stage.

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Laughter Psychology How Punchlines Work

How Punchlines “Create” Humor For all the obsession over punchlines, it might surprise you to learn that punchlines don’t actually create humor. A comedian cannot “force” someone to laugh any more than a person can force their crush to fall in love with them. Humor isn’t created by a punchline. It’s created shortly after the punchline when the listener relates to the completed joke. There are five separate stages an audience goes through when listening to a joke. The humor comes in stage 4, a split-second after the hearing the punchline. I will quickly go over the 5 stages before giving you several examples of the process in action. Like other areas of this book, this process mirrors everyday life. These are the same stages you would go through to understand a difficult problem or respond to your friend telling you some bad news. We just happen to be applying these stages to humor. If you have trouble understanding how the process works, try using a more mundane example that’s specific to you.

Stage 1: Constructing In stage 1, the audience listens to the setup of the joke and “constructs” an understanding of the situation. They use this understanding to create assumptions and make predictions. I represent this as a green circle. The stage begins with the first part of the setup and ends when the audience recognizes a violation in the punchline. A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: ‘Ugh, that’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen!’ The woman walks to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: ‘The driver just insulted me!’ The man says: ‘You go up there and tell him off. Go on, I’ll hold your …

Stage 2: Reckoning The punchline causes the audience to “recognize a problem.” In a conventional joke, this violation often breaks one of the assumptions or predictions that the audience made during the setup, causing the audience to “reinterpret” their first understanding of the setup. In storytelling, the violation still represents a problem, but it doesn’t have to change anything about the setup. This stage begins when the violation creates a second circle (represented as a red circle) and ends when the violation and safety combine to create something new (the Juxtaposition). This stage is only about 300 milliseconds (0.3 seconds) long. … The man says: ‘You go up there and tell him off. Go on, I’ll hold your monkey.

Stage 3: Resolving/Juxtaposing The audience “figures out the joke” by combining information from the setup and the punchline. They “solve” the violation by realizing what the specific problem is and why it matters (represented by a star in the diagram). If the audience fails to resolve the joke, the audience gets stuck at stage 2 and will be confused. Great jokes are often like the world’s easiest jigsaw puzzle. There are only a few pieces to put together, there are no pieces leftover or holes missing, and the picture instantly makes sense. The audience is left with a new, complete picture of the joke. In terms of a color analogy, this stage is where the color green and red come together to create something new… orange.

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After hearing the punchline, the audience realizes that the man who was “on her side” thought she was holding a monkey. Once the audience understands this, the comment from the bus driver and the man at the back of the bus both make sense. All the information goes together to create a single understanding of the story.

Stage 4: Relating/Judging Once the audience has finished putting the joke together, they begin relating to the new idea. This is the stage of the process that actually creates the laughter because it is the audience’s first chance to relate to the juxtaposition created in stage 3. Audiences never laugh at the violation. They only laugh at why the violation matters. In stage 3, the audience figured out what the problem was and why it mattered. In stage 4, they figure out what it means to them. In terms of the jigsaw puzzle analogy, this is where the audience thinks “Do I enjoy the picture?”

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Once the audience realizes what the problem is and why it matters, the joke is complete. The audience must now decide whether they think it’s funny.

Stage 5: Responding The last stage is where the audience responds to the joke. How they relate to the joke in the previous stage will determine how strong of a reaction the audience has as well as whether the reaction is positive or negative. If you are telling a story, the first violation is often used to create Comedic Tension instead of a laugh. The audience responds to Comedic Tension by anticipating the completed joke. They often react to Comedic Tension by thinking “Oh… I like where this is going!” To complete the joke, the comedian will go back through this process again. Together, the process of resolving (step 3) and relating (step 4) takes around 200 milliseconds (0.2 seconds) to complete. This means that it takes audience members around 500 milliseconds (0.5 seconds) to recognize the violation in a punchline, resolve the conflict, and then relate to the completed joke. In stage 5, the audience will respond to the new idea. The audience’s response may be positive (laughter), negative (the joke fails or offends), or neutral.

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How To Make Anyone Laugh: Understanding How Audiences Judge Jokes Let’s focus on the most important stage of the joke listening process: How the audience relates to a punchline. Stage1-3 ignore the listener and assume that the joke is all that matters. Stage 4 determines whether an audience member laughs or not as well as whether the laugh is a slight chuckle or a huge belly laugh. I’ve boiled everything down to one simple question that captures the essence of Comedic Conflict. When you deliver your punchline, the audience will immediately judge it by asking themselves:

“Was it a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise?” If your audience can say yes, then it’s very likely that they’re about to start laughing. Let’s break this definition down.

PLAYFUL: Did your punchline have enough safety? Was there something about the joke that invites the audience to be playful? Did you allow the audience to keep one foot inside their comfort zone? Does the audience feel like you’re being real with them? INAPPROPRIATE: Was there enough violation? Was there incongruity? Was there conflict? Was there a break in social norms or an absurd mental image? Is there something the audience can point to and say “Hey. That’s not right!” Does the audience understand why the violation is matters? SURPRISE: Did you give the audience a specific time to START laughing? Was the audience able to quickly put all the pieces of the puzzle together? Was there a clear make-or-break moment where the audience understood that they heard the punchline? Was the audience able to figure out the surprise before you delivered it? PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE SURPRISE: A punchline that quickly shifts from being serious to playful in a way that is slightly inappropriate.

This is a ridiculously simple definition of what makes people laugh, yet it works anywhere that you find humor. I’ve never found an exception to this rule. It doesn’t matter how weird and abstract of an example I come up with, the humor still works for the same reason. Have you ever laughed because someone took a breath in as if they were about to say something, but then they secondguessed themselves and didn’t say anything? Have you ever laughed because you and your friends suddenly recognized an awkward pause in the conversation? How could these situations be funny when there is literally no setup or punchline? Here are some more examples of places where you can find Playfully Inappropriate Surprises.

Stand-Up Comedy Improv Comedy Sketch Comedy Sitcoms/Movies Musical Comedy Slip-And-Fall Humor Blue/Dirty Humor Political Humor Fail Videos Sports Bloopers “Instant Karma” Awkward Silence Farting Freudian slips Parodies

Your #1 job as a comedian is to create Playfully Inappropriate Surprises for your audience. It doesn’t matter whether you do that by telling stories or one-liners, making observations, giving your opinions, writing screenplays, playing practical jokes, designing funny Super Bowl commercials or just being a dry, sarcastic, a**hole. There are infinite ways to create Comedic Conflict. Creating Playfully Inappropriate Surprises is WHAT you do. The art is HOW you do it. Authors Note: I will often use the phrase Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition (PIJ) because my original acronym is “PIS” (Which is a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise that I find both awesome and unfortunate.).

What Determines The Quality of Laughs? This section will look at humor from the perspective of different theories of humor. If you haven’t studied comedy before, this section might be confusing. New comedians are encouraged to read through this section, but only take the easiest ideas. Everything beyond understanding that a punchline is a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise is optional. Which Playfully Inappropriate Surprises are the best? For this answer, we need to draw on theories other than BVT. Classic theories of humor are usually grouped under one of three umbrella terms: Relief Theory, Superiority Theory, and Incongruity Theory. Since BVT is an extension of Incongruity Theory I won’t address it here. I will also include a newer, though lesser known theory called Comprehension-Elaboration Theory.

Relief Theory Relief Theory suggests that laughter is a way of releasing pent-up energy. It explains why we laugh when we see our friend slip and fall. Seeing the friend slip creates a spike of nervous energy because we’re not sure if he will be OK or not. Once we know that our friend is OK, that nervous energy is released and floods out of us as laughter. It’s easiest to see this when a comedian responds to a heckler or when a comedian is telling a story in which “the good guy” is insulted. The original insult creates a stressful situation. When the good guy responds to an insult in a funny way, it allows the audience to release their pent-up stress, creating laughter. This is true for lesser forms of stress as well. Jokes that rely on creating confusion in the setup (e.g., punning riddles, “why did the chicken cross the road?”) create a small amount of tension in the listener as they struggle to find the solution. This tension is released upon solving the riddle. Comedian/songwriter Stephen Lynch begins his song Little Tiny Mustache in a purposefully confusing way. Listening to a live recording, you can hear the audience struggling to understand the first verse. The audience laughs at each individual punchline while simultaneously getting more and more confused by the overall story. Once he segues into the chorus, everything suddenly makes sense. This sudden leap of clarity releases all the tension built up throughout verse one. You’re the love of my life, but it cuts like a knife And I feel that I’m being mislead… See I’m a little concerned, for I recently learned Of the swastika tattoo on your head… And it makes you smile, when you hear Sieg Heil You love the smell of a burning cross in the yard You do goose step salutes, in your Doc Marten boots And you quoted Mein Kampf in our fifth-anniversary card. [chorus] I think you’re a Nazi baby… Are you a Nazi…

You might be a Nazi baby… - Stephen Lynch Storytellers typically build tension by using Comedic Tension while Joke Tellers create tension through Misdirection. One of the biggest strengths of storytelling is its ability to generate lots of tension in a very natural way. It’s incredibly easy for a listener to understand and relate to a story. A comedian is free to write about any situation that stresses them out because either the listener will feel the same way that they do or because the listener will be able to empathize. Whether a listener is afraid of cockroaches or not doesn’t matter because they are able to empathize with someone who is afraid of them. Both situations are able to create lots of nervous energy to be released. Regardless of how a joke is structured, Relief Theory suggests that the funniness of the joke will be related to the level of nervous energy the listener has before and after the punchline as well as the speed with which that energy was released. Failed jokes can be a result of too little tension in the setup, not enough tension released by the punchline, or a punchline that releases the tension too slowly. As a general rule, setups that create nervous energy before releasing it through a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise tend to be funnier. In this book, we will create nervous energy through Comedic Tension.

Superiority Theory Superiority Theory suggests that laughter results from self-enhancing feelings of superiority. It explains why we find bloopers and fail videos so funny but we generally don’t laugh when we’re the butt of a joke. According to the theory, jokes always have a winner and a loser. It posits that all jokes are an act of “playful aggression” and that there are three parties to every joke: the comedian, the listener, and the object of the joke. In the case of self-depreciation or insult humor, the object of the joke can be the comedian or listener, respectively. The object of the joke receives the aggression while the comedian and/or listener get to feel superior to the object. Political humor relies heavily on generating feelings of superiority in the audience by showing inconsistencies or problems with the other side’s ideas. The businessman joke from earlier can be seen as a gentle “put-down” of the businessman, but the audience doesn’t have to “hate businessmen” for them to enjoy it. Merely watching the misfortune of others can be enough. Research suggests that there’s an “inverted-U” relationship between aggression and perceived funniness of a joke (I like to call an “inverted-U” an “N”… but I’m no scientist). Said different, there’s an optimal level of aggression for jokes. Jokes with very low or very high aggression tend to be less funny while jokes with a moderate level of aggression tend to work best. While Superiority Theory can be applied to a large portion of humor, there isn’t any evidence that suggests that all humor requires it. The most we can say is that a large majority of humor relies on some type of playful aggression. Superiority Theory suggests that comedians should look for opportunities to enhance the audience’s self-esteem by finding ways to make the audience feel better about themselves, their situations, beliefs, opinions, etc. We want to find ways to playfully insult, demean or trivialize things

without appearing overly cruel.

Comprehension-Elaboration Theory Comprehension-Elaboration Theory (CET) is a contemporary theory of humor that combines a lot of the best qualities of Relief, Superiority, and Incongruity Theory/BVT. CET posits that humor is the result of a 2-stage process. Stage one is the comprehension of the joke, which is analogous to stages 1-3 from earlier (Construction, Recognition, and Resolution). Comprehension is about creating an initial interpretation of an event. We do this through the use of schemas. Schemas refer to preexisting knowledge. They include information about objects, events, people, social roles, how to behave in a certain situation, etc. that we use to organize knowledge and expectations (Taylor & Crocker, 1981). We unconsciously create schemas by interacting with the world and recognizing patterns. For example, your schema about restaurants would include what they look like (e.g., chairs, tables, salt and pepper shakers, etc.), the different types of restaurants, how much they generally cost, etc. Think of it as your “mental representation” of a restaurant. Schemas that are related to the physical environment are called frames while those that relate to the sequences of events are called scripts. Your script for a restaurant is the typical sequence of events for a restaurant (e.g., arriving, giving the host your name, waiting for an open table… etc.). Notice how this joke breaks your script instead of your frame by playing with the sequence of events instead of the events themselves. In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I’d meet a girl and say, ‘Hi, was it good for you too?’ If a girl spent the night, I'd wake up in the morning and THEN try to get her drunk. - Steve Martin The setup of a joke is how the comedian activates the schemas that are most important for understanding the joke. This Steven Wright joke activates a schema just before breaking it. “I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.” - Steven Wright Elaboration refers to “the degree to which people use activated schemas to generate further thoughts, images, and inferences related to the reinterpretation of an event that is not necessary for comprehension” (The Psychology of Humor). This is analogous to stage 4 (Relating/Judging) from earlier. Importantly, elaboration takes place after the joke is completed. Once you understood Steven Wright’s punchline there really wasn’t anywhere else for your mind to go. You couldn’t explore any interesting implications. Your mind wasn’t able to say “If X is true

then A, B, and C are true.” The punchline didn’t lead to new thoughts or mental images. It just, kinda… ends. Contrast Wright’s joke with another Steve Martin joke that draws on a hilarious misunderstanding. "So this couple came up to me after the show and said, "Hey, are you bi?" And I thought to myself, "Well, I speak a little Spanish, but not really enough to be bi..." But I didn't want to look stupid, so I said, "Sure, I'm bi." And they said, "Great, so we're having some S&M people over, after the show why don't you come on over?" So, I thought, "Great, Spaniards and Mexicans! That'll be fun to go over there and speak a little Spanish... “ - Steve Martin Filling in the consequences of Martin’s misunderstanding is painfully obvious. You “comprehend” the joke once you realize that there’s a playfully inappropriate misunderstanding between Martin and the couple. Martin thinks they mean “bilingual” but they actually mean “bisexual.” He magnifies the problem by also misunderstanding S&M to mean Spaniards and Mexicans. As CET predicts, the funniness of Martin’s joke relies heavily on the thoughts that the audience generates after the punchline. The audience doesn’t care that there was a misunderstanding. They care about what the misunderstanding means. CET suggests that jokes that allow the audience to generate lots of humor-related elaborations are the funniest. Punchlines that have interesting consequences or lead the audience to generate a funny mental image are particularly useful. A useful way to think about this is that a punchline is an “invitation to be playful.” A punchline that allows the audience’s mind to “play around” with a new idea is more interesting and enjoyable than punchlines where the game starts and stops quickly.

Get The Most Out Of These Theories For new comedians, these theories work best as a diagnostic tool. Use the theories to understand and revise your old jokes. As you get more comfortable with the writing process as well as with each theory, you can begin applying the theories in real time. You do this by recognizing natural opportunities, not by forcing them. In fact, the best usage of these theories will be entirely subconscious. You won’t sit at your computer and think “How can I write a Superiority Theory joke?” Instead, you’ll be writing or rewriting a story and a punchline will seemingly appear out of nowhere that already contains the perfect amount of playful aggression. You won’t realize that you applied the theory until the joke is already finished. In order to get to this point, you must teach your brain what to look for. The more you apply each theory to analyze humor the more you teach your brain the rules. This is true whether you analyze your own material or material from an open-mic or an A-list comedian. Your brain slowly builds a schema

in the exact same way that it built a schema for restaurants. Like all schema, the vast majority of it is subconscious. Eventually, you will subconsciously reference this schema while writing. You’ll naturally apply the rules without thinking about them. This is generally referred to as having “intuition.” You know that you know, but you don’t know why you know.

4 Examples of How Joke-Listening Works Before moving to the writing process, let's take a look at a few examples of how jokes take listeners through the joke-listening process.

Example #1: Desert Island First, let’s use a popular Three-Count joke to illustrate why people always laugh at why a violation matters instead of the violation itself. This idea will play an important role throughout this book. Three guys, stranded on a desert island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says, “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.” The first two men create a pattern of “wishing to be off the island.” In order for the third man to create a violation, he must wish for anything other than leaving the island. If the violation mattered, then almost any punchline would work. But the violation isn’t what carries the joke. It’s the consequences behind the violation. It’s why the problem matters. When you read that the man wished for his friends back, you instantly recognized the consequences of his wish, which created the humor. If the three men were able to make three more wishes after the punchline, there would be no consequences to the last man’s wish and, thus, it would have killed the joke. The wish never actually mattered… only the consequences of that wish.

1. CONSTRUCTION: Three guys, stranded on a desert island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. 2. RECKONING: The third guy says, “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.” (Audience realizes that there’s a problem with the third man’s wish) 3. RESOLVING/JUXTAPOSING: Audience constructs a new understanding of the joke, creating a juxtaposition between the safety and violation. They now fully understand all that the joke has to offer. 4. RELATING/JUDGING: Audience figures out what the juxtaposition means to them. They can decide that it’s too safe (“I’ve heard that joke before”), too big of a violation (“The punchline

feels forced. I don’t like it.”) or that it has a balance of both (laughter). 5. RESPONDING: Audience responds

The punchline introduced a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise. The violation was hidden until the very end of the punchline, creating the surprise. The third man’s wish was a benign-violation because it was both OK and not OK at the same time. It was OK because he had a good reason to do it (being lonely) and it fit the rules of having a genie (he was allowed to wish for anything he wanted). However, it was inappropriate because his wish canceled-out his friends’ wishes and left them in the same position they started.

Example #2: Gym Instructor Joke 2 highlights how the Resolving/Juxtaposition Stage creates a juxtaposition. 'I said to the Gym instructor "Can you teach me to do the splits?" He said, "How flexible are you?" I said, "I can't make Tuesdays”’

1. CONSTRUCTION: 1. COMEDIAN: 'I said to the Gym instructor "Can you teach me to do the splits?" He said, "How flexible are you?" 2. AUDIENCE: Audience listens and begins to create assumptions, predictions, etc. 2. RECKONING: 1. COMEDIAN: I said, "I can't make Tuesdays” 2. AUDIENCE: Audience recognizes a problem with this sentence. The man’s answer does not match the audience’s predictions. This makes the response a violation. 3. RESOLVING/JUXTAPOSING: 1. COMEDIAN: n/a 2. AUDIENCE: Audience “puts together the joke” by realizing that “flexible” has two meanings (“Oh. It’s a pun”). 4. RELATING/JUDGING: 1. COMEDIAN: n/a 2. AUDIENCE: Audience judges the pun by deciding if they find it to be a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise. 5. RESPONDING: 1. COMEDIAN: n/a

2. AUDIENCE: Audience responds with laughter. In this 2nd joke, the safety and violation merge together once you realize that “flexible” has two meanings. Every pun works this way. This likely felt like a single step to you because it happened so quickly, but if you were confused by the pun then these stages would have been further apart. The punchline was playfully inappropriate because it switched between an OK and not OK interpretation of the word “flexible.” However, as you went through stage 4 of relating to this pun, you might have simply rolled your eyes.

Example #3: Wishing Well Joke 3 highlights how the Relating/Judging Stage creates humor: My mother-in-law fell down a wishing well, I was amazed, I never knew they worked.

1. CONSTRUCTION: 1. COMEDIAN: “My mother-in-law fell down a wishing well, I was amazed” 2. AUDIENCE: Audience listens and begins to create assumptions, predictions, etc. 2. RECKONING: 1. COMEDIAN: “I never knew they worked.” 2. AUDIENCE: Audience recognizes a problem with this sentence. It doesn’t make sense at first, creating a violation. 3. RESOLVING/JUXTAPOSING: 1. COMEDIAN: n/a 2. AUDIENCE: Audience “puts together” the joke by realizing that he must have wished at a wishing-well for his mother-in-law to fall down the well. 4. RELATING/JUDGING: 1. COMEDIAN: n/a 2. AUDIENCE: Audience has an “Oh my God!” moment once they realize how horrible his wish was. They judge the joke as a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise. 5. RESPONDING: 1. COMEDIAN: n/a 2. AUDIENCE: Audience responds with laughter. While this joke might seem very different from the others, it actually works the exact same way. The punchline introduces a violation and then the audience does some very quick problem-solving to

figure out that the man must have wished for his mother-in-law to fall down the wishing well. The humor is created a split-second later when the audience relates to the final idea. They must figure out the joke in stage 3 before deciding whether it’s funny in stage 4.

Example #4: South Park Notice how this South Park joke quickly takes you through the first three stages of this process: “I looked in my mom’s closet and saw what I was getting for Christmas. An UltraVibe Pleasure 2000!” - Eric Cartman, South Park This joke is set up by introducing the honest, childish reason why Cartman was looking in his mother’s closet. The safety comes from how Cartman delivers the joke. He clearly hasn’t realized what he actually found. Since he hasn’t figured out what he saw, the violation of what he saw is relatively harmless. If we could slow down time, we would have seen that it took around 300ms for you to recognize that something was wrong with what Cartman found. However, at this point, you wouldn’t actually know why it’s wrong or how the pieces fit together. The most you could say is that there’s a conflict between what he found and what you would have expected him to find as a Christmas present. It took you another 200ms for you to resolve that conflict. To do this, your brain had to find a way to interpret the joke in a way that accounted for all the information. Your brain essential asked itself “If the ‘UltraVibe Pleasure 2000’ isn’t a Christmas gift… then what is it?” Since this joke is so well written, it didn’t take long for your brain to find an interpretation that made sense. The two hints inside the joke (“in my mom’s closet” and “UltraVibe Pleasure 2000”) make it easy for the audience to resolve the conflict quickly. It leaves no room for confusion. Notice how it becomes more difficult to resolve the violation if we change the hints inside the setup or punchline. Notice how these three variations of the same joke make it harder to put the joke together. “I looked in my mom’s car and saw what I was getting for Christmas. An UltraVibe Pleasure 2000!” “I looked in my mom’s car and saw what I was getting for Christmas. A Pleasure 2000.” “I looked in my mom’s car and saw what I was getting for Christmas. A Pleasure 2000.” Changing the hiding place to “In my mom’s car” shouldn't make the joke any less funny, but it clearly does. When you say “car" you’re placing an unnecessary step between recognizing the violation and resolving the conflict. The audience hears “car” and then immediately searches their memories for anything that might be called “UltraVibe Pleasure 2000.” The audience will end up

confused because they’ll be unable to interpret the joke in a way that makes sense. The puzzle pieces don’t quite fit right. The same is true if we change the name to a slightly more ambiguous “Pleasure 2000.” The name “UltraVibe” is a great punchline because it makes it easy for the audience to figure out exactly what it is and why it'd be in mom's closet. Saying “Pleasure 2000” could still technically work, but it isn't nearly as easy to figure out. The audience would once again struggle to put the joke together. If I change both hints, I completely break the joke. The audience will still recognize the violation, but the joke is so ambiguous that the audience wouldn't be able to resolve the conflict. They’ll understand that something isn’t quite right, but they'll be unable to find a way of viewing the joke that makes sense. While recognizing and resolving violations might sound like a complicated process, your brain is constantly doing this throughout the day. Whenever something doesn’t make sense, your brain goes through these stages until it either finds a satisfactory solution or it gives up. Think of this process as if you were trying to figure out a magic trick. A great magician should create a violation (e.g., “That shouldn’t be possible”) but do it in a way that leaves you unable to resolve it (e.g., “Oh. I know how he did it.”). You notice the violation and then briefly try to figure out how it was done by searching for a way of looking at the trick that accounts for what you saw.

This page once had more words, but now finds the simple life more pleasurable.

Managing Comedic Conflict In this chapter, we’ll look at an easy way to create Comedic Conflict in our own material. Whether you’re a stand-up comedian telling an audience a story or a sketch or improvisational comedian beginning a scene, you must find a way to quickly give the audience the necessary information for the joke. There should always be a balance. Setup Too Short: Audience doesn’t have enough information to understand the joke. Setup Too Long: Audience gets bored or forgets information in the setup that is important to understand the joke. The same is true for your writing process. You need to balance the time spent writing setups (safety) and punchlines (violations). We do this by switching between two different types of writing: Exploration (creating safety) and Conflict Making (creating violations). During Exploration, we’ll write very mundane, factual material that will become the setup. During Conflict Making, we’ll find or create violations that will create tension or become our punchlines. You will be spending the majority of your time switching between these two types of writing. If you are an improvisational comedian, this process is still true. The only differences are that you are essentially writing everything in real-time in front of a live audience and the violations used to create the humor are typically the result of collaborating with other players instead of making individual choices.

How To Balance Exploration & Conflict Making You write your material by asking yourself questions and then answering them on paper. The type of question that you ask yourself will determine if you are Exploring or Conflict Making. Exploration Questions, such as “…and then what happened?” naturally lead to more safety. Conflict Questions, such as “Why can’t…?” naturally create conflict. You can control whether you are Exploring or Conflict Making by changing the type of questions you ask yourself. Exploration Questions and Conflict Questions work together. There must be a balance. Too many Exploration Questions will result in very low conflict. Too many Conflict Questions usually leads to either writer’s block or a confusing/chaotic story. Some comedians may find brainstorming techniques to be helpful here. This book doesn’t teach brainstorming techniques because research consistently shows that they decrease originality. For veteran comedians, this should be a non-starter. However, since new comedians typically aren’t focused on generating highly original material, they might find that the predictability of a brainstorming session makes writing easier. Once joke writing feels more natural they can invite more originality into their creative process.

Exploration Questions Think of yourself as an explorer. Each time you write a new bit you’re starting out with a completely empty map. You don't know what lies in any direction. You do a quick look around and then choose a direction that feels promising. Your starting point might be an experience you’ve had, an opinion you hold, an observation you’ve made, or even a random topic you’d like to write about. This becomes your starting point. You explore that starting point by asking yourself Exploration Questions. There are four main ways to explore. You can explore different experiences that you have had with your topic (storytelling), you can explore the opinions that you or others have, you can make an observation about the topic, or you can fill in details like who or why. When you’re writing a story, you will switch between these different types of exploration. For example, you can begin with a simple experience, then make an observation and follow it up with an opinion. This variety in the setup keeps the story interesting and makes it easier to introduce interesting violations later on. A story doesn’t have to be long or formal. Storytelling just refers to the natural way people communicate with each other. In the real world, people tell each other bite-sized stories all the time. Your story might be big and consequential, but it can also be a simple response to your spouse asking about your day.

Storytelling Exploration Questions Exploration questions are naturally good at moving a story forward (though they are boring by themselves). The question “Then what happened?” is a great example. It helps you steer a story in a

specific direction. Here are a few examples of Exploration Questions: What happened first? Then what happened? Why did we leave? What happened before we got there? What happened after we left? Let’s say I want to write a very simple story about going to the grocery store. I begin with a simple Exploration Question, “What happened first?” Then I continue the story by asking “And then what?”

EXPLORATION QUESTION: What happened first? EXPLORATION STATEMENT: I wanted to go to the store EXPLORATION QUESTION: And then what? EXPLORATION STATEMENT: I got into my car EXPLORATION QUESTION: And then what? EXPLORATION STATEMENT: I turned on the AC

Detail Exploration Questions Detail Exploration Questions can be added at any time. We add details to the story by asking who, what, where, when, why, and how questions. What happened first? -> I wanted to go to the store And then what? -> I got into my car And then what -> I turned on the AC Why did I do that? -> It was hot outside When did this happen? -> It was August Who was with me? -> My friend was with me Where was the car parked? -> It was parked on a public street

Opinion Exploration Questions Opinion questions are useful in every type of story, not just when writing about topics that you have strong opinions about. Generic Opinion Questions lead to topics or sub-topics. If I asked myself “What’s my favorite fruit?” then the answer would give me a topic to start with, but it wouldn’t give me much more than that. A much better way to use Opinion Questions is as a follow-up to other types of Exploration Questions. To do this, simply add “because” to the end of the last sentence. The answer will give you

a reason or an opinion that doesn’t create a violation. In comedy, why you do something can be just as funny as what you actually do.

EXPLORATION QUESTION: And then what? EXPLORATION STATEMENT: I turned on the AC OPINION STATEMENT: because I eat out too much and want to cook more EXPLORATION QUESTION: And then what? EXPLORATION STATEMENT: I got into my car OPINION STATEMENT: I’m too lazy to walk to the store EXPLORATION QUESTION: And then what? EXPLORATION STATEMENT: I turned on the AC OPINION STATEMENT: because my AC takes a long time to cool the car down

Observation Exploration Questions Now you’ll add some observations. Whatever your observation is, you should follow it up by asking yourself why you noticed it in the first place. The answer will point you towards a potential violation. If you notice something, it’s only because something about it was worthy of your attention. It made you stop and think “Wait a second…” This is an excellent way of finding violations. You will naturally ignore normal, safe details of daily life. However, violations grab your attention whether you are looking for them or not. When you walk to your car and see that your neighbor parked his car too close to your car, you’ll notice. It doesn’t matter if you were consciously looking for it or not. Your brain is naturally wired to find these types of problems. Here are some examples of observation questions. Any time you add an observation, follow it up with a why question. What did you see/hear/smell/taste/feel? Why was it worth noticing? What did you notice? Why? What did you NOT notice? Why? Who noticed it? Why did that person notice it?

Exploration Questions: Putting It All Together When you add all these types of Exploration Questions together, you get something that feels more like a real story. The give-and-take between the various types of Exploration Statements makes the story feel more natural and opens up more opportunities to create humor. EXPERIENCE: I went to the store

OBSERVATION: Have you ever noticed that grocery stores have the vegetable aisle in the front OPINION: I hate shopping for vegetables because… EXPERIENCE: Last week I tried to buy a ripe avocado and… OPINION: I think avocado farmers must be really rich. OBSERVATION: Avocados have TV advertisements, but most fruits don’t OPINION: I’m not entirely sure if avocados are a fruit or vegetable OBSERVATION: Fruits are sweet, but a tomato is a fruit… which isn’t very sweet These Exploration Questions are a great way of creating safety because the answers rarely create obstacles or problems. By themselves, Exploration can only create LOTS of safety. All eight of the lines above are safe. There’s no tension. We haven’t given the audience a reason to care about our story yet. If we’re going to create Comedic Conflict, we need to insert a violation. We need two circles if we want to start a fight.

Conflict Making Once we are finished with Exploring, we switch to Conflict Making. You can introduce conflict into your material by asking and answering Conflict Questions. Think of a Conflict Questions as “anything you can say to someone that would probably start a fight.” These questions naturally create conflict because they almost always lead to a violation. If someone asked you to wash the dishes and the first words out of your mouth were “Why can’t …” then there’s probably going to be some conflict in your future. When you say “Why can’t…” it practically guarantees that YOUR circle and THEIR circle aren’t going to match, creating conflict. The specific type of conflict depends on the rest of the question. All three of the questions below create a different kind of conflict: Why can’t you do it? Why can’t we get a maid? Why can’t I do it after I watch TV? There aren’t many options for finishing a “Why can’t…” question without creating some type of conflict. That’s what makes it such a great question to be asking yourself while writing. Here are some more Conflict Questions that can help you create conflict in your material.

Conflict Questions/Phrases Who can / can’t … Who would ever… Who in their right mind… What is(n’t), does(n’t), could(n’t), would(n’t), should(n’t) What kind of… (hypothetical) What if… (hypothetical) What do you expect me to do? (hypothetical) Where is/can … When is/isn’t, does/doesn’t … When is it an appropriate time to… When do you think… Why is/isn’t … Why do you… How can you … How/What do you think… (leads to sarcasm) How would ______ look at this situation? (change POV) [Am I, Are You, Is He] supposed to…? (disbelief) Is there anybody in the world that would… (sarcasm) I want _____, But … (internal conflict) I don’t understand why I must…

Notice how easy it would be to create conflict using any of these questions. That’s because these questions naturally create obstacles. Regardless of the original direction of the material, once you say, “Why can’t…?” you’re introducing a new direction. You’ve placed a brick wall between you and wherever the story was naturally going.

Brian Regan: Emergency Room In this Brian Regan bit, he used Conflict Questions inside his actual performance “What are you supposed to say about yourself?” and “Are you supposed to drop someone off and park the car?” Both phrases create conflict naturally. “Supposed to” is an excellent phrase because it naturally sets up a conflict between what YOU WANT TO DO and what SOCIETY EXPECTS YOU TO DO. I actually just recently had to go to the emergency room, though. I had some weird stomach virus. I almost called an ambulance. It’s weird if you’re considering calling an ambulance for yourself. You call ambulances for other people. Right? What are you supposed to say about yourself? “Can you come get me? Yeah. I don’t feel so good. Just come on and I’ll be lying on the floor.” (act out) I don’t care if you’re driving yourself or someone else to the emergency room, You still want to get out and run in with them. Are you supposed to drop somebody off and go park the car? “OK, you go in… … Tell ‘em you’re shot! … … Ask them if they validate.” - Brian Regan

But Statements A “But Statement” is your single most powerful Conflict Making tool. They are ridiculously easy to use and they can lead to Comedic Conflict just as well as Conflict Questions. A But Statement naturally creates a contrast between the first and second part of the sentence. This makes it the quickest ways to tell the audience exactly what they need to know to understand a problem. With a single sentence, you can tell the audience both what you wanted and why you had a problem getting it. We use But Statements every day to clearly communicate problems big and small. I looked for apples at the store, but they didn’t have any. I have to give a speech on Monday, but I’m really nervous. My friend hit on a girl at the bar, but he was really drunk. I took my friend to church, but he told everyone dirty jokes. But Statements are particularly effective for storytelling because they make it easy to introduce a problem early on. In his Thanksgiving Day Football bit, Ray Romano used this But Statement to create tension: “I don’t want to be rude, but I want to watch the game.”

This immediately sets up a problem. He wants to watch the football game and not be rude to his family on Thanksgiving Day. The audience will watch as the low-level problem in the setup escalates into high-level conflict in the punchline.

Ray Romano: Thanksgiving Football They put football on during Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to watch the game. We made a compromise during dinner. We put the TV on (but) without the volume. Now I have to pretend that I’m paying attention to my family. Grandma... (eyes moving toward TV) can you pass the... gravy, pass the GRAVY! I’M OPEN GRANDMA! … Get rid of the gravy, what are you looking at? … ah... … You suck. No. I’m not going to shut up. We should have gotten rid of her last year. I told you as soon as her knees went to get rid of her. Be careful with But Statements. Not all tension is equal. A But Statement’s job is to create a contrast between the first and second part of the sentence. Whether that contrast actually matters is a different matter. Some But Statements are so weak that the audience won't notice or care about the violation. The But Statement “My car is black, but your car is brown” creates a contrast. However, unless you want to go through the trouble of convincing an audience that this difference is actually important and worth talking about, it’s better to just ignore it. But Statements are so easy to create that it doesn’t make sense to obsess over ones that are weak or awkward. We’ll discuss ways to deal with weak tension in the troubleshooting chapter.

Comedic Tension Can Be Explicit or Implicit While a But Statement naturally creates a contrast, that doesn’t mean that the safety and violation are always on opposite sides of the But Statement. In Romano’s example, there’s a clear contrast between not wanting to be rude and wanting to watch the game. The first-half and second-half of the But Statement are in direct conflict. To clearly see this conflict, we could restate Romano’s sentence as being “I don’t want to be rude, but I want to do something that’s rude.” The only difference between this sentence and the original is that “I want to watch TV” is more specific. The But Statement is explicitly telling us the conflict. However, this isn’t true for the example “I took my friend to church, but he told everyone dirty jokes.” There isn’t a direct fight between “taking your friend to church” and “Him telling everyone dirty jokes.” If the violation is that your friend told everyone dirty jokes then the anti-violation (safety) is your reasonable expectation that he would behave like a normal churchgoer. So while the But Statement says “I took my friend to church, but he told everyone dirty jokes,” the real conflict can be written like this: “I took my friend to church. I thought he’d behave properly, but he told everyone dirty jokes.” Being able to make these types of distinctions will become very important in later chapters.

Elaboration Possibility Elaboration possibilities are analogous to Comprehension-Elaboration Theory. The main difference is that CET explains possible elaborations as what enhances the audience’s laughter. Elaboration possibilities are similar, but they are used by the writer instead of the audience. From a writer’s perspective, elaboration is the ability to take an idea and build off of it. A story set in New York City can naturally go many different directions. The same is often true for stories set in bars or other social hotspots. There are so many people, places, and things to do that you’re unlikely to run out of options. Your ability to elaborate on a story is high whenever there are many different possible combinations of ideas that can lead somewhere interesting or whenever ideas can lead to many future ideas. A story set in the middle of the desert or alone in a room would be more difficult to elaborate on because you have fewer options for creating interesting ideas and there is a much lower chance that one idea will spiral out of control and open up more possibilities. Situations with many possible ways to elaborate make it easy to find interesting answers to the question “And then what happened?” The example “I took my friend to church, but he told everyone dirty jokes” has many interesting possibilities because there are many interesting ways that we can continue talking about what happened next. For example, we could get specific about the dirty jokes, we could explore the awkwardness of the situation, we could have the churchgoers enjoy the jokes a bit too much, or we could even have the churchgoers respond with even dirtier jokes until the situation spirals out of control. There are tons of options that could potentially lead somewhere interesting because we have a lot of interesting ways that we can elaborate on the initial idea. Situations with few possibilities to elaborate tend to hit a dead-end very quickly. Instead of taking your friend to church, what if you took them to a bar? Setting up a story by saying “I took my friend to a bar, but he told everyone dirty jokes” is considerably more difficult than a church because there are fewer interesting directions to explore. The idea that someone told a dirty joke in a bar doesn’t create much tension. There’s no reason for the audience to think "Oh no! Then what happened?” All the options that were interesting in the church now feel mundane and boring. Since we’d expect dirty jokes in a bar it makes elaborating considerably harder. There are very few interesting answers to the question “And then what happened?”

Creating But Statements What makes But Statements so effective is how easy they are to use. You can literally add “… but” to the end of any statement and instantly create tension. I wrote five But Statements below using prompts from a random word generator. The word generator created 2 random words each round. I gave myself around 15 seconds to create each But Statement. The prompts were funeral/pocket, tasty/open, ceremony/hostility, candle/bread, and misplace/essay. For each But Statement I will identify the Comedic Tension, briefly discuss its strengths and weaknesses and describe what strategy I’d use to create material. 1. (Funeral/Pocket): The priest was giving a eulogy at the funeral, but he kept playing with the change in his pocket. This But Statement is by far my favorite. There’s a clear violation between the seriousness of giving a eulogy and casually playing with coins in your pocket as if you're bored or don’t care. This But Statement implies the conflict. The left side of the But Statement sets up the situation. That situation carries with it a set of expectations about what should happen. I don’t need to explicitly tell you how the priest should act when giving a eulogy because it’s implied. The right side of the But Statement tells you the violation. The violation is how the priest is behaving. This means that the antiviolation/safety is how we’d expect a priest to behave during a eulogy. “The priest was giving a eulogy at the funeral. He should have acted mournful, but he constantly played with the coins in his pocket.” Like all benign-violations, this situation feels both OK and not OK at the same time. It’s OK because all the priest is doing is playing with change in his pocket. That’s a rather harmless action. However, it clearly not OK in this specific situation. If I were going to write this story, I’d tell it from the POV of attending the funeral and it’d begin when I notice that the priest seems to be going through the motions, but not actually caring. I could choose to keep the “playing with the change in his pocket” idea or edit it out. Either way, this But Statement has created a situation that’s ripe for humor. There are many interesting ways to elaborate on this initial idea that are worth exploring. 2. (Tasty/Open): Burritos are tasty, but if you open them you can never roll them back up correctly. This But Statement highlights an interesting observation that I never really thought about until this exercise. I’m the type of person whose burrito constantly falls apart while eating. This is an interesting contrast to begin a joke with. I could either tell the audience a story (e.g., “I was eating at the restaurant and…”) or use commentary (e.g., “Have you ever noticed how…”). I could tell it from my POV (e.g., “I’m jealous of everyone else’s burritos”) or the group’s POV (e.g., “Everyone is upset that I’m dragging the group down.”). Since it’s generally easier to take whichever path leads to diminishment, showing how “I’m bringing the group down” would likely be the best path forward. Like the last But Statement, the comedic tension is on the right side. There’s no conflict between “Burritos are tasty” and “rolling up a burrito is difficult.” The But Statement did its job of creating a contrast (good thing, but bad thing). However, the violation that I want to explore is the fact that

burritos are difficult to roll back up. The anti-violation/safety is my reasonable expectation that burritos should be easy to roll up. “Burritos are tasty. It should be easy to roll up a burrito, but my burritos always fall apart.” Once we identify the real conflict, we can safely ignore “Burritos are tasty” and begin writing about the more interesting topics of burrito maintenance and the consequences of irresponsible burrito ownership before finally moving on to the problem of the meat sliding out of a hamburger. 3. (Ceremony/Hostility): We went to the ceremony, but the bride and groom were already showing hostility to each other. Once again, the tension is on the right side of the But Statement. The violation is that the bride and groom are upset at each other. The anti-violation/safety is the belief that they should be happily in love. We could rewrite this to clearly show the conflict like this: “We went to the ceremony. It should have been the happiest day of their life, but they were hostile to each other.” Now we could explore different ways that the couple is getting upset, the backstory behind the anger, or even compare and contrast this to other situations or ceremonies. Having only 15 seconds to generate each But Statement, I took the first idea that popped into my head for ceremony (a wedding ceremony) and then tried to connect it to the second word with a But Statement. Once I had time to think through my creative choices, I realized that choosing a religious ceremony would have likely been funnier than a wedding ceremony. Different religions have different ceremonies and each type of ceremony would offer something unique to explore. Thus, there are better elaboration possibilities for a religious ceremony than for a wedding ceremony. The hostility of a priest during an exorcism or the hostility of a rabbi during a circumcision can lead the material in very interesting directions. The wedding ceremony has an average amount of elaboration possibilities. While there are a lot of different, interesting directions that we can explore, many of them take us dangerously close to breaking the playfulness of the joke. The last thing we want is to hit a punchline and hear the audience go “Aww. That’s sad.” If I want the audience to laugh at a couple having a horrific wedding ceremony, then I’d better give them a very playful reason why they don’t have to feel like monsters. I would want them to “laugh about” or “laugh with” instead of “laugh at.” If I got that balance wrong, the audience would begin feeling sorry for the couple instead of laughing at the playful inappropriateness of the situation. 4. (Candles/Bread): We had birthday candles, but we had to use bread instead of a birthday cake. The last two But Statements were the most difficult because they happened to be words that were already related to each other. In the candle example, I substituted a birthday cake for plain bread to create the But Statement. While this clearly created a violation, it doesn’t really result in anything too interesting. Notice that this setup has left me with relatively few options to elaborate. There are very few interesting ways to elaborate on the idea of switching a birthday cake with bread. In contrast, Bill Engvall tells a story about wanting to get a motorcycle for his birthday but

receiving a scooter. We could restate this as “I wanted to get a motorcycle, but I got a scooter instead.” While there isn’t a huge difference between the two, there are some very important implications that can be elaborated on. There are funny mental images, he could talk about the huge let down for his birthday or the fact that he bought himself a leather jacket that would have looked cool on him while riding a motorcycle but looks ridiculous when he’s riding a scooter. Unlike the birthday cake substitution, there’s a lot of interesting ways that Engvall’s story can continue. Not only are there very few implications to explore for switching a birthday cake for bread, but by using a But Statement that feels inauthentic and fake, I’ve practically guaranteed that this story is going to feel very “jokey.” There are very few ways to frame this story that the listener would actually believe is true instead of just an awkward setup for a formal joke. That said, this But Statement could still be used. It’s just clearly inferior to #1-3. The idea that a family put candles on a piece of bread implies that they might be too poor to buy a cake. If that’s the case, we can create humor by talking about other “substitutions” that they make. Perhaps the youngest brother has to stand in the corner and “be the Christmas tree.” The humor would work as long as the substitutions remained playfully inappropriate. 5. (Misplace/Essay): I misplaced my homework, but I can still pass the class if I get 100 on my essay. This But Statement can be used to create the initial tension for a story, but it doesn’t give us much information to work with comedically. The problem is that this student must now get 100% on his next essay. However, there’s no obvious anti-violation at the moment. Why can’t he get 100%? What’s stopping him? The tension is so weak that it’d be easier to add a new But Statement on top of the original than to try to force this setup to work. Notice how adding a new But Statement solves the problem: “I misplaced my homework, but I can still pass the class if I get 100 on my essay. I have to finish writing the essay tonight, but I have to babysit my annoying little brother.” Now we have an interesting conflict that we can elaborate on. Since the first But Statement doesn’t really matter anymore, we can either rewrite it to make the story flow better or edit it out altogether. Since our only concern at this point is finding interesting conflicts to write about it doesn’t really matter which option you choose. We care about the ideas, not the wording.

Exploration & Conflict Making Now you have the tools to explore your material and create conflicts. You can use this same process to create Comedic Tension in a setup or to create Comedic Conflict for a punchline. Whenever you are writing, you will be switching between Exploration and Conflict Making. The first few times you try out this writing process, you can keep it very formal by consciously switching from Exploration to Conflict Making or vice versa. Once you’re comfortable switching back and forth, you’ll want to blur the lines between Exploration and Conflict Making. Eventually, this should feel like a single step instead of two. Whether you are creating safety or introducing violations should depend on the evolving needs of the situation, not on whether you have committed to spend the next few minutes using a specific technique. Here is a very simple example of the give-and-take between Exploring and Conflict Making. You can use as many Exploration Statements as you want before switching to Conflict Making. I used But Statements for simplicity, but you can use any kind of Conflict Making tool.

EXPLORATION: I want to go to the store C.M.: But I have no gas EXPLORATION: So, I decided to walk C.M.: But the nearest store is really far away EXPLORATION: So, I call my mom to get help for a ride C.M.: But we haven't been getting along well recently EXPLORATION: So, I decided to just walk C.M.: But there’s a lot of crime in my neighborhood EXPLORATION: I made it to the store and bought groceries C.M.: But I forgot that I can’t get the groceries home How long you spend Exploring vs. Conflict Making will depend on your goal for that writing session. Early in the writing process, you will want to spend more time Exploring and less time Conflict Making. This allows you to build a large, logical story with many experiences, observations, and opinions without feeling the pressure to quickly find a punchline. Whether you naturally find a conflict or you intentionally come back to look for them doesn’t matter. Both options are far easier than forcing each sentence to fit into a joke.​

I suggest using more Exploration while you are getting used to this new writing method. This will give you more ideas to work with early on and put less pressure on each individual idea. Later on, when you want to punch-up the quality of your material, you will spend more time Conflict Making. Conflict Making requires that you create problems, so it puts the breaks on your writing in a hurry. Too much Conflict Making leads to writer’s block. When you have writer’s block, you are finding so many violations that you aren’t sure how to move forward. You’re essentially saying “I want to write X, but I can’t because of Y.”

Stepping Stones What I really love about using Exploration + Conflict Making process is how easy it is to try out different ideas. You don’t have to brainstorm and go through a long process to find great ideas. It might take a person using a brainstorming method several minutes to go through all the steps (topic, listing audience assumptions, inverting those assumptions, deciding which assumption to break, figuring out the premise, writing a punchline, writing potential setups, then figuring out how to link the setup and punchline together). Once you reach the end of the brainstorming process, you only have two options: Go back to a previous step or throw everything away and try again. Understandably, if you put that much effort into a potential joke, it’s hard to cut your losses and try something new. You’d feel obligated to keep digging and force your setup to work. The Exploration + Conflict Making process is much different. Completing one cycle can be done in as little as a few seconds. You can quickly try out so many options that it doesn’t make sense to obsess over a single combination. For new comedians, I recommend that you give yourself extra time with each idea simply because it’s great practice. You’ll have to find a balance that’s right for you, something that gently pushes you to uncover new possibilities and develop your comedy skills but also acknowledges that some Exploration + Conflict Making combinations aren’t worth the effort. Personally, I think an idea should have to prove itself to you, not the other way around. A single Exploration Statement could easily have 5 or 10 interesting But Statements or Conflict Questions added to it. If a combination doesn’t make you curious or feel playful, jump to the next idea. It’s the idea’s job to inspire you, not the other way around. There is no “end” that you can reach with this method. Every idea, whether it results in a funny punchline or not, is a stepping stone to more ideas. Every But Statement can be helpful if you allow it to be. The worst-case scenario for a But Statement is that it can only be used as a stepping stone to another idea, which is actually a pretty nice scenario. In fact, I recommend using this strategy on purpose as a way of moving from a boring, generic starting point to something more unique and interesting. It’s very difficult to write interesting material about a generic topic, like “airports.” When you start with a generic topic, the only ideas that come to mind are also generic. However, one But Statement or Conflict Question about airports can get you thinking in a whole new direction (i.e., “Why does security feel they need to specifically say that baseball bats aren’t allowed on planes?”). Whether I want to write about this topic or not doesn’t really matter cause it makes a great stepping stone. Using this as a new starting place is way more interesting and a lot easier than beginning with something generic, like airports. Instead of forcing myself to brainstorm about airports (and coming up with hacky answers like “TSA” and “airport food”), I find myself curious to know how a terrorist might use a baseball bat as their primary weapon. I start wondering how the planning session goes. I get the mental image of a bunch of them going to batting cages. I see a few getting distracted by the arcade, playing around on the skeeball machine and then trying to justify it when the boss catches them. I see them at the prize

counter with a fist-full of tickets trying to select between the plush elephant or novelty sunglasses. I see it becoming a weekly event and eventually resulting in them forgetting why they started in the first place. I see them eventually calling head office to ask if they’d sponsor their softball team so they can buy jerseys. Using But Statements and Conflict Questions as a way of finding interesting starting points helps you find a stream-of-consciousness. There’s no real “end” to the strategy I used. Every new idea opened up even more opportunities. I could have continued in the same direction or taken a single idea and went on a new tangent, starting the entire process over again for a new bit. For example, I could begin talking about how weird all the prizes are at arcades. There’s no reason I would have to use the word airport, baseball bat or terrorist on stage… even though these were all stepping stones that allowed me to arrive at this topic. The audience would never care because they would never know. The whole purpose of a stepping-stone is to leave it behind when you’re done using it. My job is to allow the uninspiring ideas to lead me closer to the inspiring ones.

This page makes no sense in the eBook.

Highlighting The Problem At this point, you will have an Exploration Statement creating safety and a But Statement or Conflict Question creating a violation. This will create tension in the juxtaposition. The Why Problem helps us answers two questions: “Where is the tension?” and “Why does the tension matter?”

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EXPLORATION: I want to go to the store C.M.: But I have no gas WHY PROBLEM: I’ll have to find another way EXPLORATION: So I decided to walk C.M.: But the nearest store is really far away WHY PROBLEM: I’m lazy and walking isn't fun EXPLORATION: So I call my mom to get help for a ride C.M.: But we haven't been getting along well recently WHY PROBLEM: I have to have an uncomfortable conversation with my mom EXPLORATION: So, I decided to just walk C.M.: But there’s a lot of crime in my neighborhood WHY PROBLEM: I'm scared EXPLORATION: I made it to the store and bought groceries C.M.: But I forgot that I can’t get the groceries home WHY PROBLEM: I’m an idiot… and I’ll be even more scared walking back Whenever two ideas fight, there are specific reasons why that fight creates (or could create)

tension. When I say “I want to go to the store, but I have no gas,” the most obvious problem is that I can't drive to the store without gas. But if you’re an audience member, this setup won’t make you lean forward in your chair and think “Oh. This is getting interesting!” Thankfully, we don’t have to go with the most obvious problem. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

I can’t drive to the store My girlfriend never fills up the gas tank when she’s done using my car Gas prices are too high! I should sell my SUV I could afford to fill it up if I didn’t waste my money on other things

A useful way to identify interesting Why Problems is to imagine you are talking to a stranger. You launch into your story by saying “I want to go to the store, but I have no gas.” The stranger responds with “So what?” Your answer to that question will be your Why Problem. Ideally, it should be interesting enough that you’ll have that person’s full attention. You can also find interesting Why Problems by changing the level of the problem. Let's say you get in your car and you’re mad because you're out of gas. Changing the direction of that anger creates lots of new and interesting combinations. Who you decide to be mad at and why will determine what the rest of the story will look like. 1. You vs. The World - Why are gas prices so high! I’m mad at the world. 2. You vs. Person/Group - Why didn’t my girlfriend put gas in when she borrowed the car? I’m mad at her. 3. You vs. Yourself - I forgot to buy gas. I’m mad at myself. There are also four choices for time. You might want to focus on the problem at-hand (present moment), use a problem to make a bigger point about the past or the future, or you might want to put the problem in a hypothetical situation. A. The Present - I’m out of gas now. What will I do? B. The Past - I always forget to buy gas! Why don’t I learn! C. The Future - I always procrastinate. If I continue to procrastinate in the future that means I’ll… D. Hypothetical Situation - I can’t even remember to buy gas. I’d be a lousy president. Could you imagine the President of the United States running out of gas? … This is a really useful way of highlighting interesting problems. The reason it’s so helpful is the same reason why you’ll want to switch between different types of Exploration Questions: They force you to think of different perspectives that might not be obvious at first. If you find yourself struggling to find interesting problems, try exploring your options within each category. Personally, I’ve found

the “You vs. Yourself” category to be very useful. Audiences enjoy the “internal conflict” that comes from second-guessing yourself or lacking self-confidence. Not only is it easy for the audience to identify with, but it’s also really easy to insert into material because you can second-guess practically anything. The material begins to take shape when you highlight a specific problem. The Exploration and But Statement give your material a general direction, but without identifying a specific reason why the problem matters, you won’t do much to capture the audience’s attention. It’s too vague for the audience to care about. The story gets much more interesting once you highlight an interesting problem. The listener goes from vaguely seeing where the story might go to dying to know more.

How Listeners & Storytellers Use The Why Problem Imagine you are listening to me tell a story. It could be on-stage, off-stage, one-on-one or with a group of friends. The situation wouldn’t change anything about how I’d tell the story. I begin by saying “I walked into a party, but my ex-girlfriend was there.” EXPLORATION: I walked into a party C.M.: But my ex-girlfriend was there WHY PROBLEM: (to be determined)

Listeners (Before & After Highlighting A Problem) As a listener, you already know that there’s tension in that situation. You understand that being around an ex-girlfriend at a party is (or could be) a problem. However, this setup alone won’t get you fully engaged in the story. It’s not enough to know THAT there is a problem. The storyteller has to translate the generic problem (Comedic Tension) into something that is specific and relatable for the audience (The Why Problem). At this point in the story, you know that there’s tension. What you don’t know is the specific reason(s) why that tension was actually a problem (the Why Problem). Even though you haven’t heard this story before, you still know that I’m about to tell you why this problem mattered. If I abruptly changed topics, you’d say “Hey, wait. What happened after you noticed your ex-girlfriend?” You know this because this is how people naturally tell stories. It doesn’t matter if the story is funny or serious. We’ve heard and told so many stories in our lives that we intuitively understand how they work. If I bring up a tense situation inside my story, you’ll naturally want to hear how that tension played-out.

Storytellers (Before & After Highlighting A Problem) Now imagine that you’re writing the story instead of listening. How would you make your friend laugh using this setup? I went to a party last night, but I saw my ex-girlfriend there. Punchline: ____________________ If I asked you to spend 5 minutes trying to generate punchlines for this setup, it’d be challenging. A punchline here would come out really awkward and forced. Trying to finish this joke would feel like work, not play. Highlighting the problem can help us here, too. Highlighting the problem doesn’t just help the listener figure out why the problem matters, it also helps the writer/storyteller bridge the setup and the punchline. The Comedic Tension (CT) suddenly becomes fun when there is an interesting Why Problem (WP) to work with. Notice how opportunities to create humor naturally open up once you hear the

Why Problem. Here are nine different Why Problems that I could use. Notice how each one gently pushes the story in a different direction and gives you a strong hint as to what the eventual punchline might look like. [CT] I went to a party last night, but I saw my ex-girlfriend there. [WP] And that’s important because… 1.

… When I’m nervous, I say the wrong thing and don’t want to embarrass myself in front of her.

2.

… She has a new spouse, and I refuse to pretend that I like him.

3.

… I haven’t done any dating since we broke up, so I don’t want to be seen alone.

4.

… I need to act like I’m having way more fun than her to make her jealous.

5.

… I ate a salad before coming out, and I didn’t check my teeth for lettuce.

6.

… I’m on a date with someone I’d rather not be seen with.

7.

… I’ve become super-successful since then, so I want to be “in her face” about it.

8.

… I’ve become super-poor since then, so I have to figure out how to act like I have more money than I actually do.

9.

… I want to flirt with her new husband.

Before moving on, compare how you’d feel about writing a punchline using one of these nine Why Problems with how you felt earlier when the problem was still vague. If you selected one of these specific problems and began writing, you’d have a very clear idea about how you’d generate humor from the situation. Earlier, completing the joke felt like a chore. Now it’d be fun. In fact, there’s a good chance that you read one of the Why Problem examples above and automatically imagined how the scene would play out in your head. You didn’t force anything. You didn’t brainstorm. You didn’t even bother translating your “mental movie” into words. It snapped into place effortlessly. Instead of asking you to “work for a punchline,” the Why Problem invited you to be playful. When you master this skill, the entire comedy writing game will change for you. Early on, I recommend that you avoid violations and Why Problems that actually make you angry. Once you get comfortable with this writing method, you’ll naturally expand your comfort zone to include these situations. Violations and Why Problems that are slightly abnormal work well because they already contain both safety and violation. Emotions and moods that are slightly negative (a small embarrassment or awkward situation) or slightly positive (feeling silly) are typically the easiest to work with because there is very little chance that you’ll end up with too much violation or safety. Creating jokes that convert huge violations (anger) into something funny is incredibly rewarding, but new comedians need to be very careful because finding the perfect safety/violation balance is not always straightforward or easy.

Ray Romano: Using Why Problems Romano explicitly told the audience his Why Problem in his Football bit. He began with a But Statement to create a very generic problem (Weak Tension #1). They put football on during Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to watch the game. This first tension sets up the story by explaining the original problem. He doesn’t want to be rude, but he wants to do something that could be considered rude. He’s having an internal conflict. We made a compromise during dinner. We put the TV on (BUT) without the volume. The second tension (Weak Tension #2) adds a new layer to the problem. Now the audience understands that Romano is having an internal conflict about being rude and that he has the specific challenge of watching TV with no volume. Then he got to the real purpose of the joke with Tension #3. Unlike the first two tensions, this tension will actually be used to create humor, so we’ll call it the Comedic Tension. Tension #1 and #2 are called “Weak Tensions.” They have the same structure as a Comedic Tension, but they create tension that is insignificant. Weak Tension is usually used as a stepping stone to get to something more interesting or to build the story. You will learn more about them later. For now, let’s ignore the Weak Tensions to keep things simple. We can treat all of the Weak Tensions as safety. They put football on during Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to watch the game. We made a compromise during dinner. We put the TV on (BUT) without the volume. Now I have to pretend that I’m paying attention to my family. This Comedic Tension doesn’t use a But Statement, but it works the same. We could change the format of this joke by writing it like this: I’m pretending like I’m paying attention to my family during Thanksgiving Dinner, BUT I’m actually paying attention to the football game on TV. Writing the joke this way doesn’t change anything about how the joke works. The violation is that he’s being rude by paying attention to the TV. The anti-violation is that he’s trying hard to not be rude. There’s a clear conflict between what he’s pretending to do and what he’s actually doing. Our next job is to figure out why the Comedic Tension matters by identifying the Why Problem. Imagine you’re in his situation and you’re pretending to pay attention to your family while secretly watching a football game. What might create tension in the situation? Why would it be

uncomfortable for you? How might you make it uncomfortable for others? How would you finish the sentence “I hope I don’t _____.” There are many reasons why pretending might create a problem. Romano has already given us a hint when he mentioned not wanting to be rude. Why Problem: If he’s not careful pretending, he might do or say something rude. Let’s quickly revisit the five But Statements I created using the random word generator. For each But Statement I’ve listed my Exploration Statement (EXP), Conflict Making Statement (CM), the Violation (V), the Safety/Anti-Violation (S/A-V), and the Why problem (WP). Identifying the Violation and Anti-Violation can help you find an interesting Why Problem, but it’s not necessary. EXAMPLE #1: EXP: The priest was giving a eulogy at the funeral C.M: but he kept playing with the change in his pocket. V: He shouldn’t be acting bored. S/A-V: He should be acting mournful W.P: He’s being ‘a bit’ disrespectful EXAMPLE #2: EXP: Burritos are tasty C.M: but if you open them you can never roll them back up correctly. V: My burritos always fall apart S/A-V: It should be easy to roll up a burrito W.P: My burritos slowly unravel as I’m eating and makes a huge mess EXAMPLE #3: EXP: We went to the ceremony, C.M: but the bride and groom were already showing hostility to each other. V: They were hostile to each other S/A-V: They shouldn’t have been hostile to each other W.P: The bride and groom were making the guests feel uncomfortable by constantly snapping at each other EXAMPLE #4A: EXP: We had birthday candles C.M: but we had to use bread instead of a birthday cake. V: We used bread S/A-V: We should have used a birthday cake W.P: We made a weird substitution EXAMPLE #4B: EXP: We had birthday candles

C.M: but we had to use bread instead of a birthday cake. V: We used bread S/A-V: We should have used a birthday cake W.P: I had to make a birthday cake out of bread because I accidentally made a promise that I couldn’t deliver. EXAMPLE #5: EXP: I misplaced my homework C.M: but I can still pass the class if I get 100 on my essay. EXP-2: I have to finish writing the essay tonight C.M.-2: but I have to babysit my annoying little brother. V: He’s unable to focus on the paper S/A-V: He needs to focus on the paper W.P: I need to find a way to keep my little brother busy while I write my essay

Whenever I’m writing comedy or coaching students, I focus on finding Why Problems that feel authentic and natural. Time and time again, I’ve found that the most authentic and natural Why Problems lead to the best stories. The Why Problem shouldn’t change just because you’re telling a comedic story. I didn’t decide that my Why Problem should be “The priest is being ‘a bit’ disrespectful” because it felt like a good setup to a joke. I used it because this is exactly how I think I’d feel in that situation… and if I feel that way, I can almost certainly get the audience to feel that way, too. The But Statement for example #4 began as something really fake and unbelievable. I split this into two separate jokes. In example 4A, I ignored that the setup feels fake and I used my original idea of creating humor from the substitution. The punchline for 4A will play off of the idea that I make lots of bad substitutions for celebrations. In example 4B, I try to take the wildly implausible setup and make it more believable. By stating that I accidentally made a promise that I couldn’t deliver, I’ve suggested that there’s a reason why this is happening. Instead of trying to get the audience to laugh at what it’d be like to switch plain bread for a birthday cake, I’m going to get the audience to see how a rational person can find themselves doing something so incredibly stupid.

Premise Now that we have created Comedic Tension and identified an interesting Why Problem, our next task is to figure out how we want to use them to create humor. It’s worth noting that we haven’t committed to any specific type of punchline yet. We can still choose between a Storytelling Punchline or a Misdirection Punchline. Until now, we haven’t really known enough about our material to decide what type of joke would work best. Now that we have ideas written down and we understand the Comedic Tension, we’re in a much better position to choose an effective strategy to finish off the joke. This is often a make-or-break moment for a joke. A great premise often leads directly to an easy, effective punchline while trying to force a low-quality premise to be funny can result in a lot of wasted effort. We will focus on three different options: 1. Using “What if…?” Questions 2. Magnifying the Why Problem 3. Recontextualizing the Why Problem.

The Goal of a Joke Premise Think of a premise as a hypothesis or educated guess about what will lead to something funny. When you create a premise, you’re trying to quickly find the most promising idea by going through a variety of options. You think to yourself “If I try X, will it lead to something funny? What if I try Y or Z?” Premises ignore the small details of a joke and force you to focus on the overall idea. Premises are especially important for new comedians because it forces them to take a step back and think holistically. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by details when writing. Premises invite us to take a quick look at our options, play around with them, choose one that we feel passionate about, and then explore it in more depth. If our first guess doesn’t lead us to a quality punchline, we can easily come back and find a new premise for the same setup. This saves us a lot of time and frustration. Taking a step back for 30-60 seconds to play around with different ideas can easily save you 5-10 minutes of going in circles or even be the difference between finding an awesome punchline and throwing a setup away in frustration. To go back to our explorer analogy, creating a premise is like deciding whether the direction you’re walking is actually worth the trip. While identifying your premise isn’t completely necessary, the benefits of taking a step back and thinking about how your idea will create humor are definitely worth the time. I’ve found from my own coaching experience that new comedians who get stuck are usually incredibly close to something great. They just got caught up in the details and miss the opportunity directly under their noses. Focusing on the premise is the best way to get the clarity needed to realize what you’re missing.

Experts vs. Beginners: Why Premises Matter Here’s a very unsurprising fact: Science shows that experts are better than beginners at performing different tasks. Here’s a surprising fact: They’re only slightly better. Once a person understands the tools of the trade and gets comfortable using them, the quality with which a novice and an expert can complete a specific task is rather similar. The more specific and straightforward the task is, the less advantage an expert has. That means that after you understand how a tool works and have had the chance to play around with it for a while, there’s no significant difference in quality between you and an expert with respect to that specific tool. For most tools, you’ll get 75+% of an expert’s results within a few weeks of practice. If experts are only slightly better than novices at each task, why is there such a huge difference in the end result? One of the greatest sources of an expert’s strength comes from his ability to simplify complex problems in order to figure out the best path forward. Novices might be almost as good as experts at completing each specific task, but experts are the ones that are able to analyze an ambiguous problem, figure out which tasks are the most important, make accurate guesses about the consequences of each action, and keep the big picture in mind throughout the creative process. Both a novice and an expert can hit a nail with a hammer, but it’s the expert who thinks “Is a nail the best option?” and “If I used a screw or wood glue, how would that affect the rest of the project?” Nowhere is this expert advantage more obvious or helpful in comedy than in coming up with joke premises. Coming up with a great joke premise is a holistic process, not a linear one. It requires taking a very ambiguous situation with many interconnected pieces and figuring out how to use it effectively. To the beginner, finding a great premise can feel more like guesswork than anything else. It’s difficult to take good guesses before you have obtained a deep understanding of each tool, how they work, when to use them, when to avoid them, and what results to expect from them. In contrast, a veteran comedian will often create and test ideas without even realizing that they’re doing it. Veteran comedians might not even use a formal “premise stage” because they are constantly playing around with ideas. In the mechanics of comedy section of this book, I mentioned that understanding and applying theories of humor can help you develop a “schema” (a mental organization of information). Studying the mechanics of comedy and then applying those mechanics to analyze humor is one of the best ways to teach your subconscious brain the rules of comedy. It’s through repeatedly experimenting with each theory and each tool in different situations that your brain builds and refines its schema. Unsurprisingly, the way you develop this “expert ability” is by actually playing around with each tool. Read that last line one more time (unless you already did, then you can keep going). The way you gain expertise with these tools is by playing with them, not by reading about them. I know that you know this information… but do you apply it to the fullest extent? Do you give yourself full creative license to play around with ideas and see what happens? Or do you think that the outcome of your playtime somehow reflects who you are or what you’re capable of doing or becoming? Imagine walking up to a group of kids playing in the playground and telling them “Look. You can play a game of make-believe. But if you pretend something stupid and the game isn’t fun… well, the other kids are going to hate you. What you kids need to do is sit down, have a brainstorming session, and figure out

exactly what makes a great make-believe game. That’s how adults do it. And look how great it works for us. Now you go play. It’s time for daddy’s Prozac.” If you need any more reason to jump in with both feet, check out the video I made entitled Creative Naïveté. There is no such thing as an “incorrect tool.” The most you can say is that “so far doing this usually doesn’t work well for me in these types of situations.” This is both an accurate way of looking at the learning process, and the world’s worst battle cry. Succeeding and failing are both important aspects of learning how to use each tool. It’s easy for a new comedian to come up empty and think “A great comedian wouldn’t have made this choice” as if great comedians figured out that lesson some other way. The reason a veteran comedian would make a different choice from a beginner is that the veteran has already played around with similar situations in the past and found that, at least for them, sometimes it’s better to leave a tool on the shelf. Here’s the great news, once you find a great premise, you’re once again on a rather even playing field with veteran comedians. The process goes from being holistic and complex back to being linear. It might take you longer to do each step and you will almost certainly require many more failed experiments than a veteran comedian to find your final punchline, but once you have a great premise that inspires you, the majority of an expert’s writing advantage is gone. Finishing the joke is more about problem-solving than anything else.

Using “What If…?” Questions The easiest way to find awesome premises is by using “What If…?” questions. What If’s can be useful at any point in the process, but they are particularly effective at creating premises. I like to think of a premise being like a screenwriter pitching his ideas to a movie executive: WRITER

“What if two women want to become nuns, but they accidentally join a sorority by mistake?”

EXECUTIVE

“Hmm. What would happen then?”

WRITER

“Well… What if they keep misunderstanding everything because they still think it’s a church?”

EXECUTIVE

“Interesting… What else you got?”

WRITER

“OK… What if instead of accidentally joining a sorority they have a secret double-life playing beach volleyball?”

EXECUTIVE

“Nah. Anything else?”

WRITER

“What if we butcher another Star Wars film?”

EXECUTIVE

“I love it.”

A good What If Question promises to lead you somewhere that is Playfully Inappropriate. You won’t know exactly what the punchline will be, but you should be able to take a quick guess as to whether the general direction sounds promising. Make the premise prove itself to you. When you find a fun idea, you’ll feel it in your body. It will spark your curiosity.

2 Ways of Using Why Problems Having a Why Problem to work with makes the process of creating a great premise much easier. A good Why Problem will always give you clues about what to do next. No idea or situation is without its flaws. The stronger something is in one area, the weaker or more out of place it is in another. Every Why Problem has at least one weakness. One of the simplest ways of creating a premise is by identifying that weakness and exploiting it. Here are a few examples of how you can use a Why Problem to find interesting joke premises.

WHY PROBLEM: That might be embarrassing JOKE PREMISE: Lead the story to an embarrassing outcome WHY PROBLEM: I think it’s weird JOKE PREMISE: Show just how weird it is by comparing it to something else WHY PROBLEM: That’s stupid. JOKE PREMISE: Give the audience an analogy that highlights and magnifies the stupidity of the situation WHY PROBLEM: I’m socially awkward JOKE PREMISE: Give the audience an example that shows you being super-awkward in a conversation WHY PROBLEM: I'm bad at explaining things JOKE PREMISE: Create a hypothetical situation, such as “I’d be a horrible middle school teacher” and then show do an awful job at explaining something WHY PROBLEM: I'm not a good parent JOKE PREMISE: Show the audience how you ended up making a stupid parenting choice There are two Why Problem strategies that are particularly useful for setting up funny situations: Magnify or Recontextualize. Magnifying a Why Problem creates humor by playing with scale while Recontextualization creates humor by playing with the context.

Magnifying Why Problems If we want to get a laugh, we need to make sure the punchline packs a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise. Remember, Comedic Tension is simply a Comedic Conflict that the audience doesn’t find Playfully Inappropriate enough or Surprising enough to laugh at. Everything else about them is exactly the same. In fact, some jokes will naturally fall into this weird middle-area where some audiences laugh and others don’t.

To convert Comedic Tension into a Comedic Conflict, we magnify the Playful Inappropriateness and we boost the speed to make the punchline more Surprising. All this means is that we’re taking a mundane, slow, small, or generic Why Problem and converting it into something that is unique, fast, big, and specific. We are going to look for ways to make it more Playful, more Inappropriate, and more Surprising. To use this strategy, look for ways to take your Why Problem and make it even worse. You want to figure out how far you can stretch your idea. If your Why Problem is something generic, like “That might be embarrassing.” Then you can create a premise by magnifying that embarrassment and making it more specific. What is a specific outcome that would be embarrassing? For example, you might have a piece of lettuce in your teeth while talking to your ex-spouse. How do you make it more surprising? You might look in the mirror half-way through the conversation and notice it, allowing the embarrassing outcome to be a surprise. Why Problem (Slow, Small, Generic, Low-Tension) x 10 = Why Problem (Big, Fast, Specific, High-Tension) WHY PROBLEM: That might be embarrassing JOKE PREMISE: Magnify the embarrassment WHY PROBLEM: I think it’s weird JOKE PREMISE: Magnify the weirdness WHY PROBLEM: That’s stupid. JOKE PREMISE: Magnify the stupidity WHY PROBLEM: I’m socially awkward JOKE PREMISE: Magnify the awkwardness WHY PROBLEM: It's confusing JOKE PREMISE: Magnify the confusion

Recontextualizing Why Problems The second way to use the Why Problem is by placing it in a new context where it doesn’t belong. This allows comedians to take almost any idea and create interesting contrasts simply by playing around with the context. Whether something is considered safety or a violation depends more on the context than on anything concrete. To give you an analogy, a new BMW is safe when it’s on the highway, but it definitely shouldn’t be on a rocky, muddy, mountain road. A Jeep is at home on that same mountain road, but place it on a race track and it’ll be wildly out of place. Stick a racing car in New York City traffic and the violation will be painfully obvious as bicycles and pedestrians pass by. The strength of an idea becomes its weakness when it’s outside its normal context. The more

specialized something is, the easier it is to create contrast by taking it out of its original context. You can also poke fun of ideas that are boring by pointing out how unspecialized or uninteresting they are. Instead of placing the idea in the wrong context (as we did with the BMW on the mountain), we create a situation where the bland, boring nature of the idea is painfully obvious. In this joke, Richard Jeni lets the audience in on his thought process while deciding between purchasing a sports car or a KIA. Like earlier ideas, this joke creates humor by putting the car in a context where it clearly fails. Your brain goes “You want to buy a sports car! Besides, the only way we’re going to get a girl home with a KIA is if we run over her and her hair gets caught in the bumper!” - Richard Jeni If you play with the context, you can create humor anywhere. That is why there’s so much diversity in this category. All that’s required is that the comedian takes an idea and give it some type of new perspective. If the new perspective is funny, it’ll shed light on an old idea in a fun, surprising way. In everyday life, we adjust our behavior to fit each situation. When we walk into the library, we speak quietly. When we are in church, we stop using foul language. When we’re speaking to a child, we use smaller words. We automatically adjust our behavior because we know what’s expected of us. Playing with the context flips that on its head. We purposefully seek out the worst situations for our problem and find excuses to create Playfully Inappropriate Surprises for the audience. We take what is acceptable or normal in one context and find a new context where it’s inappropriate by either transplanting the idea or “failing to adjust” to the new situation. For example, if you highlight the problem “I’m impatient,” then you can magnify how impatient you are to make the punchline more Playfully Inappropriate. However, this becomes way more effective when you also play with the context. Instead of trying to be funny simply by exaggerating how impatient you can be, place yourself in a situation where it is painfully obvious that your impatience will be a huge problem, such as while your wife is giving birth (“Will you PUSH ALREADY! It’s been over an hour!”). This line uses both magnification and recontextualization. Not only are you being “super-impatient,” but you’re also in a situation where being even a little impatient isn’t acceptable. Instead of adjusting your behavior like a normal person, you double-down on the old behavior and thereby magnify the inappropriateness. These two strategies are incredibly flexible and very powerful. Recontextualization often leads to hypothetical situations. For example, I could use the “being impatient at a hospital” joke even though it’s clearly not true. Under no circumstance would I try to sell this joke as truth to the audience. That would break trust. The audience knows it didn’t happen, so there’s no point it acting like it did. Instead, I could admit to the audience that I can be a little impatient at times, then add “I’m not super-impatient. Like if my wife was giving birth I wouldn’t be like “Will you PUSH ALREADY! It’s been over an hour!” Framing the joke this way allows me to use

both magnification and recontextualization without breaking any trust with the audience. Let’s look at another example. If your Why Problem is that you’re always over-analyzing things, then you’ll want to find a situation where the tendency to over-analyze is painfully obvious. Your punchline will magnify that “tendency to over-analyze” while also playing with the context. It might be a situation where you need to act quickly (“That guy has a weapon!”) or a mundane situation that becomes socially awkward, such as a pretty girl asking you to pass her something. Instead of acting normally, you start telling the audience all the different thoughts you had (“Should I pass it quickly? I might look desperate. If I’m slow, that might look weird. Can I flex my muscles while I pass it? Should I try to say something funny? Oh God! How long have I been thinking about this?!”). Playing with the context works both ways. In the “I’m impatient” example, we began with a behavior (Why Problem) and then searched for a situation where there would be a lot of contrast. However, we can get the same result by starting with a situation and then looking for interesting behaviors. Either way, you end up with a Playfully Inappropriate contrast between your actions and what’s normal or socially acceptable in that context. Beginning with the context and then finding incongruent behaviors is a really easy strategy to use. By far, the most common way to do this is by failing to adjust to a situation. The context moves and you either fail to notice or refuse to adjust. This creates instant conflict because there is no longer a normal balance. Notice how Homer Simpson instantly creates a hilarious situation by failing to notice that people are threatening him. In a normal world, Homer would instantly recognize and respond to the threat in order to minimize tension. In the world of comedy, that tension gets magnified. Not only does Homer fail to notice the threat, but he responds in a polite, empathetic manner. This creates an even bigger contrast. Like other forms of recontextualization, this joke creates an incongruency between the needs of the situation (safety) and someone’s actual behavior (violation). Temporary Worker #1: You're gonna be REAL sorry for getting us fired. Homer Simpson: Well, I'm sorry now. Temporary Worker #1: Yeah, you're GUNNA be. Homer Simpson: I said, I'm sorry now. Temporary Worker #2: We said you're GUNNA BE! Homer Simpson: I know when I'm sorry, and I'm sorry now! You guys don't know me at all. - The Simpsons, Halloween of Horror To use this strategy, simply find a way to create the most contrast between your Why Problem and the situation. You can start with a behavior or Why Problem and search for interesting situations or you can begin with the situation and ask yourself which behaviors would be the most playfully inappropriate. Every idea has a weakness. Your job is to exploit that weakness as much as you can using all the tools in your comedic toolbox. Combining magnification and recontextualization is a very powerful combination. Your Why Problem will almost certainly be used for one or both of these strategies.

Examples: Finding a Premise Using Why Problems In the last chapter, we simplified Romano’s joke into a single Exploration + But Statement. We then discovered the Why Problem by asking ourselves why pretending to pay attention to your family might create problems. I’m pretending like I’m paying attention to my family during Thanksgiving dinner, but I’m actually paying attention to the football game on TV.

Why Problem: If he’s not careful pretending, he might do or say something rude. A good Why Problem will always give you a hint for what to do next. This Why Problem is practically begging for a punchline that is incredibly rude (yet still playful). If the punchline is going to create a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise, we will need to take this mundane, slow, small, and generic Why Problem and turn it into something unique, fast, big, and specific. To do that, all we need to do is magnify it and make it specific. Notice how the small, generic problem that Romano ‘might have’ gets magnified and becomes more specific. Why Problem: If he’s not careful pretending, he might do or say something rude. Joke Premise: He accidentally says something rude to a family member when he’s really talking about the football game. Why Problem (Magnified)/Joke Premise: He accidentally says something horrible to his grandmother. When Romano starts yelling at his grandmother, the tension goes through the roof. The small consequences of accidentally saying something wrong because you’re only pretending to listen to your family give way to the huge consequences of accidentally saying that you should have gotten rid of your grandmother when her knees went out. Take this Maria Bamford setup about having a coworker that hates her. She stopped talking to me, even though I kept talking to her… I know she didn't like me personally because she'd talk to anyone else about ANYTHING. This setup is easy to rewrite into a But Statement:

I talk to her, but she won’t talk to me. You might think that the Why Problem is simply that her coworker doesn't talk to her. We could potentially create a joke by highlighting this conflict and magnifying it so that the coworker goes through extraordinary lengths just to not speak to Bamford. While it’d be possible to write such a joke, there’s a far more interesting Why Problem just below the surface that Bamford has already hinted at. Imagine telling a friend about having a coworker that hates you. You say “I talk to her, but she won’t talk to me.” Your friend says, “So what? Why do you care?” Take a look at Bamford’s setup again. What do you think is actually annoying her? The real problem is that her coworker talks to everyone else. Why Problem: She ignores me, but she’ll talk to anyone else about anything. Identifying an interesting Why Problem is the most difficult part of this joke. Now there is a fairly straightforward path. This Why Problem is strongly hinting towards playing around with “anyone” and talking about “anything.” The more insignificant the conversation, the funnier the joke will be. Joke Premise: Find someone random to talk to and then talk about something insignificant. I know she didn't like me personally because she'd talk to anyone else about ANYTHING. Mailman: “Hi Linnet. We have a package here for you.” Linnet: My cat got out this weekend… and she got as far as the front walk… and she looks up me like, “what?” and I'm like… “You know what." Here’s a great Wanda Sykes example for converting generic tension into something specific. The Comedic Tension in this joke is big enough to get a small laugh, but the real punchline comes later. [S] I don't understand this whole Elvis thing. [S] There are dead people in my family that we miss and love dearly, [CT] but shoot, we don't dress up like them and do impressions. I’ll rewrite the joke so that it fits the Exploration + But Statement format to keep it simple: People are allowed to dress like Elvis, but they’re not allowed to dress up like other dead people. Now we highlight a specific problem.

Why Problem: There’s an inconsistent rule. If you dress up like Elvis and do an impression, then it’s cool, but if you dress up like a different dead person and do an impression then it’s offensive. Dressing up like a dead person should either be “always offensive” or “always OK.” The hint that the Why Problem is giving us is to break the rule. Premise: Show how inappropriate or awkward it could get to break this rule by dressing up as a dead person. The Premise is generic and low-tension. The “general idea” of dressing up like “a dead person” is vague. It’s hard for the audience to think that’s inappropriate without a specific example. The more specific the example, the easier it is for the audience to recognize the inappropriateness of the situation. To make it capable of getting a laugh, it needs to magnify the Playful Inappropriateness so that it becomes specific, fast, and high-tension. To magnify the Why Problem, simply take what “could be inappropriate” or “might go wrong” with the setup and magnify it so that the punchline represents the worst possible outcome (that the audience is willing to accept or believe). Why Problem (Magnified)/Joke Premise: Apply “Elvis rules” to a “non-Elvis person” to highlight the problem with the inconsistent rule, then magnify the inappropriateness by making the dead person a family member who was bald and wore dirty shirts. I don't understand this whole Elvis thing. There are dead people in my family that we miss and love dearly, but shoot, we don't dress up like them and do impressions. I'll show up at the family reunion in a dirty t-shirt and a bald cap - 'Look, everybody, I'm Uncle Earl.’ Recontextualizing is not always necessary because you won't always want to put your ideas in a new context. Ray Romano's example keeps the same situation throughout. He just takes a generic problem and magnifies it. However, Wanda Sykes’ punchline uses both strategies. Not only does her punchline magnify the awkwardness of dressing up like a dead person, but she purposefully put the impersonator in a situation that would create the most conflict: dressing up as a dead relative at a family reunion. She could have easily chosen a different combination to create contrast, such as going to church dressed as Jesus. Dressing up as a dead relative at a family reunion is the perfect combination to maximize the Playful Inappropriateness of the joke. Magnifying the inappropriateness by portraying Uncle Earl as someone who was bald and always wore dirty shirts was a lighthearted way to add to that inappropriateness.

Troubleshooting The Magnify Step If you’re having trouble magnifying your problem, make sure that the problem you originally highlighted isn’t already magnified. For example, you might highlight the problem “it’s stupid” and then magnify it so that it becomes “it’s really stupid” or you might skip the first step and go directly to “It’s really stupid.” If you do, you might think you did something wrong because common sense says that there’s no point in magnifying your Why Problem to “It’s really, really, stupid.” If this happens, it’s likely that you highlighted and magnified in the same step. These two steps (highlight and magnify) often happen at the same time. In fact, once you are comfortable using this writing method, you will almost never use them as two separate steps. They will feel like a single action. When that happens, you’ll be able to put a lot more focus on the art of comedy instead of the mechanics.

But Statement Examples EXAMPLE #1: EXP: The priest was giving a eulogy at the funeral C.M: but he kept playing with the change in his pocket. W.P: He’s being ‘a bit’ disrespectful PREMISE: Magnify the disrespect in a playful way EXAMPLE #2: EXP: Burritos are tasty C.M: but if you open them you can never roll them back up correctly. W.P: My burritos slowly unravel as I’m eating and makes a huge mess PREMISE: Magnify the mess of the burrito and contrast it with everyone’s neat and tidy burritos to show how I’m “bringing the group down.” EXAMPLE #3: EXP: We went to the ceremony, C.M: but the bride and groom were already showing hostility to each other. W.P: The bride and groom were making the guests feel uncomfortable by constantly snapping at each other PREMISE: Use the punchline to have the bride or groom say something that makes a guest incredibly uncomfortable EXAMPLE #4A: EXP: We had birthday candles C.M: but we had to use bread instead of a birthday cake. W.P: We made a weird substitution PREMISE: Show that this is a pattern by making an even weirder substitution EXAMPLE #4B: EXP: We had birthday candles

C.M: but we had to use bread instead of a birthday cake. W.P: I had to make a birthday cake out of bread because I accidentally made a promise that I couldn’t deliver. PREMISE: Show how things logically spiraled out of control until I was finally forced to substitute bread for a birthday cake EXAMPLE #5: EXP: I misplaced my homework C.M: but I can still pass the class if I get 100 on my essay. EXP-2: I have to finish writing the essay tonight C.M.-2: but I have to babysit my annoying little brother. W.P: I need to find a way to keep my little brother busy while I write my essay PREMISE: Find a way to get more time to focus on the paper while you should be babysitting.

How To Write The Punchline We have all the important pieces of the joke already in place. Here’s a recap of what we’ve done so far: 1. We used an Exploration + But Statement or Conflict Question to create Comedic Tension. 2. We highlighted a specific reason why the tension mattered (the Why Problem). 3. We created a premise by using What If Questions, magnifying the Why Problem and/or playing with the context. The premise is now leading us towards a punchline that will be specific, fast, and have enough tension to get a laugh.

EXPLORATION: My children are growing up C.M.: I know I should always act mature, but it’s hard. WHY PROBLEM: I’m a bad role model for my children PREMISE: A situation where it’s obvious that you’re a bad role model EXPLORATION: I went to a party C.M.: But I saw my ex-girlfriend there. WHY PROBLEM: Talking to her might be embarrassing PREMISE: A specific outcome that would be really embarrassing EXPLORATION: I'm reading the instruction manual C.M.: But it's hard to follow WHY PROBLEM: It's confusing PREMISE: Exaggerate how confusing the manual was in your example. EXPLORATION: I like using examples when I’m speaking C.M.: Sometimes the first example I think of isn’t the best WHY PROBLEM: Some of my examples are really weird or inappropriate

PREMISE: "A really weird or inappropriate example to use in a conversation" EXPLORATION: I’m not great at conversations C.M.: What am I supposed to say? WHY PROBLEM: I’m socially awkward PREMISE: Create a moment that is incredibly awkward EXPLORATION: My washing machine broke C.M.: I tried to fix it with duct tape WHY PROBLEM: That was a stupid idea. PREMISE: Magnify the stupidity by showing how bad the result was

Listener’s Path vs. Comedian’s Path For the majority of this book, we’ve been adding violations and then highlighting the Why Problems that naturally arise from the juxtapositions. This is the easiest way to create interesting ideas because there’s so much flexibility. You don't need to know what you're searching for when using this method. You can freely explore. However, to create a punchline, it is easier to reverse this process. Instead of adding a violation and hoping that it’ll lead to a funny Why Problem, we’ll use a funny Why Problem to find a violation. This might sound complex, but you already use this strategy to make your friends laugh. For example, whenever someone uses sarcasm, the safety is the literal/false meaning of the words, the violation is the true/sarcastic meaning of the words, and the Why Problem is “the speaker is being sarcastic.” Take this example from Jim Carrey about being a Canadian living in Los Angeles. Carrey created a Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition by sarcastically responding to someone who thought Canada was always cold. You will notice that not only does Carrey use the magnification strategy to develop the premise, but he also uses the same juxtaposition for a long time. When you find an interesting juxtaposition, you can play around inside it for a very, very long time. This is one of the biggest strengths of storytelling. [S] I tell people in Los Angeles that I’m from Canada [CT] But they always respond the same way [P] “Wow. Must have been cold.” [S] I used to get really upset, [CT] But now I just go along with it. [P] “Yes. Canada. [T] It was a frozen, hostile wasteland… [T] And there was much work to be done… [T] if we were to survive the elements. [T] After boring a hole through the ice to find food, [T] my good friend NanTuk and I… [T] would build an igloo, [T] To protect ourselves… [T] from polar bears… [T] and flying hockey pucks.”

When you use sarcasm, you and your friend go through the process in reverse directions. From your friend’s POV, he heard the words you were saying before he realized that you were being sarcastic. His path was Safety -> Violation -> Why Problem (Talking normally -> “something’s not right” -> “Oh, he’s being sarcastic”). From your POV, “I’m going to be sarcastic” occurred before you figured out what you were going to say. Your path went Safety -> Why Problem -> Violation.

This is one of the reasons why people rarely laugh at their own punchlines. People laugh because they find a Why Problem to be a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise, but in order to tell a joke, you must already know the Why Problem. It also explains why sometimes you might say something funny without laughing, but then later find yourself laughing along with your friends. In these situations, you essentially took the Comedian’s Path to say the joke and then realized that your comment was funnier than you originally thought by going through the Listener’s Path. You were still surprised by the joke, but your surprise was different from the one you gave the listeners. Since a punchline is simply a violation that results in a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise for the audience, we can use either path to create a punchline. Using the Listener’s Path will result in more flexibility, but less control over the outcome. But Statements and Conflict Questions are great ways of introducing a violation, but it’s more difficult to figure out if the violation will result in a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise. Using the Comedian’s Path will limit the possibilities, but help you focus on finding violations that have the best chances at creating a quality laugh. Your primary tool for taking the Comedian’s Path will be using Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition Questions, or PIJ-Q’s. I recommend using the Comedian’s Path as your default strategy, but not being afraid to switch to the Listener’s Path to break out of a writer’s block. It’s easy to get stuck using one strategy, but it’s very difficult if you’re using both (and it’s next to impossible if you’re also using the Stepping Stones strategy).

PIJ Questions There are a lot of great reasons to use PIJ-Q’s, but the best one is that they are ridiculously fun to play with. A PIJ-Q is a type of question that guides you toward uncovering the best violations to use for a punchline. They are designed to get you thinking of different opportunities to create Playfully Inappropriate Surprises for the audience. Every answer to a PIJ-Q is a potential punchline. Once you find an answer that you’re happy with, converting it into an actual punchline is usually effortless. Many times it will be nearly identical to the punchline that you eventually put on stage. Other times you’ll convert the answer to your PIJ-Q into a punchline by doing some simple storytelling or problem-solving. Regardless of the outcome, most of the creative work will be finished.

4 Parts of a PIJ-Q 1. The first part begins the question with who, what, where, when, why, or how. 2. The second part adds “… Playfully Inappropriate…” to the question to ensure that the question leads us towards Comedic Conflict. The result is a phrase like “What is a Playfully Inappropriate…” 3. The third part is usually a noun or verb that is “Playfully Inappropriate.” A verb is typically an inappropriate action or reaction to the situation. It creates a mismatch between what you do and what’s considered a normal or appropriate action. A PIJ-Q such as “What is a Playfully Inappropriate comment to make…” will naturally create these types of Comedic Conflicts. Nouns also create incongruencies and mismatches, but they don’t require any action. When a noun creates a Comedic Conflict, it’s because something about the noun is inappropriate for the situation. A PIJ-Q such as “Who is a Playfully Inappropriate person to ask for financial advice?” will naturally lead you to uncover these types of situations. The answer to this question will be some type of mismatch. 4. The final part focuses on the situation. Often, this means applying the Why Problem from earlier, but you can also use generic PIJ-Q’s. The situation is what you will be creating a mismatch for. Asking yourself “Who is a Playfully Inappropriate person?” or “What is a Playfully Inappropriate question?” doesn’t make much sense without context. Comedy is about conflict, and there can’t be a conflict without at least two ideas to fight. By adding the situation, our PIJ-Q has something to create conflict with. For example, the PIJ-Q “Who is a Playfully Inappropriate person to have as the best man at your wedding?” will naturally lead you to think about people who wouldn’t be a good pick to be your best man. Most of the time you’ll want to use your Why Problem/Premise when asking PIJ Questions (especially once you get used to this new method of writing). Using the Why Problem is easy. For example, if your Why Problem is “I’m a horrible role model,” then your Premise might put yourself in a situation where that would be painfully obvious, such needing to respond to your kid’s bad behavior. Your full PIJ Question might look like this: “What is a Playfully Inappropriate response to

learning that your kid cut school to smoke pot?” The answer to that question will be a violation that will work as a punchline. Remember, when you combine the magnification and recontextualization strategies to create the best contrast. The PIJ-Q not only magnifies the Why Problem “I’m a really bad role model,” but it also finds a situation where being a bad role model is painfully obvious. EXPLORATION: My children are growing up C.M.: I know I should always act mature, but it’s hard. WHY PROBLEM: I’m a bad role model for my children PREMISE: A situation where it’s obvious that you’re a bad role model One of your answers to this PIJ-Q will eventually become your punchline. Here are some possible answers to the PIJ-Q: PIJ-A #1: “How much you paying? My dealer has been over-charging me for years.” PIJ-A #2: “Son, you need to think about your future. Once pot is legal, your profit margins are going to fall. You need to move to something safer, like crack cocaine.” PIJ-A #3: “Don’t sell drugs, honey. Strippers make way more money.”

Most of the time, especially after you’ve gotten used to this process, your PIJ Answers will naturally be worded in a way that will work as a punchline. You’re using your natural sense of humor to answer the question. We aren’t doing anything to change or influence your personality with this process. You don’t have to “put a part of you aside” to complete this process. If you’re dry and sarcastic, that will show up in your answer. If you’re playful and weird, that’ll show up, too. If you want to do political humor, you’ll ask yourself more political questions and get more political answers. Regardless of how you use it, your personality and natural sense of humor matter. All we’re doing is using questions in a way that feeds you the best stimulus so that you can respond naturally.

EXPLORATION: My children are growing up C.M.: I know I should always act mature, but it’s hard. WHY PROBLEM: I’m a bad role model for my children PREMISE: A situation where it’s obvious that you’re a bad role model PIJ-Q: What is a Playfully Inappropriate response to learning that your kid cut school to smoke pot?

PIJ-A: How much you paying? My dealer has been over-charging me for years. My children are growing up. I know I should always act mature, but it's hard. I got a call from my son’s school. They said that he cut class to smoke pot. My first thought was, “I hope he’s not selling pot. Pot has small profit margins.”

Two Types of PIJ-Q’s A PIJ-Q can be either generic or specific. The only difference is that generic PIJ-Q’s can be applied in almost any situation while specific PIJ-Q’s require a Why Problem. Generic PIJ-Q’s don’t care if you’re talking about how stupid something is, how uncomfortable a conversation was, or how embarrassing a slip-and-fall can be. You can literally point to any part of your material and ask a generic PIJ-Q like, “What is a Playfully Inappropriate analogy to use right now?” or “What is a Playfully Inappropriate way to break the audience’s assumptions?” Generic PIJ-Q’s are useful because they exponentially increase the number of options we have available when writing and they can help us get unstuck when we’re having trouble finishing a joke. However, because they are so broad, it’s difficult to find an answer that really hits the bullseye. In a head-to-head contest, it’s almost impossible to beat a specific PIJ-Q with a generic one. A much better strategy is to use generic PIJ-Q’s to find ideas that specific PIJ-Q’s could never find. Since specific PIJ-Q’s are designed to convert your Why Problem into a punchline, they will never lead to analogies, wordplay, or ways to break the audience’s assumptions. It’s important to use both types so that you can get the best of both worlds.

Examples of Specific PIJ Questions Here are two examples of specific PIJ-Q’s. Specific PIJ-Q’s use the Why Problems from step two. EXPLORATION: I was having a conversation with a stranger C.M.: But I forgot his name WHY PROBLEM: It was awkward PREMISE: A really awkward social encounter PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to show the audience how awkward the conversation became after I forgot the other person’s name? EXPLORATION: I was talking to my friend on the phone C.M.: And he said his girlfriend is pregnant WHY PROBLEM: It’s hard to see my friend as a father PREMISE: It’s can’t see my friend as a father PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate comment to make after hearing that my friend’s new girlfriend is pregnant?

We could have tried to get the same results using a generic PIJ Question, like “What’s a Playfully Inappropriate thing to do that will break a social norm?” That might have pointed us in the same direction, but generic questions tend to result in boring, generic answers. In a head-to-head battle, specific PIJ-Q’s always win.

Examples of Generic PIJ Questions Generic PIJ-Q’s can be tried anywhere at any time. Examples #1-8 assume that you have already written a setup. The Playful Inappropriateness will come from the conflict between your PIJ Answer and whatever setup you already have. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to act out the current situation? What’s a Playfully Inappropriate analogy to use right now? What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to contradict myself right now? What’s a Playfully Inappropriate resource to use to prove my point? What’s a Playfully Inappropriate fact about myself that I could bring up right now? What’s a Playfully Inappropriate callback I could use right now? What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to break a social norm right now? What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to break the audience’s assumptions?

Example #9-16 use who, where, when, and why. The Playful Inappropriateness will come from the mismatches between the subject of the question (the who, what, where, when, or why) and the situation (red text). I’ve added my own examples of interesting situations to make it easier to see how the answer to your PIJ-Q can create punchlines. When you’re writing, you’ll use situations that are relevant to your own material. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

When is a Playfully Inappropriate time to admit that you’ve been drinking alcohol? Who’s a Playfully Inappropriate person to have as the best man at your wedding? Who’s a Playfully Inappropriate person to vote for if you couldn’t vote for a regular candidate? Where a Playfully Inappropriate place to get advice about medical procedures? Where a Playfully Inappropriate place to lose your virginity? When is a Playfully Inappropriate time to start a conversation about your partner’s past mistakes? 15. (WHY) What is a Playfully Inappropriate reason to give someone when they ask you why you didn’t come to work this morning? 16. (WHY) What is a Playfully Inappropriate excuse for binge-watching Netflix?

The PIJ Chart: Make Your Own PIJ-Q’s PIJ Questions work best when you’re able to play around with them and quickly find a question that fits your unique situation. Instead of trying to list all the different PIJ-Q’s or explain the categories, I’ve decided on a visual system. To create a question, begin at the top of the chart and move down. Each “+” represents the next step. For example, you can choose “What” + “is a Playfully Inappropriate” + “way to act out this situation” + “that will” + “Magnify the Why Problem?” The Specific PIJ-Q’s are in bold while generic PIJ-Q’s are in regular font. Why the chart works should be more important than what the chart says. Use it to quickly run through a variety of ideas, but don’t be afraid to put the tool down and trust yourself once you understand how it works. While this chart allows for a lot of possibilities, it is not complete. Once you understand how it creates opportunities for punchlines, you’ll want to add your own ideas. You can exponentially increase the effectiveness of the chart by converting material into PIJ-Q’s. Most of the PIJ-Q’s I’ve developed came from studying other comedians. When you hear a great joke, ask yourself what question the comedian might have asked himself. You can then use that same question in your own material without fear of copying. You can ask the exact same question in a different situation and create an entirely different punchline.

Who, What, Where, When, Why, How + … is a Playfully Inappropriate … + 1. Way to act out the situation 2. Comment to make 3. Thing to do 4. Thing to say 5. Way to respond/react 6. Thought to have 7. Feeling/emotion to have 8. Way to prove your opinion or disprove an enemy’s opinion 9. Comparison to make 10. Example of this problem 11. Way to define/redefine the problem 12. Resource to use 13. Observation to make 14. Analogy to use 15. Mistake 16. Situation to be in 17. Fact about you/someone 18. Question to ask 19. Way to get help 20. Way to "fight back” 21. Hypothetical situation 22. Character flaw 23. Quotation to use 24. Misquotation to use 25. Context 26. Way to get what you want 27. [ADD YOUR OWN] + … that will … + A. Magnify the WP B. Recontextualize the WP 1. Break a social norm? 2. Embarrass myself/another 3. Create a misunderstanding? 4. Reveal too much information 5. Be a little “too true” 6. Insult myself 7. Put-down a bad guy 8. Retaliate 9. Be sarcastic 10. Parody a known source 11. Be ironic 12. Create an analogy 13. Use wordplay (pun, etc.) 14. be a huge exaggeration 15. be a huge understatement (+specificity) 16. Compare & contrast 17. Prove/disprove an opinion 18. Contradict yourself/another 19. Callback to an earlier joke 20. Break the audience's assumptions with a… 1. Who-Shift

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

What-Shift Where-Shift When-Shift Why-Shift How-Shift

Ray Romano: Thanksgiving Football Let’s go back to our Romano example to see how he went from the Why Problem to a punchline. Here’s a recap of what we already know. 1 - COMEDIC TENSION: He created Comedic Tension in the setup… They put football on during Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to watch the game. We made a compromise during dinner. We put the TV on (BUT) without the volume. Now I have to pretend that I’m paying attention to my family. 2 - HIGHLIGHT PROBLEM: He found a specific reason why the Comedic Tension mattered. Why Problem: If I’m not careful pretending, I might do or say something rude. 3 - MAGNIFY PROBLEM: He then took the Why Problem and found ways to magnify it so that the slow, small, generic, low-tension problem became fast, big, specific, and high-tension. Why Problem (Magnified)/Joke Premise: I accidentally say something horrible to my grandmother. At this point, we don’t yet know what the punchline IS, but we know what the punchline DOES. Regardless of the words used for the actual punchline, the humor will come from accidentally saying something horrible to his grandmother. 4 - PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION: Since the process for creating Comedic Tension and Comedic Conflict are the same, all we have to do is take our current material and add another Exploration + But Statement, Conflict Question, or use a PIJ-Q. All three techniques can result in the same punchline, though some are much easier. For each punchline below I’ll list a potential But Statement, Conflict Question, or PIJ-Q that could have been used to arrive at the same punchline. PUNCHLINE #1: I accidentally yell “pass the gravy!” BUT STATEMENT #1: I meant to yell at the TV but I accidentally yelled at grandma. CONFLICT QUESTION #1: How can I reveal that I’m not actually paying attention to the family? PIJ-Q #1: If I were “pretending to pay attention to my family but actually watching football on TV, what is a Playfully Inappropriate way that I might reveal the Why Problem (accidentally yell at

grandma)?” PUNCHLINE #2: I accidentally say “You suck” to grandma instead of the TV. BUT STATEMENT #2: I’m mad at the game but everyone thinks I’m mad at grandma CONFLICT QUESTION #2: How can I accidentally hurt grandma’s feelings? PIJ-Q #2: If I were “pretending to pay attention to my family but actually watching football on TV, what is a Playfully Inappropriate way that I might accidentally insult a family member?” PUNCHLINE #3: I say “We should have gotten rid of our player when his knees went out” but I accidentally say “we should have gotten rid of grandma when her knees went out.” BUT STATEMENT #3: I’m talking about the game but everyone thinks I’m talking about grandma CONFLICT QUESTION #3: What small misunderstanding could create a huge problem? PIJ-Q #3: If I were “pretending to pay attention to my family but actually watching football on TV, what is a Playfully Inappropriate way that I might accidentally hurt grandma’s feelings?” Notice how 95% of the work is done and we haven’t given a single thought about word choice or joke structure. When you’re this close to the punchline, it doesn’t really matter how much formal comedy training you’ve had. When you’re focusing on creating Comedic Conflict, the ideas are creating the humor, not the words. Bad word choice can kill conventional jokes, but it has little effect on storytellers. Romano’s word choice doesn’t change his joke. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be in English! This joke would function exactly the same in Spanish, Chinese, German, or French. They put football on during Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to watch the game. We made a compromise during dinner. We put the TV on without the volume. Now I have to pretend that I’m paying attention to my family. Grandma... (eyes moving toward TV) can you pass the... gravy, pass the GRAVY! I’M OPEN GRANDMA! … Get rid of the gravy, what are you looking at? … ah... ... You suck. No. I’m not going to shut up. We should have gotten rid of her last year. I told you as soon as her knees went to get rid of her.

1. CONSTRUCTION: I’m pretending like I’m paying attention to my family during Thanksgiving dinner 2. RECKONING: BUT I’m actually paying attention to the football game on TV. 3. RESOLVING/JUXTAPOSING: Audience constructs a NEW understanding of the joke, creating a juxtaposition. The new understanding combines both safety and violation. 4. RELATING/JUDGING: Audience realizes the pretending could create a new problem 5. RESPONDING: Audience waits for the punchline.

1. CONSTRUCTION: Now I have to pretend that I’m paying attention to my family. Grandma will you pass… the gravy 2. RECKONING: Pass the GRAVY! I’M OPEN GRANDMA! ... 3. RESOLVING/JUXTAPOSING: Audience constructs a NEW understanding of the joke, creating a juxtaposition. The new understanding combines both safety and violation. 4. RELATING/JUDGING: Audience realizes that he's accidentally saying something awful to his grandmother, but that he doesn't mean it because he’s actually watching TV. 5. RESPONDING: Audience laughs at the Playfully Inappropriate Surprise

Conventional Jokes vs. Storytelling Structure Now that we’ve worked our way through the entire process, let’s take a moment to compare how the result is different from conventional joke-telling. We will then take a look at a few more examples before moving on. In the next chapter, I’ll show you how you can use this single system to generate both conventional and storytelling-style jokes. In Romano’s bit, he introduced the Comedic Tension early on and gave us a specific reason why it was a problem (he had to pretend to pay attention to his family). The punchline then took the problem of “pretending to pay attention to your family while watching the TV,” highlighted what was wrong with it (accidentally speaking to Grandma instead of the TV), and magnified it (saying horrible things to grandma instead of something slightly rude). As audience members, we know where the story is going. There isn’t a hint of a Broken Assumption or Misdirection in this joke. Notice how authentic and real the story feels. Whether the story is actually true isn’t important because it feels real. The only way to create a story that feels this realistic is by refusing to use old comedy tricks like Broken Assumptions or Misdirection. The audience’s correct assumptions are what made it so funny. The audience knew pretending to pay attention to his family would cause a problem for Romano, they just didn’t know exactly how. The humor comes from the disastrous way the situation played out. If this punchline had used Misdirection then it wouldn’t have worked as well. The reason Romano’s punchline hits so hard is that the audience already knew what the violation MEANT before they knew what the violation actually WAS. The audience didn’t have to figure out why Romano was suddenly yelling at his Grandma because he had already told them that he was only pretending to pay attention to his family. He told the audience how to feel about the punchline, then he told them the punchline. The hint inside the setup was big enough to make sure the audience knew how to quickly interpret the punchline but ambiguous enough that there was still a surprise to give the audience. This cannot be done when using Misdirection or Broken Assumptions. It only works when you’re being real with the audience.

Storytelling Builds Trust With The Audience While Storytelling Structure doesn’t have to be used to tell stories, there are two great reasons why they are perfect for storytelling. First, if you’re writing a Broken Assumption Joke, then your setup must create a false assumption for your punchline to break. That’s the whole purpose of the setup. Outside of stand-up comedy, we already have a term for purposefully giving someone a false assumption: a lie. The setup for a Misdirection Punchline is sort of like WWE wrestling. The audience (usually) knows it’s fake, they just don’t really care. Sometimes it’s more fun to simply “believe the lie.” It’s as if there’s an unwritten agreement in WWE wrestling: “You pretend to hit that guy with a metal chair, he pretends like it really hurt, and I’ll pretend like it actually happened.” Everybody wins… sorta. While some comedians are amazing at applying this strategy (i.e., Jimmy Carr), it’s far more common to see it fail miserably. It’s not uncommon to see an open mic audience chuckle at a few

jokes and then completely lose interest in a comedian. The problem isn’t the words being said. The problem is that no connection was ever made between the comedian and the audience. When a comedian comes off fake, it is very easy to notice and that inauthenticity makes it easy for the audience to disengage, even if that comedian is saying some funny stuff. Authenticity matters. If you’ve ever had a friend try to sell you something, you know exactly how easy it is to feel the lack of authenticity. You instantly realize that they aren’t being real with you and that inauthenticity makes it easy to hang up the phone. The opposite is also true. How many times have you stopped dead in your tracks because someone quietly said, “Can we talk?” The deeply authentic way they asked for your time cut through all the bull***t. They got your attention in the most authentic way possible, and it made it nearly impossible to disengage. Don’t throw away authenticity for a quick laugh. The more a comedian relies on Misdirection, the less the audience will trust each setup. If every punchline breaks an assumption, why would the audience continue to make assumptions? This rule doesn’t apply when performing for Goldfish (use one-liners). Instead of breaking assumptions, a much better strategy is to “skew the truth” and use exaggerations. This allows you to create violations without breaking the audience’s trust. Just look at mythology. Myths have been passed down orally (stop chuckling) for centuries. A myth is essentially a story that mixes truth with exaggerations and lies. They do it so well that it no longer makes sense to talk about which parts of the story are real or fake. All of the ingredients combine together and become a single, inseparable story. This idea was described beautifully by Matryoshka Doll. “You can’t put the yolk back into the egg. You can’t put an egg back into a chicken. And you can’t put a small chicken inside a bigger chicken… What were we talking about?” - Matryoshka Doll

Storytelling Grabs The Audience’s Attention Early Comedic Tension doesn’t require that a comedian “hide the problem” until the punchline. The comedian can grab the audience’s attention early on by introducing a violation, which gives the audience a good reason to pay attention. Compare this to how joke-structures typically work. If you hide all violations until the punchline, then that means the setup will be completely safe. The Three-Count joke about the three men stuck on a deserted island is 51 words long, but the first violation doesn’t appear until word 41. That means the first 86% of the joke is entirely safe. There’s nothing fun, interesting, or engaging about it. The comedian is basically telling the audience “Stay with me until the end and I promise the punchline will be worth it.” It’s as if you were watching a movie that promised you that the ending would be worth the first 80 minutes of boredom. Conventional jokes solve this “boring setup” problem by making the setup as short as possible.

This is easily one of the most common pieces of advice you’ll find in comedy training: Keep the setup SHORT. The theory goes “short setup lines -> more time for punchlines -> more laughs.” Storytelling ignores this idea. Instead of “rushing through the boring stuff,” why not make the setup one of the most interesting, engaging, authentic, and relatable parts of your performance? A great storyteller will capture the audience’s interest in the setup. He is worth listening to from the very beginning. The punchlines are one of many great reasons for the audience to invest their time and energy into listening, understanding, and relating to the story. If storytelling had a rule for what makes a great setup, it’d be something like this: The setup should be as short as possible… unless you are giving the audience something more valuable in return. (Restated for my Economics homies: The Marginal Costs of each unit of setup should be equal to the Marginal Benefits).

Wanda Sykes Example Let’s do the process again with Wanda Sykes example. 1 - COMEDIC TENSION: She starts out with an Exploration + But Statement. I don't understand this whole Elvis thing. There are dead people in my family that we miss and love dearly, but shoot, we don't dress up like them and do impressions.

2 - HIGHLIGHT PROBLEM: What is a specific reason why the Comedic Tension matters? What’s the problem that we’re going to highlight? Why Problem: There’s an inconsistent rule. If you dress up like Elvis and do an impression, then it’s cool, but if you dress up like a different dead person and do an impression then it’s offensive. Dressing up like a dead person should either be “always offensive” or “always OK.” 3 - MAGNIFY PROBLEM: We take the weak tension (“It would be awkward if…”) and magnify it to become “It’s super-awkward when…” We also play with the context so that the situation maximizes the awkwardness. Why Problem (Magnified)/Joke Premise: Apply “Elvis rules” to a “non-Elvis person” to highlight the problem with the inconsistent rule, then magnify the inappropriateness by making the dead person a family member who was bald and wore dirty shirts. 4 - PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION: There are lots of playful ways to arrive at

this punchline. You could easily get to this punchline using one or more of these: “What is a Playfully Inappropriate way of applying ‘Elvis rules’ to a non-Elvis person?” “Who is a Playfully Inappropriate person to dress up as?” “When would dressing up as this person be the most inappropriate?” “I should be dressed like Elvis, but I’m actually dressed like…” Regardless of which route was taken, the result is the same. The punchline is a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise that highlights a problem (inconsistent rule) and then magnifies and recontextualizes it to maximize conflict. I don't understand this whole Elvis thing. There are dead people in my family that we miss and love dearly, but shoot, we don't dress up like them and do impressions. I'll show up at the family reunion in a dirty t-shirt and a bald cap - 'Look, everybody, I'm Uncle Earl.’

Richard Jeni: “Card Table Dating” 1 - COMEDIC TENSION: Richard Jeni begins by creating Comedic Tension. He doesn’t use a But Statement or Conflict Question, but the Comedic Tension is still implied. I say on a first date you don’t want a dinner table damn it. What you want is a card table. A man and a woman meet up at a card table, write down all their emotional problems on little cards, and take turns slapping them on the table and being honest. It’s easy to identify the tension in this situation by placing yourself in the situation. If you had to write down your emotional problems and admit to personal flaws on a first date, what would be your number one worry? The reason this situation creates tension is the same reason why you would NOT want to go first. Going first means you have to trust the other person and it leaves you vulnerable. 2 - HIGHLIGHT PROBLEM: What is a specific reason why the Comedic Tension matters? What’s the problem that we’re going to highlight? As you read the Why Problem, think about what you would do if you were writing it. Why Problem: Your answers might be incongruent. You don’t want to admit too much or too little. Either way would be socially awkward. Whoever goes first must “trust”

that their partner will have a congruent answer. Joke Premise: The second person’s answers are incongruent. 3 - MAGNIFY PROBLEM: Now we take this generic, low-tension idea and turn it into something specific and high-tension. Since the Why Problem is highlighting how awkward it’d be if the two people gave incongruent answers, it should be easy to guess what the punchline should do. The punchline will magnify the incongruency between the boy’s answers and the girl’s answers. The answers won’t just be incongruent. They’ll be ridiculously incongruent. Why Problem (Magnified)/Joke Premise: The answers are CLEARLY incongruent. One person’s “emotional problems” are obviously bigger than the other. 4 - PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION: The only task left is to find Playfully Inappropriate ways of creating extremely incongruent answers between the man and the woman (sounds like fun, right?). The guy’s job is to be the straight man. He will set up the woman by admitting to some type of problem. The girl’s job is to take the guy’s small problems, magnify them, and then reply with an extremely incongruent problem that is Playfully Inappropriate.

Richard Jeni: “Card Table Dating” I say on a first date you don’t want a dinner table damn it. What you want is a card table. A man and a woman meet up at a card table, write down all their emotional problems on little cards, and take turns slapping them on the table and being honest. The guy’s got his cards. He goes first. Hello. My name is Bob and I’m a Scorpio. Hello. I’m Sally. I’m a psycho! My dad locked me in the closet when I was 8 years old. My dad came out of the closet when I was 5 years old! I’m self-centered and obsessed with my appearance. I’m from Los Angeles, also. I can’t have an orgasm unless I’m on top I can’t have an orgasm unless I’m on crack! I have an imaginary friend named Bosco. You know Bosco?! I’m neurotic, we need to see other people. I’m schizophrenic, I AM OTHER PEOPLE!

Five out of the six punchlines/taglines in this bit use the same overall strategy of magnifying the man’s problems. With the exception of the Los Angeles joke, using PIJ-Q’s like “What’s a Playfully Inappropriate response that will completely overshadow the man’s problem?” would work for each

setup. The woman’s responses begin as more playful than inappropriate, but Jeni used the final three replies to see how much inappropriateness he could get away with: She admits to using drugs, having a personality disorder, and being so crazy that she actually has other people’s imaginary friends. The Los Angeles tagline is more conventional than the others. Like Broken Assumption jokes, the punchline works by redefining something about the setup. Instead of magnifying the man’s problem, the woman’s response was a “Playfully Inappropriate way of defining/redefining ‘self-centered people.” In most cases, I don’t recommend using punchlines that redefine the setup because it breaks the audience’s trust. They almost always feel forced and fake. However, Jeni pulled it off beautifully. Here’s why he was able to get away with it:

1. The first three punchlines built huge momentum and trust. The audience already loved where it was going. This practically guarantees he’ll get the benefit of the doubt on the next punchline. 2. The audience didn’t have enough time to think because the taglines were coming so quickly. 3. The “redefinition” was from one character of the story to another, not from the comedian to the audience. The audience didn’t have to “reset because the setup turned out to be a lie.” They got to watch a single story unfold. EXPLORATION: He admits to “x” C.M.: But she admits to “10x” WHY PROBLEM: You don’t want your answers to be incongruent with your partners. PREMISE: Huge incongruence between man's & woman’s “flaws” Let’s revisit our 5 But Statements from earlier. Using PIJ-Q’s, we can now take the premises and create punchlines.

EXAMPLE #1: EXP: The priest was giving a eulogy at the funeral C.M: but he kept playing with the change in his pocket. W.P: He’s being ‘a bit’ disrespectful PREMISE: Magnify the disrespect in a playful way PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate comment to make if you were bored or not paying attention while giving a eulogy? PIJ-A: “He lived a good life… no wait, that was my 10:30 am. EXAMPLE #2: EXP: Burritos are tasty C.M: but if you open them you can never roll them back up correctly. W.P: My burritos slowly unravel as I’m eating and makes a huge mess PREMISE: Magnify the mess of the burrito and contrast it with everyone’s neat and tidy burritos to

show how I’m “bringing the group down.” PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate analogy that highlights how messy I am while eating a burrito? PIJ-A: I looked like a toddler at the adults’ table… Sauce is smeared all over my face… Grease is running down my elbow… The only thing I haven’t done is take a cup of milk and [violently shake the bottle like a baby]. EXAMPLE #3: EXP: We went to the ceremony, C.M: but the bride and groom were already showing hostility to each other. W.P: The bride and groom were making the guests feel uncomfortable by constantly snapping at each other PREMISE: Use the punchline to have the bride or groom say something that makes a guest incredibly uncomfortable. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate thing for the bride/groom to say in front of a guest? PIJ-A: “I wish you weren’t pregnant.” EXAMPLE #4A: EXP: We had birthday candles C.M: but we had to use bread instead of a birthday cake. W.P: We made a weird substitution PREMISE: Show that this is a pattern by making an even weirder substitution PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate substitution for another celebration? PIJ-A: My brother had to be the tree during Christmas. EXAMPLE #4B: EXP: We had birthday candles C.M: but we had to use bread instead of a birthday cake. W.P: I had to make a birthday cake out of bread because I accidentally made a promise that I couldn’t deliver. PREMISE: Show how things logically spiraled out of control until I was finally forced to substitute bread for a birthday cake PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate reason to switch bread for a birthday cake? PIJ-A: I lied about having a birthday cake because I’m a people-pleaser. EXAMPLE #5: EXP: I misplaced my homework C.M: but I can still pass the class if I get 100 on my essay. EXP-2: I have to finish writing the essay tonight C.M.-2: but I have to babysit my annoying little brother.

W.P: I need to find a way to keep my little brother busy while I write my essay PREMISE: Find a way to get more time to focus on the paper while you should be babysitting. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to keep your brother busy while your parents are away? PIJ-A: Introduce your 14-year-old brother to dirty websites.

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Applying New Tools To Conventional JokeWriting In this chapter, we’re going to switch gears away from storytelling and revisit conventional joke structures and types of Comedic Conflict. Joke telling and Storytelling are both important aspects of great comedy. Learning how to apply the principles in this book to conventional joke writing will not only improve your joke-writing skills, but it’ll make you a better storyteller as well. This is especially true if you’re a novice. Joke structures can be helpful because they are more black-andwhite than storytelling. You’ll notice that some categories have far fewer options than others. The more restrictive the joke type, the fewer ways we have at arriving at that destination. There are always going to be more ways to create social violations or exaggerations than ways to create ThreeCount Jokes, puns, or other restrictive joke structures. This chapter is going to list a variety of joke structures and types of Comedic Conflict. In each joke, I’ll list examples and then give you various PIJ-Q’s, But Statements, and Conflict Questions that will either lead you directly to a punchline or push your material in the correct direction. Joke formulas typically begin by asking you to select a topic and then use a brainstorming exercise to create word associations. Instead, we’re going to make conventional joke-writing a natural extension of storytelling. You can cycle through Exploration and Conflict Making over and over again until you either find an interesting Comedic Tension or you find the perfect opportunity to use a specific joke structure. Either way, your writing process will continue to flow naturally. This will not only make the process more fun, but your ideas will have more diversity and personality to them because they are more personal to you than a word association list. Where you are in the writing process won’t have much effect on this chapter because we’ll be creating punchlines by adding violations to your existing material. What you start with can be anywhere from a few newly written sentences all the way up to polished material that you have been testing and revising for a long time. Regardless of where you’re starting from, our job is to find opportunities for creating new and interesting violations.

About the Categories & Labels I break the different types of Comedic Conflict into five broad categories: Norm-Based Violations, Word-Based/Linguistic Violations, Meaning-Based Violations, Scale-Based Violations, and Logic-Based Violations. The types of jokes that are inside each category share common characteristics and typically create humor in the same way as other jokes in that category. Don’t obsess about how jokes are grouped together. The only purpose for these labels is to help new comedians see patterns that they can use in their own writing. Your final joke might fit nicely into one of these categories, it could overlap between two categories, or even defy these categories altogether.

The only legitimate purpose for these categories is to make it easier to recognize opportunities. The reason we want to understand each category is so that we can quickly respond with the most effective tool when the time is right. This is exactly how people who constantly make “That’s what she said!” jokes do well. They’ve gotten good at noticing certain words or phrases that they can make sound dirty. To put it another way, they have gotten good at recognizing a pattern in the setup (Comedic Tension) and quickly responding to it by selecting an effective tool (the phrase “That’s what she said!”) to create a Playfully Inappropriate Surprise. The only reason people don’t think “That’s what she said!” people are comedic geniuses is because the tool is one-dimensional. We can draw a straight line between the setup and the punchline. There’s no mystery behind how the joke teller arrived at their punchline. This changes once people start using more tools and using tools that are more complex. People who are able to quickly recognize various patterns in a setup and skillfully respond with the perfect punchline are labeled hilarious. People who are able to not only respond to various situations, but are able to actively and consistently create them in stand-up, improvisational comedy, sketch, and screenwriting are considered comedic geniuses. The only important differences between “That’s what she said!” people and comedic geniuses are how many different types of situations they can respond to, how effective they are at responding, and whether they can actively and consistently do it. Throw in a healthy dose of uniqueness and you have an unstoppable combination. In this chapter, we will begin this journey of acquiring diverse comedic tools and learning how to use them effectively. Whether you can attach one of these labels to a finished joke doesn’t change anything. It’s purely a learning tool. While you might want to systematically go through each category and try to write punchlines for practice, it’s best to simply understand how the category works so that you can recognize opportunities as they naturally arise.

Norm-Based Violations Violating a norm simply means doing something other than what’s considered “normal” or “acceptable” in polite society. It’s one of the easiest and most effective ways of creating a Comedic Conflict. Since society sets standards for what people are “supposed to do” or “should be like” in polite society, it's very easy to create interesting contrasts by ignoring or rebelling against those rules. For example, the viral commercial for Poo-Pourri got its comedic power from violating a cultural norm. The entire commercial featured a high-class lady with a very proper English accent talking about her poop in the most polite way possible. There was a very clear contrast between what she was saying and her “proper” persona. Here are some other great examples of social violations. “There was a point in time when we were in (Disneyland) where I lost my daughter. But I knew eventually I would run into her again, so I took that time to get on rides she couldn’t get on. When I saw her she was crying. I was like, ‘It’s not your birthday. Today’s not about you.’” - Kevin Hart I have nephews. They love spending time with us. They love it because we let them do whatever they want to do – they’re not our kids, we don’t care. ‘Only thing I have to do is keep you alive, that’s it.’ They come visit us, man – ‘Oh what? Oh, no dinner? Alright, fine, hey – ice cream all day, how about that? I don’t have to cook a damn thing. Just scoop it out. There you go. Eat up. I don’t pay your dental bills.’ - Wanda Sykes “I can’t believe we’re still giving clothing as a gift. Cause whenever you get clothing as a present, you always open it up and you think, ‘Not even close.’ And the person that gives it is always like, ‘You can take it back if you don’t like it.’ ‘That’s alright. I’ll just throw it out.’ Don’t give me an errand.” - Jim Gaffigan STRATEGY: Look for opportunities to do something insensitive. Listen to the “quiet voice” in your head that you usually ignore because it whispers things that aren’t appropriate. Social violations can be on purpose or by accident. Magnifying and the “Failure to Adapt” strategy your Why Problem is a great way of creating social violations. Any “failure to adapt” to a situation will also lead to social violations.

1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate action, reaction, or thought that wouldn’t be socially acceptable? 2. BUT STATEMENT: I know that the polite thing is to do X, but I going to do Y. 3. BUT STATEMENT: You’re allowed to X, but you’re not allowed to Y

4. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why does everybody have to X? 5. CONFLICT QUESTION: What’s the problem with X anyway? 6. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why can’t I X?

Embarrassment Embarrassment is one of the most common types of social-violations in comedy because it’s easy to write and easy for the audience to relate to. Jokes that use embarrassment often involve making some type of mistake in public and are often combined with other elements, like exaggeration or specificity. I can’t use the “you too” phrase. I never use it right. Like a waitress will bring my meal. (waitress) “Hey, enjoy your meal.” (Regan) “You, too! But you don’t have one, do ya? I’m a dufus.” - Brian Regan You wanna talk about awkward moments? Once, during sex, I called Lois 'Frank.' Your move, Sherlock. - Family Guy STRATEGY: Similar to conflicts based on a misunderstanding, look for opportunities that might lead to an embarrassing outcome. Notice when you’re worried about doing something in daily life. This can be a sign that you’re imagining an embarrassing outcome. An imagined outcome can create humor the same way a real one can. You can also use your creative license to convert “that person’s embarrassing moment” into your own story.

1. PIJ-Q: What action/reaction might lead to getting embarrassed? 2. PIJ-Q: What inappropriate action/reaction would lead to embarrassment? 3. PIJ-Q: In what situations am I most likely to get embarrassment? 4. PIJ-Q: What could I do right now that might backfire? 5. BUT STATEMENT: I meant to do/say X, but I accidentally did/said Y. 6. BUT STATEMENT: Everyone is good at X, but I’m awful at it. For example… 7. BUT STATEMENT: I thought it’d be OK, but then X. 8. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why didn’t this go according to plan?

Insults/Put-Downs/Comeuppance/Retaliation All types of jokes in this category work in similar ways. A violation is used to put someone in their place or make them lose social status. The person/group receiving the insult will either understand that it’s a lighthearted attack (such as a comedy roast) or they are someone the audience has deemed “deserves it.” Comeuppance/Retaliation works the same as insult humor, except the person being insulted has recently committed a violation themselves. The audience gets an extra sense of joy out of these put-downs because they get to strike back at someone who hurt someone else. It’s “instant justice.” Pirate: “I’ve spoken with apes more polite than you!” Guybrush: “I’m glad to hear you attended your family reunion!” - Monkey Island “I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for those who like country music, denigrate means to ‘put down.’” - Bob Newhart “I used to work at McDonald’s making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? ‘Hey, if I could pay you less, I would, but it’s against the law.’” - Chris Rock Women can do anything men can do… except math, chess, running, jumping, lifting stuff, fixing things, making money, hockey, surfing, driving, making decisions, being tall, taking out the garbage, tipping, fishing, being funny on purpose, reading a map, listening to good bands, writing, running the country, inventing anything important, or being fun to hang out with. Don’t get me wrong, I love women, I just think they should drink from a separate water fountain. - Daniel Tosh Meg Griffin: “Mom, I can't clean - I got stuff to do!” Lois Griffin: “Sweetheart, we all know you don't have any stuff to do.” - Family Guy STRATEGY: Look for villains in your material. If necessary, you can cast a character in a bad light to make the audience dislike them, which will create more psychological safety when you insult them. If you are accidentally rude to someone, you can write about the encounter from either perspective. You can write about how awful you felt or you can go the opposite way by switching positions in the story so that you get to play the victim who gets the last laugh. It’s your story.

1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate comment to say to someone right now? 2. PIJ-Q: What Inappropriate comment could I make in a playful way? 3. PIJ-Q: How can I playfully compare X to something bad? 4. BUT STATEMENT: X is bad, but you’re worse. 5. BUT STATEMENT: X is like (bad thing Y), but without (good thing about Y) 6. CONFLICT QUESTION: How can they look themselves in the mirror? 7. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why can’t they see what everyone else sees?

Self-Depreciation Self-Depreciation Humor works the same as insult humor, except it’s directed inwards instead of outwards. As with put-down humor, a self-depreciation joke leaves the receiver (comedian) in a relatively lower social status. This type of humor is generally much more playful than the insult humor or retaliation. It often focuses on physical features or less significant personality traits. "You can't please all the people all the time, and last night all those people were at my show.” - Mitch Hedberg “I have low self-esteem; when we were in bed together, I would fantasize that I was someone else.” - Richard Lewis “My wife is always trying to get rid of me. Last night she told me to put the garbage out. I told her I already did. She told me to go keep an eye on it.” - Rodney Dangerfield STRATEGY: Don’t try to force self-depreciation. This humor is very effective when you’re creating Comedic Tension. You can say that you’re “bad at dating,” quickly step away from your story to tell the audience a story that shows just how bad you are, and then jump back into the original story. Make sure you keep self-deprecating humor light and playful. Stretching self-depreciation too far can lead to an empathetic response instead of laughter. Studying Rodney Dangerfield can teach you a lot about this strategy. 1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to make fun of myself?

2. PIJ-Q: How might I accidentally insult myself? 3. PIJ-Q: How can I playfully compare myself to something bad? 4. BUT STATEMENT: X is bad, but I’m worse. 5. BUT STATEMENT: I am like (bad thing Y), but without (good thing about Y) 6. BUT STATEMENT: I’m not good at X, but I make up for it by not being good at Y. 7. CONFLICT QUESTION: How do people find the willpower to X?

Word-Based / Linguistic Violation Wordplay uses language as a way of creating violations. Linguistic Violations tend to be most useful when they’re used to make a punchline feel more playful. Unlike other categories, these violations tend to feel one-dimensional. They work for singular jokes, but they aren’t as applicable as other categories.

Wordplay Wordplay is all about finding ways to create playful violations with words or their meanings. For example, Jim Jefferies uses wordplay while talking about how a relatively high percentage of Americans are in jail. In the land of the free, you have the least amount of free people. - Jim Jefferies I’m humbled to be sitting at a table with President Obama, a man I greatly admire. It’s such an honor to perform for the leader of the world’s most powerful/poorest country. - Seth Meyers

STRATEGY: Wordplay is more likely to come to you by accident than because you were searching for it. The best strategy is to play around with your ideas. Try out new setups or alter the punchlines to existing ideas. When a combination results in interesting wordplay, you’ll notice, even if you’re not specifically looking for it.

1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to play with the sounds or meanings of the words in my material? 2. PIJ-Q: Can I rewrite the punchline to add wordplay? 3. BUT STATEMENT: The word X means Y, but it also means Z. 4. BUT STATEMENT: I said X, but she thought I said Y (similar sound) 5. CONFLICT QUESTION: What words can I rhyme?

Puns A pun is simply a type of wordplay that requires that a word has a double meaning. This is how

That’s what she said! jokes create humor. They take the original meaning (safety) of the phrase and convert it into something dirty (violation). I was a very driven boy scout. Driven everywhere I was. - Eddie Izzard “I got a friend, she’s got a theory. She reckons the way to drive a man wild with desire is to nibble on his earlobes for hours and hours… I think it’s bollox.” - Jimmy Carr ‘I said to the Gym instructor “Can you teach me to do the splits?” He said, “How flexible are you?” I said, “I can’t make Tuesdays”’ Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one — and let the other one off. - Street Jokes STRATEGY: If you use a pun on stage, it better be good. Audiences have already heard way too many puns from unfunny friends and relatives. They’re usually not worth the trouble. If you find a pun that you aren’t sure about, try it out as if another person told it to you. If it gets a groan, at least the audience will empathize with you instead of blame you. If the audience groans, you can use put-down humor to create more safety as a way of saying “I didn’t like it either, so I said…” If it’s funny, you can tell it as yourself next time.

1. PIJ-Q: What word or phrase in my material has a double meaning? What is a Playfully Inappropriate way to use it? 2. BUT STATEMENT: The word X, means Y, but it also means Z. 3. CONFLICT QUESTION: What kind of joke can I make that will make most people want to punch me in the mouth? (I’m not a fan of puns)

Meaning-Based Violations Meaning-Based Violations, such as analogies, sarcasm and callback lines, are some of the most useful strategies for comedians. These types of violations often create a contrast between a surfacelevel meaning and a deeper meaning. Sometimes the change in meaning is obvious, but sometimes it’s very subtle. Anything a comedian does to change how the audience views something is a meaningbased violation. Whereas many other types of Comedic Conflicts create humor by doing something (i.e., “saying something to create an embarrassing situation”) these violations tend to create humor by staying in place. The comedian is basically saying, “You think it’s X, but it’s actually Y.” Seinfeld has become the world’s most financially successful comedian by mastering the ability to shed new light on our normal, everyday experiences. Throughout his material, you’ll see him subtly change how the audience views or understands very common experiences or observations. “Proof that we don’t understand death is that we give dead people a pillow.” - Jerry Seinfeld When someone is being sarcastic, the way something is spoken changes the meaning of the words being said. The words might say “You’re an Einstein,” but the actual meaning is “You’re an idiot.” When using a Misunderstanding, the comedian “accidentally” misunderstands something, creating two separate ways of viewing a situation: The comedian’s incorrect understanding and the audience’s correct understanding. When using parody, the comedian is putting a new spin on an old idea. Broken Assumption jokes often fall into this category as well because they redefine the setup so that the meaning of the joke shifts between the setup and the punchline. Something about the audience’s understanding of the joke shifts between the setup and the punchline, regardless of whether the punchline shifts the who, what, where, when, why, or how. Callbacks are the most straightforward use of recontextualization. They take something the comedian said earlier in the performance and reuse it in a new context, creating an “inside joke” with the audience. Any time you reference something like this in a punchline, you’re changing the original meaning. Meta-jokes also work by referencing, except instead of referencing something the comedian said earlier, he’s referencing something about jokes “in general.” The meaning switches from being a joke into being a “joke about jokes.” “The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much I play, I’ll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once. They’re relentless.” - Mitch Hedberg “A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.” - Bob Hope

“The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.” - George Carlin “If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.” - Steven Wright Eggnog, who thought that one up? “I wanna get a little drunk, but I also want some pancakes.” - Dave Attell 53 f****** virgins! The very thought of 53 f****** virgins, it’s a nightmare! It’s not a f****** present, it’s not a prize, it’s a punishment! Give me 2 fire-breathing whores any day of the week. I’m a slut man! - Billy Connolly I think a treehouse is really insensitive. That's like killing something and then making one of its friends hold it. - Demetri Martin

Analogies Analogies are extremely useful. They can be used by themselves to create punchlines or they can support other types of jokes. Like wordplay, analogies have two different interpretations. The easy interpretation is usually safe. It takes an idea that you already know and it then applies it to an idea that you want to know more about, which is the difficult interpretation. For example, if you don’t know anything about psychology, I might say “The brain is like a computer.” It takes an easy idea (computers) and uses it to help you understand something more difficult (the human brain). Both useful and funny analogies result in learning, the only difference is that the audience finds the new understanding of funny analogies to be Playfully Inappropriate. The audience is essentially saying that the analogy taught them something that was Playfully Inappropriate. He looks like a geriatric Dr. Evil. - John Oliver I’ve never really thought of myself as depressed as much as paralyzed by hope. - Maria Bamford “If the presidency is the head of the American body politic, Congress is its gastrointestinal tract.”

- Jon Stewart

If I get married again, I want a guy there with a drum to do rimshots during the vows. - Sam Kinison This Sam Kinison analogy isn’t as obvious as the others. It uses the analogy “If I get married again, all my vows will be a joke.” The analogy is still there, it just takes an extra step to get there. As a side note, creating analogies is the only exception to my “no brainstorming” rule. For those keeping score at home, I didn’t suggest brainstorming word associations for wordplay jokes even though wordplay jokes require word association. I have rejected brainstorming because in both science and practice it fails to create truly original ideas. Regardless of your intentions, it always comes out to be a giant (not to mention predictable) word association list, which isn’t very useful. However, this can be great for creating analogies. The strength of an analogy doesn’t come from its uniqueness (though unique analogies are more fun), it comes from its ability to capture the most important characteristics that you want to highlight. That said, when I create an analogy, I keep the brainstorming very playful and I get back to my natural writing process as quickly as possible. I don’t expect anything special to come from the brainstorming session because I know that I’m the one that’ll do the heavy lifting. The most I’ll expect from a brainstorm are cold, dead, lifeless words on a page. It’s my job to breathe life into them.

STRATEGY: Analogies are very friendly to new comedians and can be put into almost any situation. The easiest way to create an analogy is simply by taking your topic or situation and saying that it’s like something else. Your goal is to capture the most important 1-2 characteristics of your situation. This can be extremely effective when used with your Why Problem.

1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to define/redefine the setup? 2. PIJ-Q: What analogy would create a Playfully Inappropriate in this situation? 3. PIJ-Q: What is a Playfully Inappropriate thing to compare this to? 4. BUT STATEMENT: This is X, but it’s like Y. 5. BUT STATEMENT: X is just Y, but without Z. 6. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why do people always act like they are at X? 7. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why can’t X be more like Y?

Misunderstanding Jokes A misunderstanding is a situation in which one person/group doesn’t have the same point-ofview as another. The most common or obvious understanding is the safety while the misunderstanding is the violation. Recall that people don’t laugh at violations. They laugh at why the violations matter. The audience won’t laugh simply because two people misunderstood each other. There needs to be a significant reason why that misunderstanding matters. In joke-telling, the misunderstanding is typically revealed in the punchline. The humor comes from the consequences of the misunderstanding. In practice, this often means the comedian feigns stupidity or pretends to be ignorant about a topic. When the “stupid” comedian responds, the audience realizes that he doesn’t actually understand what he’s talking about. This creates two separate meanings. The safe meaning is the normal understanding, the violation is the misunderstanding, and the punchline is a response that shows the audience that the comedian failed to arrive at the normal/acceptable understanding. “I went to France. If you go to France let me give you a warning… “Chapeau”, means “Hat”… …“Oeuf,” means “Egg”… … It’s like those French have a different word for EVERYTHING!” - Steve Martin Steve Martin pioneered this type of violation in the 1960s and popularized it in the 1970s. Throughout Martin’s performances, he was constantly playing the fool as a way of constantly setting up these types of conflicts. When he says “It’s like those French have a different word for EVERYTHING!” the audience realizes that he doesn’t understand that there are different languages. The audience gets to see the world from Martin’s incorrect view and their own, creating a Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition. For storytelling, it’s more common to use a misunderstanding in the setup to create Comedic Tension and then use punchlines and taglines to magnify the problem. Since the comedian “doesn’t know he’s wrong,” the misunderstanding is in the subtext, not the actual words. The audience hears the punchline, realizes that the comedian is wrong, and then fills in the consequences of that incorrect belief. We already saw this process in action in Steve Martin’s misunderstanding joke from the section on Comprehension-Elaboration Theory. "So this couple came up to me after the show and said, "Hey, are you bi?" And I thought to myself, "Well, I speak a little Spanish, but not really enough to be bi..." But I didn't want to look stupid, so I said, "Sure, I'm bi." And they said, "Great, so we're having some S&M people over, after the show why don't you come on over?" So, I thought, "Great, Spaniards and Mexicans! That'll be fun to go over there and speak a little Spanish... “ - Steve Martin In this joke, Martin uses a misunderstanding to create Comedic Tension and then magnifies the

problem in the follow-up. The audience realizes early on in the joke that there’s a huge disconnect. Martin thinks they are talking about being “bilingual” while the other people are actually inviting him to a sex party. When he enthusiastically states that he can’t wait until after the show to speak Spanish, the audience fills in the consequences of his misunderstanding. It’s very playful, super-inappropriate, and packs great surprises for the audience. Here are some other great examples: Rumack: You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital. Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it? Rumack: It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now. Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land? Captain Oveur: I can’t tell. Rumack: You can tell me. I’m a doctor. - Airplane! “Do you realize there are other countries?” - Eddie Izzard Yeah, I would like a cup of black coffee please. ‘How would you like that coffee?’ How would I like the black coffee? Can you put it in a cup? Yeah, don’t just splash it on my face. ‘Would you like cream and sugar with that?’ Is it black cream? If not, I’ll take it blackity black, black. Filled with blackness. Devoid of all light. Think of the blackest thing you can imagine and double that blackness and take a black magic marker and fill in the gaps and put that into a black rocket ship and shoot that into the depths of black space and close your eyes and use that as a reference. - Brian Regan I was at a restaurant, and I ordered a chicken sandwich, but I don't think the waitress understood me. She asked me, "How would you like your eggs?" I thought I would answer her anyway and said, "Incubated! And then raised, plucked, beheaded, cut up, put onto a grill, and then put onto a bun. Damn! I don't have that much time! Scrambled!" - Mitch Hedberg “America. Everyone knows it’s the greatest nation on Earth and our leaders are the greatest leaders on Earth. But did you know there are other countries that are NOT America? And each of them has a leader of its very own? Let’s take a moment to meet one in our on-going series ‘Other Countries’ Presidents of the United States” - Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Eddie Izzard’s joke is completely different in structure, but it functions the exact same way as Martin’s French joke. Izzard, a British comedian, got an applause break when he playfully asked his

American audience if they understood that there are other countries besides America. Izzard was playfully teasing American’s for being self-centered. Another British comedian, John Oliver, used the same tool for the same purpose by saying that each country has their own “President of the United States.” Martin, Izzard, and Oliver are all using the same tool (A fake misunderstanding) to make fun of the same thing (American self-centeredness). Martin does it by BEING the self-centered American while Izzard and Oliver lightly poked fun from the outside. Importantly, since all three comedians used Put-Down Humor, they kept it very light and playful. If the jokes weren’t so lighthearted, the underlying meaning of each joke would be highly inappropriate. Each joke would basically be saying that Americans are too stupid to understand that there are other countries/languages/etc. In fact, Izzard mentioned in a commentary about this joke by saying that he was worried the first time he delivered it on stage. The subtext was so potentially offensive that he wasn’t sure if he could create enough safety for the audience to get away with it. Brian Regan and Mitch Hedberg both use this strategy when they purposefully created a misunderstanding in the setup and then magnified the problem in the punchlines and taglines. Like a lot of Comedic Tension, the original violations set everything else in motion. In real life, people adjust their behavior to minimize violations. In comedy, comedians fail to adjust so that they can magnify the problems. Hedberg’s egg joke acknowledges that the waitress misunderstood him, but instead of adjusting his behavior to meet the situation, Hedberg takes the absurdity it creates and then magnifies it by plowing straight forward as if they never had a misunderstanding. Regan uses the same tactic. Instead of adjusting his behavior to correct the coffee barista, he purposefully ignores the misunderstanding and magnifies the problem. Both Hedberg and Regan chose to “answer her anyway” so that they could take the small violation and magnify the inappropriateness of the situation. This also holds try for our Jim Carrey’s Canada joke from earlier. Instead of “correcting the guy from Los Angeles” Carrey decided it was “more fun to just go along with it.” While Carrey’s joke emphasizes sarcasm and exaggeration, it essentially works the same Regan or Hedberg: An early misunderstanding creates a conflict which is magnified throughout the rest of the bit. Or, to put more simply, each comedian found a way to create an interesting juxtaposition and then spent the rest of the bit playing around inside of it.

STRATEGY: Look for opportunities to misunderstand something, especially if it could lead to embarrassing or absurd outcomes. The reason for the misunderstanding could be that the subject is complicated, that you’re new to this, that your nervous and “not thinking straight,” or that you misheard, misspoke, etc. These are all just excuses to create two different understandings of the same situation. Once you find a misunderstanding, see how far you can take it. Whenever there are two separate understandings of the same thing, the Why Problem is there isn’t a shared understanding between you and the other person/group. You can either magnify that misunderstanding or, more commonly, you can ignore the problem and magnify the awkwardness or inappropriateness of your response.

1. PIJ-Q: What is something easily misunderstood? What is a Playfully Inappropriate result of the

misunderstanding? 2. PIJ-Q: If I didn’t understand ______, what is a Playfully Inappropriate action, belief, comment, etc? 3. BUT STATEMENT: Most people know X, but I didn’t… so… 4. BUT STATEMENT: She said X, but I thought she said Y… so… 5. CONFLICT QUESTION: What kind of person doesn’t understand X?!

Sarcasm Sarcasm also uses recontextualization, though it might be easier to think of it simply as a meaning-based violation. It gets its power from the contrast between the words being said and the true meaning behind those words. We’ve already seen how sarcasm works in the Jim Carrey example that illustrated how a comedian and a listener take different paths through a joke. [on Gun Control] In the 10 years before Port Arthur, there were 10 massacres. Since the gun ban in 1996, there hasn’t been a single massacre since. I don’t know how or why this happened, uh… Maybe it was a coincidence, right? - Jim Jefferies

STRATEGY: You do you, boo.

1. PIJ-Q: What sarcastic remark would be Playfully Inappropriate right now? 2. BUT STATEMENT: I said X, but I thought Y. 3. CONFLICT QUESTION: What do you think I’m going to do?

Parody A parody is a mixture of acting out a punchline, Exaggeration, Misunderstanding, and Recontextualization. They take something old, put a new spin on it, and then present it as if there were no violation. It’s only funny from the audience’s 3rd person POV. The audience is able to recognize the truth/problem of the situation, but the comedian pretends that he doesn’t. [all women’s magazines are the same] “Thirty ways to shape up for summer. Number one, eat less. Number two, exercise more. Number three… what was I talking about again? I’m so hungry.” - Maria Bamford

STRATEGY: Parodies are fun to play with. Instead of attacking an idea head-on, try using parody. They allow you to show how crazy an idea is acting as one of the group.

1. PIJ-Q: What is a Playfully Inappropriate way to act this situation out that will highlight one of its biggest problems? 2. BUT STATEMENT: Most people look like X, but they look like this. 3. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why do you guys all act the same?

Irony [after explaining that his job requires a mastery of the English language] Some people have a way with words, and other people... oh, uh, not have way. - Steve Martin Irony is similar to a contradiction. A contradiction occurs when two ideas oppose each other while irony occurs when you take an action expecting positive results but end up getting negative results.

STRATEGY: Irony is one of the more difficult targets to hit because it’s very specific about the outcome of your actions. You need to find a way for your actions to backfire.

1. PIJ-Q: What is an action or reaction to this situation that will have the opposite of my desired effect? 2. BUT STATEMENT: I tried to +X, but I ended up -Y. 3. BUT STATEMENT: I say +X, but then they do -Y. 4. BUT STATEMENT: I expected + X, but I got -Y. 5. CONFLICT QUESTION: What action could I take that will backfire severely?

Callback Lines A callback line is a line that you used earlier on in your set that you can reuse for another bit. These lines “call back” to an earlier punchline or reference. It’s a type of recontextualization because it creates comedic conflict by “repurposing” what was already said. The safety comes from the original context or meaning of the sentence while the violation comes from the new context or meaning. If you’ve ever watched the movie Airplane! then you certainly remember Leslie Nielson opening the cockpit door every few minutes and saying “I just want to tell you good luck, we’re all counting on you.” The first time the line is spoken it’s entirely safe. It makes sense that he would say it. But the line takes on a new meaning afterward. “I just want to tell you both good luck, we’re all counting on you.” - Leslie Nielson, Airplane! The same is true for the other great callback of the movie, “I picked the wrong day to stop

______.” Each time the line is spoken, the addiction increases. Not only is it a fun callback line, but it also gets better each time because we start realizing that he’s given up tons of addictions in the same stressful week.

1. “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking.” 2. “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.” 3. “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop taking amphetamines.” - Lloyd Bridges, Airplane!

STRATEGY: Callback lines get easier as you do longer performances. Don’t force a callback line. You’ll notice when there is an opportunity for one, even if you’re not specifically looking for it.

1. PIJ-Q: What prior event/topic/joke can I put in this new context? 2. PIJ-Q: What is a Playfully Inappropriate way to reuse an old idea? 3. BUT STATEMENT: This word/phrase/punchline was original in (old context), but now it’s in (new context). 4. CONFLICT QUESTION: Where can I reuse this idea?

Meta-Jokes Meta-jokes are “Jokes about jokes.” They create humor by quickly shifting the meaning of the joke. The joke begins as a standard joke, but then quickly begins to make fun of itself. This type of joke is uncommon in stand-up, though you will see it periodically. “An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walk into a bar. The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?” “How many people of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a specified task? A finite number: One to perform the task and the remainder to act in a manner stereotypical of the group in question.” It was good seeing him because I hadn’t seen him in about four years. The last time we were together, we were doing a roofing job on the top of a 40-story building. While we were up there, Billy started getting depressed and he started talking crazy. Then he went up onto the ledge and he said he was going to jump. It was too late and I couldn’t stop him. He jumped off the building. Right after he jumped, I looked down and I noticed that

Trampoline Emporium was having a sidewalk sale that day. He landed on one of the trampolines and bounced back up. Just as he got to the level of where I was standing, he said, ‘You know, I think a lot of your joke premises are very contrived and hard to believe.’ That hurt a little bit. - Demetri Martin STRATEGY: Meta-Jokes are entirely unnecessary. You can play around with them, but you will rarely find one that you enjoy enough to keep going on stage with it each night.

1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to make this a meta-joke? 2. BUT STATEMENT: The joke started out about X, but it ended as a joke about Y.

Broken Assumptions Broken Assumptions create humor by using Misdirection. I think of these jokes as “Playful Lies.” The setup leads the audience to believe that something is true, but the punchline reveals that it isn’t. It relies heavily on recontextualization. However, unlike analogies or sarcasm, the punchline of a Broken Assumption breaks the original meaning. This means that in order for the audience to understand the joke, they must go back and fix a problem within the setup. This type of joke can be fun to use, but it practically guarantees your joke will feel inauthentic. Sometimes that’s OK, but most of the time the quality isn’t worth the sacrifice in authenticity. Of all the well-written jokes below, Amy Schumer’s is the only one that actually feels natural outside of stand-up comedy. Every other joke would feel really awkward or forced if it came from a friend. “I went home with this French guy ’cause he said something adorable, like, ‘I have an apartment.” - Amy Schumer “Do you know what I love most about baseball? The pine tar, the resin, the grass, the dirt. And that’s just in the hot dogs.” - Dave Letterman “I was on a date with this really hot model. Well, it wasn’t really a date-date. We just ate dinner and saw a movie. Then the plane landed.” - Dave Attell “I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day inside my fort.” - Zach Galifianakis

“Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe.” - Jackie Mason Every time you speak you’re giving the listener information about the who, what, where, when, why, or how of your story. Some of this information is explicit, meaning you actually say it. The rest is implicit, meaning the listener assumes it. Take this setup by Steve Martin: “I gave my cat a bath the other day… he loved it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, and it was fun for me too. The setup explicitly tells you WHO (“I”) and WHAT (“gave my cat a bath”), and WHEN (“The other day”). It does not explicitly tell us WHERE, WHY, or HOW. The audience will fill in the missing information by making assumptions. Where = “the bathroom.” Why = “the cat was dirty.” and How = “He put the cat in the bath.” Who – What – Where – When – Why – How The purpose of the punchline is to break one of these assumptions. Martin could shift the WHERE by saying that he washed the cat in a place outside of the bathroom. He could also create a violation by shifting the WHY. Instead of washing the cat because it is dirty, perhaps he's doing it because he’s evil and knows the cat hates it. His last option is shifting the HOW. Instead of washing the cat using a conventional method, he could wash it some other way. “I gave my cat a bath the other day… he loved it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, and it was fun for me too. The fur would stick to my tongue, but other than that… - Steve Martin This is a How-Shift because “The How" shifts between the setup and the punchline. Here’s an example from Bill Engvall. Notice what information you assume as you read through. So finally, on about the fifteenth tee, I hit the drive of my life… And I watch this ball just go and go and . . . kind of hit this guy in the head. And I felt bad, but he overreacted, I thought. I mean, it wasn’t like a square hit; it just kind of glanced off his head. But he goes whippin’ his car off the freeway, like “here we go!” Mr. Attitude! - Bill Engvall This is a Who-Shift. Engvall hides the true identity of the guy he hit with the ball until he reveals that wasn’t actually another golfer, but a driver. He didn’t talk about the when, nor do we make

assumptions about it. The when is entirely left out. I call the break from the assumption to the new interpretation “shifts” because the punchline shifts the original understanding of the joke. The safety of the joke comes from the first interpretation. The punchline creates a violation by changing one of the assumptions created. A Broken Assumption joke will always fall into one or more of these “shift” categories.

“Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.” - Dave Barry Some shifts don't require the audience to completely reinterpret the setup. This is usually the case in Why-Shift jokes because the purpose of the setup can change without changing how to interpret the setup. The punchline simply adds new information that takes the joke in a different direction. You can see from this Dave Barry joke that the punchline uses misdirection by using a Why Shift, but that misdirection doesn't necessarily mean that the setup is false. You’ll also notice that because you don't have to “fix” anything in the setup, the joke feels like it flows more naturally.

Leave Out Some Info Notice that WHEN is often undefined. This is the most common piece of information to leave out because it usually doesn’t play a role in the story or joke. In my example, I say that I “went” to the store, so you know it’s in the past… but that’s all. If the actual date/time doesn’t matter, either don’t mention it or use a short phrase like “The other day” or “I once went to …” Both Steve Martin and Bill Engvall skipped the “when” in the examples. They keep it very generic so that they can move on to more important information. STEP 1: Begin with an exploration statement. These statements tend to be very factual. STEP 2: Identify the explicit and implicit information. Anything that the audience will naturally assume is considered implicit information. STEP 3: Decide which implicit information you will shift. This will become the basis of the Broken Assumption. STEP 4: Test out Playfully Inappropriate substitutions for each type of shift. Search for ones that have the most interesting implications (i.e., interesting consequences or mental images). STEP 5: Rewrite the setup and punchline to flow together. WHO-SHIFT: When you’re single all you see are couples… but when you’re a part of a couple, all you see are hookers. (Jim Gaffigan)

PIJ-Q: Who would be a Playfully Inappropriate substitution?

WHAT-SHIFT: Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country. (Stephen Wright) PIJ-Q: What would be a Playfully Inappropriate way to redefine “cross-country skiing?”

WHERE-SHIFT / WHEN-SHIFT: [while snow-skiing with his family] I hit two trees and fell down a ditch. And that was just walking from the lodge. (Bill Engvall) PIJ-Q: Where would be a Playfully Inappropriate place to actually be talking about?

WHY-SHIFT: I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal – high enough so you can look up her dress. (Steve Martin) PIJ-Q: What is a Playfully Inappropriate reason to put a girl on a pedestal?

HOW-SHIFT: I gave my cat a bath the other day… they love it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick to my tongue, but other than that… (Steve Martin) PIJ-Q: What is a Playfully Inappropriate way to give your cat a bath?

Scale-Based Violations Exaggeration Jokes One of my favorite moments in sitcom history was when Tony Hale’s character “Buster” tried cursing in Arrested Development. Buster is the “slow” character in the sitcom, so he has a childlike innocence to him. The scene begins with Micheal claiming that Buster was finally starting to understand the give-and-take of guy-talk. When Michael playfully says “Eat my dust,” Buster tries to playfully respond with a comeback line, but goes way too far. Practically everything Buster says is bleeped out by the TV while Michael’s playful smile turns to horror as his brother says the most awful things imaginable. While exaggeration can sometimes stand by itself, it’s much more common to see exaggeration supporting other jokes or being used to make a story more interesting. At the height of his popularity, comedian Dane Cook used exaggeration very effectively in his storytelling. Exaggerations have a way of bringing a story to life. Exaggeration gets its humor from incongruency. Cook uses a lot of exaggerations, but he’s not always trying to create punchlines… he’s just trying to make the story more interesting. “Last night, it was so cold, the flashers in New York were only describing themselves.” - Johnny Carson “We were on a plane ‘that’ big… like a pack of bubble gum with 8 people on it.” - Ron White Father: “The fire escape doesn’t look very safe. Is it inspected every week?” Principal: “It’s USED every week.” - Peter Sellers STRATEGY: Exaggeration is most effective when it is supporting other punchlines or when it’s being used throughout a story to build Comedic Tension. While you might create a few exaggerationbased punchlines, you should get so skilled at exaggerating details of your story that the lies and truths blend together until they’re indistinguishable. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to exaggerate a part of this story? BUT STATEMENT: It was like X, but it was even better/worse/etc. BUT STATEMENT: I thought it would be X, but it ended up being 10X. CONFLICT QUESTION: How stupid do you have to be to X? CONFLICT QUESTION: What details can be stretched?

Understatement Understatement is the same as an exaggeration, but it works in the opposite direction. It creates a contrast between your response and what would be considered a “normal” response. It usually occurs directly after a large violation. Instead of a large violation leading to a large reaction, the comedian creates contrast by using an incongruent response. This type of joke is often combined with specificity. [While in the Emergency Room] NURSE: “How are you feeling today?” REGAN: “… I’m on a gurney.” - Brian Regan STRATEGY: Look for opportunities to react to big violations. Many times, your understatement will benefit from using specificity.

1. 2. 3. 4.

PIJ-Q: If this situation wasn’t so extreme, what is a comment I’d make or thought I’d have? PIJ-Q: What would be a surprising comment to hear from someone in my position? BUT STATEMENT: Everyone would expect me to X, but I Y. CONFLICT QUESTION: Do you think I’m just going to say Y?

Specificity Jokes Specificity enhances storytelling in much the same way that exaggeration does. Specificity doesn’t actually create Comedic Conflict, but it does make your punchlines more fun and playful. By trading a ‘general idea’ for a specific idea we get a clearer (and more entertaining) picture of the story or punchline. “Let me make something clear. It’s not THAT the wind is blowin’… it’s WHAT, the wind is blowing… if you get hit by a Volvo… it doesn’t matter how many sit-ups you did that night.” - Ron White You can tell from reading this line that the word “Volvo” is what makes the joke funny. But the comedic conflict is deeper. The joke has nothing to do with Volvos… You can replace Volvo with another car type and it’d probably work the same. The purpose of saying Volvo is 2-fold: Brand names are great for specificity because A) the audience all has the same knowledge about them and B) brand names try to be known for something (Volvo = safety). This information can be used to add more humor to a punchline.

STRATEGY: Specificity works great when combined with an understatement. It’s also effective whenever you want to show that you are ill-prepared or inadequate for something. Instead of saying that you don’t have everything required, say that you only have X.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

PIJ-Q: What’s specific product would be Playfully Inappropriate to have/use in this situation? BUT STATEMENT: I need X, but all I have is this Y (Y = specific) BUT STATEMENT: I need X, but all I have is this Y (Y = specific) CONFLICT QUESTION: Why can’t I use a Y (Y = specific)? CONFLICT QUESTION: What generic noun can I change for a specific one?

Logic-Based Violations Logic-Based Violations create humor by playing with normal common sense. They take what “should be true” if life were normal and show how it isn’t. Here are two logic equations written by Lewis Carrol that helped inspire Steve Martin’s development of anti-comedy. A logic equation is used to prove a point in philosophy by first proving smaller pieces. Steve Martin found the conclusions of these logic equations to be funny in a way he’d never seen on stage before. 1) Babies are illogical. 2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile. 3) Illogical persons are despised. Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles. and… 1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste. 2) No modern poetry is free from affectation. 3) All of your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles. 4) No affected poetry is popular among people of taste. 5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles. Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting.”

Sometimes logic-based violations create humor by showing how similar ideas can be unexpectedly different or how dissimilar ideas share something unexpected. Other times the logical violation is linear, such as how Three Count Jokes create a prediction and then break it.

Compare & Contrast Compare & Contrast works by creating a conflict between two ideas. Comparisons usually show how dissimilar ideas actually share something unexpected in common. Contrasts usually show how two ideas that should be similar can be very different in some (important) way. Compare and contrast jokes can also be used to show how something that is true/safe/acceptable in one context doesn’t work in another. It violates logic because it doesn’t add up like you would expect it to. You could (slightly) over-simplify this to a formula to be “Good + Good = Bad” or “Bad + Bad = Good.” Demetri Martin is a master at using this strategy. One of his favorite strategies is to use punchlines to reveal an unexpected difference or similarity between the two ideas, such as this joke that takes two very similar statements (“Yes” and “Yep”) and shows how one can be completely inappropriate in a

different context. When you’re having sex with somebody, you can say “yes”, you can say “yeah”, you can say “uh-huh.” But for some reason you can’t say “yep”. Yep, oh, yep, baby. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep indeed! - Demetri Martin

“Racism isn’t born, folks, it’s taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps. End of list.” - Denis Leary How does it feel to be the least cultured person at a bus station? - Family Guy Pie can’t compete with cake. Put candles in a cake, it’s a birthday cake. Put candles in a pie, and somebody’s drunk in the kitchen. - Jim Gaffigan Whatever cleaning goes on on the planet, women do 99% of it. But see, women are not as proud of their 99% as men are of our one! We clean something up, we're gonna talk about it all year long. It might be on the news, you don't know. A woman could be out re-paving the driveway. Men actually have enough gall to walk out onto the porch and go "Hey baby? Man, it's hot as hell out here! Look, don't worry about emptyin' that ashtray in the den, I done got it, all right? Did it for you, sweet pea. I'm gonna take a nap now.” - Jeff Foxworthy Inventions intrigue me, I was reading about the Walkie Talkie and I read it was a military invention. That surprised me. Usually, military stuff has strong names you know Apache Helicopter, Tomahawk missile. ...Walkie Talkie? How did that slip through the system? Was a general talking to some guy? "What do you have there soldier?" Well, it's a new communication device that's untethered which will enable the troops to speak effectively when they're in the field. "What's it called?" Walkie Talkie. Look I'm walkie and I'm talkie. Now you walkie and talkie general. I'm walkie and talkie, are you walkie and talkie? "I like it, soldier. What's this explosive device?" The Wammy Kablammy and this is the Rooty Tooty Aim and Shooty. - Brian Regan He knows all the golf lingo. You know? You hit your ball, he’s like “there’s a golf shot. That’s a golf shot.” Well of course it’s a golf shot; I just hit a golf ball. You don’t see Gretzky skating around going “there’s a hockey shot, that’s a hockey shot.” - Bill Engvall

I’m not technically rich. But I do have a lot of **** I don’t need that I’m not willing to share with people - Maria Bamford In Bamford’s joke, she uses the compare and contrast strategy to talk about her wealth. The phrase “I’m not rich, but…” is very important because it implies that they share something in common. She’s not insulting rich people. She’s saying that even though she isn’t technically rich, she also has stuff she doesn’t need and won't share. This creates far more safety than insulting rich people directly with a line like, “Rich people have too much stuff and won’t share any of it.”

STRATEGY: This one is fun. Put ideas together that don’t belong and then try to prove to yourself why they do. Try taking your situation and changing it around slightly to see how it affects you or the story. You can contrast two people’s behavior or compare how your own behavior changes around each. The strategy is all about creating many interesting combinations. Keep it playful and use your imagination.

1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate comparison to make right now? 2. PIJ-Q: How might “Good + Good = Bad” or “Bad + Bad = Good?” 3. BUT STATEMENT: You can do X, but you can't do Y… even though X and Y are very similar. 4. BUT STATEMENT: POV1 can do X, but nobody else can. 5. BUT STATEMENT: I’m not X, but I am Y. 6. BUT STATEMENT: It’s unacceptable/acceptable to X, but only when you are/n’t doing Y. 7. BUT STATEMENT: X is good and Y is good, but together they are bad. 8. BUT STATEMENT: X can do Y, but Y can’t do Z 9. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why are X’s the only people that can Y? 10. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why doesn’t X work in other situations?

Broken Prediction Jokes & The Rule of Three Broken Predictions are very similar to Broken Assumptions. The main difference is that Broken Predictions creates a violation “going forward” while a Broken Assumptions break something from the setup. The Rule of Three joke is the most streamlined version of a Broken Prediction joke. The setup begins by creating a list of two similar-objects/actions in the setup and the punchline introduces one that doesn’t belong. The first two items create a pattern and the third breaks that pattern. Three guys, stranded on a desert island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who

grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says, “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.” I think vests are all about protection. You know what I mean? Like a life vest protects you from drowning and bulletproof vests protect you from getting shot and the sweater vest protects you from pretty girls. Leave me alone. Can't you see I'm cold just right here? - Demetri Martin Like analogies, it’s very common to see a violation of predictions playing a supporting role in a joke. It’s not enough for a punchline to simply break someone’s predictions, there must be something about that violation that the audience finds playful.

STRATEGY: If you happen to have a list of two safe items then you can play around with finishing off a Rule of Three joke. Usually, they aren’t worth it. They get small laughs, but this joke structure has been used and abused by comedians in the past so much that the audience will automatically assume after hearing the first two items on a list that the third will be a violation. If you want to use it, try to hide that you’re telling the audience a list as best you can.

1. PIJ-Q: Is there a list where I can break the audience’s predictions in a Playfully Inappropriate way? 2. BUT STATEMENT: The audience will expect X, but I’ll say Y 3. CONFLICT QUESTION: How can I break the pattern?

Omitted Punchline Jokes An omitted punchline is when the comedian intentionally leaves out the last word(s) of a punchline so that the audience can fill in the rest. Many omitted punchlines substitute a gesture for the missing words while others simply trail off as if the comedian lost his focus. Omitted Punchlines cannot create humor by themselves. They only work when they are supporting another type of joke and when the audience already knows what the punchline would have been. Sometimes they are used as a way of letting the comedian avoid explicitly stating something that might be too big of a violation, which helps create psychological safety. Omitted punchlines can also be useful when the audience already knows what is about to be said or when a gesture/facial expression can do a better job at communicating the punchline.

Fat Tony: I don't know whether to knock you on your kisser or kiss you on your knockers. Selma: I don't know whether to peck you on the kisser, or kiss you on the Fat Tony: You shall have your lipo. - The Simpsons “And I didn’t want to run from the goose cause [shrugs shoulders] … (audience laughs) that would look freakin’ stupid.” - John Caparulo Shagging sells everything! That’s it, there’s an advert for coffee- You come around, “Cup of coffee?” “Ooh, let’s shag!” Yes! Adverts for chocolate bars, two bits of chocolate bar, one eats one, one eats the other, “Oh, let’s have a shag!” That stuff for cleaning the floor, clean the floor clean, and then you shag on the floor… Dog food, dog eats dog food… … … … anyway… So… not sure what happens there. - Eddie Izzard

STRATEGY: Look for opportunities to communicate your punchline with only gestures. A gesture like shrugging your shoulders or sighing can communicate more than explicitly saying “I’m tired.”

1. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate gesture to use that could substitute for what I was going to say? 2. PIJ-Q: What’s a Playful way for me to lead the audience close to something very inappropriate, but not finish? 3. BUT STATEMENT: I was going to say X, but I’ll say nothing/do Y

Contradiction / Paradox Jokes A contradiction is a mixture of misunderstanding, irony, and POV humor. In a contradiction, the words a comedian uses get contradicted by something that happens directly after and the irony comes from the comedian failing to notice. Take these three Steve Martin examples. The words either contradict what he says later (example 1), what he does later (example 2), or who the audience already knows him to be (example 3). “In Bananaland only two things are true: one … all chairs are green. And two … no chairs are green.”

- Steve Martin “I can “Drink as much alcohol as I want… And it doesn’t affect me!” [Martin loses balance and crashes into the mic stand] - Steve Martin “But it’s an intellectual town, and I’m an intellectual ‘Kiiinndd’ of guy.” - Steve Martin

STRATEGY: Look for opportunities to break your own rules or catch others breaking their rules. You can look back at your material to see what opinions or statements you made that might have set you up for a contradiction. It’s also possible to start with the violation and then figure out what to say just before it to force a contradiction. Note that it’s much easier to create contradictions using actions or what the audience already knows about you than to create a Words vs. Words contradiction. Also, there should be very little time between telling the audience about the rule and breaking that rule. If you contradict yourself a full minute after telling the audience your rule, most audience members won’t connect it to the earlier statement. Speed plays a very big role.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to contradict myself or an earlier comment? PIJ-Q: What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to show I’m inconsistent with this rule? BUT STATEMENT: My words say X, but the action says Y. BUT STATEMENT: My words say X, but the audience already knows Y. CONFLICT QUESTION: What rule do you have that you sometimes break? Why? CONFLICT QUESTION: What rule do you have that is ambiguous (i.e., you apply it in different ways at different times). 7. CONFLICT QUESTION: How could someone simply turn around and do X after Y? 8. CONFLICT QUESTION: How can people who think X also believe Y? 9. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why don’t people who think X ever think about Y?

Making Your Punchlines “Pop” We’ve spent a lot of this book discussing playfulness and inappropriateness. In this chapter, we’re going to shine a spotlight on surprise. The reason surprise is buried deep in this book is because it doesn’t affect much in the early writing process and it’s rather easy to insert or rewrite your punchlines to use it. Playfulness and Inappropriateness are important from the earliest stages of the writing process. Veteran comedians will often insert the surprise automatically while new comedians would get more benefit by focusing on creating Playfully Inappropriate Juxtapositions and then making the PIJ more surprising by rewriting the joke later. A trigger, by definition, is something that begins a process. The trigger of a gun has only one purpose; It begins the process of firing the gun by causing the next part of the process to happen. I don’t know what that next part is. If you really want to find out, I ask anyone holding a confederate flag. Those two things seem to go together. Comedians use triggers to help them convert potential humor into actual laughter. The trigger in a joke has one very simple job: Signal to the audience that it’s time to start laughing. To do this, a trigger creates a make-or-break moment for the joke that is purposefully easy for the audience to recognize and respond to. Great triggers make it super-easy for the audience to recognize that they are inside the punchline. There’s no ambiguity. There’s a very clear before and after. The trigger doesn’t create humor itself, even though it always occurs inside the punchline. The Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition creates the humor while the trigger creates the Surprise. People who are funny in everyday situations are very good at naturally inserting triggers into punchlines, even if they don't realize that they’re doing it. If you pay close attention to how you and your friends trade funny stories, you’ll notice the principles in this chapter at work. An easy way to identify triggers is by asking yourself this question: “At what specific point in the story/joke did I realize that I going to start laughing?” It’s easiest to think through a funny story or a joke that you heard in super-slow speed at first. The trigger always goes near the end of the punchline. There are a few great reasons to do this, but the main reason is that we don’t want to be “stepping on the laughs.” Comedy requires a give-andtake relationship with the audience. Think of the audience as constantly switching back-and-forth between input mode (listening and understanding what the comedian is saying) and output mode (responding to the punchline). The audience never listens to new information while laughing at old information. The second the audience thinks you’re saying something important, they’ll stop laughing so that they don’t miss the next joke. This means once the audience has all the necessary information to understand a joke, the comedian needs to either stop talking or only say trivial comments like “I know, right?” that the audience instantly knows isn’t the setup to another joke. The moment you say something like, “So I decided to…” the audience recognizes that they need to pay attention and switch back to input mode.

Triggers and Confidence New comedians need to be extra careful here. In order for a trigger to work, it must be an obvious make-or-break moment for the joke. The more obvious a trigger is, the more effective it tends to be. This is especially true in live comedy because there’s a strong social component to laughter. Nobody in a big group wants to be the first one to laugh if they aren’t sure that others will join them. Hell, peer pressure is literally the only reason I don’t try to start flash mobs everywhere I go. When the trigger in a punchline is obvious, it gives everyone the confidence to join the laughter. In order to give the audience that confidence, you need to be confident yourself. The trigger inside the punchline needs to be an obvious, make-or-break moment for the joke. You must not only speak your punchline confidently, but you need the confidence to be patient while the audience processes the completed joke and begins laughing. Being patient after a punchline will feel really awkward at first, but it’ll eventually become second-nature. If you’re not sure how long to pause after a punchline, it’s always better to pause for too long than for it to be too short. Pauses that are too short can have a huge negative effect on a punchline, but the only downside to a long pause is that it might feel a bit awkward. If you want to get the most out of the trigger then you also have to accept its biggest downside. While an obvious trigger gives the audience an obvious time to start laughing, it also makes it obvious when a punchline fails to get a laugh. This is why confidence is so important when delivering punchlines. You can either chose to make your punchline pop by delivering it confidently or you can try to “hedge your bet” by making the trigger less obvious so that if it bombs you won’t feel as embarrassed. Hedging your bet is a recipe for disaster and almost guarantees that the joke will bomb. Being confident doesn’t guarantee that the audience will laugh, but hedging your bets will almost guarantee that they won’t. Again, this is why I don’t start flash mobs. I have enough confidence for about 4 or 5 seconds of Billie Jean before regret sets in. After that, the obviousness with which I tried to inspire strangers to dance with me will be painfully obvious to everyone watching.

3 Types of Triggers Anything that causes the audience to realize that the joke is finishing can work as a trigger. The most common triggers are keywords, gestures, and voice inflections, but any social cue works. Conventional jokes usually trigger laughter with a keyword while storytellers emphasize voice inflection. The purpose of a keyword is to surprise the audience with the violation. The keyword is the exact word(s) that introduce the violation. Take this Who-Shift joke by Jim Gaffigan: When you’re single, all you see are couples… but when you’re a part of a couple, all you see are hookers. Keywords are useful because they are incredibly easy to recognize. Beginner comedians love them because being able to point to a specific word/phrase that “makes the joke funny” helps them stay confident in their joke. For new comedians, the benefits of feeling confident easily outweigh any negatives. Few things are more important than confidence on stage. For non-beginners, voice inflection should be more important than keyword placement. Your material will flow better and sound more natural if you aren’t obsessing over word-choice. Gestures work the same way as keywords. The only exception is that they are physical actions instead of spoken words. Gestures can be obvious body movements or small facial expressions and can be found in the setup or punchline. Take this Ron White example. Notice how you can change the gesture into a keyword without breaking the joke: This bridge is so rickety, the speed limit is 5 mph, and I got a ticket! The officer asks, "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" "I don't know, 8, 9? My foot slipped off the brake!" "I clocked you at 11 mph. More than twice the legal speed limit!" [Puts hands together for handcuffs] Voice inflections are incredibly important in both the setup and punchline. In the punchline, your voice inflection and tone can either trigger laughs by themselves or be used to make a keyword easier for the audience to notice, which makes each keyword more effective. If you watch your favorite comedians closely, you’ll notice that keywords are often spoken with a sharp, downward tone. This makes it easier for the audience to sense the end of a joke by making the punchline pop. This is another reason why it’s important to have your trigger at the end of the punchline. If you want to use a sharp, voice inflection to make the punchline pop, you can only do that if the trigger is located at the end of the punchline. The next time you make someone laugh in a natural setting, notice how you spoke the punchline. You’ll likely notice that you used a voice inflection to make the punchline easier to recognize. You’ll also notice that the voice inflection and/or keyword you used occurred at the very end of the joke. Nice work. Go celebrate with a non-dairy smoothy.

Shifting From Serious to Playful Regardless of HOW you signal the punchline, the shift from being serious to playful is what pushes the audience towards choosing laughter as a response. All jokes, even dirty or edgy ones, require some level of playfulness to work. Nowhere is that playfulness more important than inside the punchline.

How You Shift

Where You Shift

Keyword Gesture

Seriousness -> Playfulness

Voice Inflection

A quick shift from being serious to playful is absurdly effective. It's so effective that sometimes you can even say a punchline that doesn’t make any sense and get a person to start laughing anyway. Excuse me while I nerd-out for a moment: This works because the listener notices the shift into playfulness and they start anticipating a funny/playful outcome before their brain has had time to figure out what was said. Said differently, the shift from being serious to playful is like telling someone how to respond before you tell them what they are actually responding to. The listener will sense the playfulness quicker than he can figure out the meaning of the words being said. To understand a sentence, you have to wait until the last few words are spoken. However, understanding a smile or frown is instantaneous. When you smile at someone while you’re talking, you’re essentially telling them how they should interpret your sentence before you’ve even finished talking. This is true whether you start smiling in the beginning or whether you begin seriously and then smile near the end. A person’s facial expressions and tone of voice are so easy for the brain to process that they will always be finished before the brain has had time to listen to the entire sentence and then put everything together to understand its meaning. This is why vocal triggers like using a sharp, downward tone or shifting from a serious voice into a playful one work so well. You don’t have to exaggerate the shift into playfulness to make it work. Some jokes work better with a huge shift (Ray Romano’s Thanksgiving Day joke) while others feel more natural with a tiny one (Wanda Sykes’ Elvis joke). Shifting from seriousness into playfulness isn’t about trying to “convince” the audience to laugh. If your completed joke doesn’t have enough Playful Inappropriateness inside it, delivering your punchline with a crazy smile, a silly voice, or fake laughter isn’t going to save it. It’ll only make the audience spend the rest of the show trying to put their finger on why they think you’re so creepy. Even relatively edgy comedians shift from being serious to playful in their punchlines. Each of the comedians below tends to use edgy material, but their punchlines still shift from being serious to (relatively) playful. While the playful shift is powerful, it’s not fool-proof. If you're a sarcastic person, you've likely

had the experience of a stranger not being sure if you were joking or not. When someone "isn't sure if you’re joking," what they are really saying is that they noticed a violation (the sarcastic tone) but they didn't notice a trigger (a shift into playfulness), so it didn't feel like a punchline. They were left in limbo wondering if it is an appropriate time to laugh.

Putting Everything Together Word Choice, Delivery, and Polishing Material At this point, the joke is essentially complete. Once you find a PIJ Answer that you like, you will combine everything together into a fluid story. Remember, a “story” doesn’t have to be formal or long. It just refers to the natural way you communicate with others. A few sentences are fine. The more complex you try to make your story, the more difficult it will be to create it. If you’re a stand-up comedian, it’s always best to begin a story as generic as possible and then slowly add complexity over the next few weeks of performances. If you try to be complex early on, not only are you going to make the writing process much more difficult, but you’ll also make it harder to identify problems with your material after shows. If you tell a complex story, how will you figure out which piece of the story is dragging the rest down? Combining everything together is more about problem-solving than anything else. Feel free to make small changes to the setup or punchline. Nothing is ever set in stone, even after the material has been put on stage. Great comedians keep playing around with different combinations. Your punchline will most likely be your favorite answer to your favorite PIJ Question, though you might have chosen to use a But Statement or Conflict Question instead. Regardless of which method you used, your punchline should be nearly identical to how you’ll eventually perform it on the next show. It’s usually best to figure out your punchline first. It’s easier to change the setup to fit the punchline than the other way around. To create your setup, combine your Exploration statements, But Statements, and Conflict Questions together in a way that makes sense. Just like your punchline, this shouldn’t require much effort. We just want it to flow together in a way that sounds natural and makes it easy for the audience to understand the important information. Throughout this book, we’ve been using exploration statements to create setups and Conflict Making to create Comedic Tension. For storytellers, this is nearly identical to how it will be performed. Whether you’re writing for stand-up, a TV show, or you’re making everything up on the spot through improv, the performance of the material will go through two necessary steps: Introducing the Comedic Tension and creating a Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition. Everything else is optional. Instead of looking at the structure or wording of a joke, let’s take a look at how setups can achieve different goals. Setup lines can be broken down into three broad categories based on where they are inside a joke: 1. Intro Sentences (Pre-Comedic Tension) 2. Intro the Comedic Tension 3. Extend Comedic Tension (Post-Comedic Tension) INTRO SENTENCE(S) TO AUDIENCE

Intro Sentences are setup lines that occur before introducing the Comedic Tension. Introductory sentences are typically used to help the audience transition from one joke or topic to another. They contain any important who, what, where, when, why, or how information needed for the audience to begin constructing an understanding of the joke. When used effectively, these lines can also frame information in a way that will maximize the Comedic Tension later on. For example, if a joke is about getting into a fight with your significant other, mentioning that you were tired, hungry or already having a bad day can increase the tension even further. Thus, these setup lines can both introduce the situation/topic as well as begin framing how the audience should relate to the joke.

INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION When you introduce the Comedic Tension you add a violation into the material. Just like in our writing process, introducing the Comedic Tension is as simple as telling the audience about a problem. That problem creates some type of tension that the joke will explore. It can be done explicitly or implicitly using any of the methods that we’ve already covered in the writing section.

EXTEND THE COMEDIC TENSION The final type of setup occurs after introducing the Comedic Tension but before the punchline. It tells the audience what happened directly after the problem. This Hedberg joke uses two sentences between the CT and PIJ: INTRO: I was at a restaurant, and I ordered a chicken sandwich, CT: but I don't think the waitress understood me EXTEND CT: She asked me, "How would you like your eggs?" I thought I would answer her anyway and said, PIJ: “Incubated! And then raised, plucked, beheaded, cut up, put onto a grill, and then put onto a bun. Damn! I don't have that much time! Scrambled!

These lines can also be used to help frame the Comedic Tension in a way that will maximize the Comedic Conflict. For example, if you are writing a joke about being bad at dating, the Comedic Tension can introduce the problem of having lousy dating skills while the lines afterward can give the audience specific ways that extend the original idea.

Substitute Teacher Sketch The Substitute Teacher sketch by Key & Peele does an excellent job of quickly framing the situation, introducing the Comedic Tension, and then going directly into various ways that Comedic Tension could create conflict. The sketch begins with a substitute teacher standing in front of a group of high-school students.

INTRO: All right, listen up y'all. I'm your substitute teacher Mr. Garvey This introductory sentence, along with the visual cues inside the sketch make it clear that class is beginning and that the man is the substitute teacher. At this point, the audience isn’t sure what information will be important. The audience begins constructing an understanding of the situation, but they are unsure of what the problem is or why they should care. The substitute teacher continues… CT: I taught school for 20 years in the inner-city, so don't even think about messing with me. You all feel me? The audience now understands that his experience comes from “the inner-city,” which suggests that race will play a role in this sketch. Also, the aggressive way he says “don’t even think about messing with me” tells the audience to expect some confrontations. These two pieces of information will be used throughout the sketch. However, the audience still doesn’t know any specifics. The situation is tense, but the audience doesn’t know what will trigger a conflict. Ext CT: Okay, let's take the roll here. Jakequaline… where's Jakequaline at? … No Jakequaline here? [confused girl raises her hand] …Yeah? When the substitute teacher says “Jakequaline” the audience is initially confused, creating a violation. The audience must now search for a reason why the substitute would ask if “Jakequaline is here.” The first punchline of the sketch will fix this confusion. PIJ: Uh, do you mean, Jacqueline? The audience now recognizes that the substitute teacher was mispronouncing the girl’s name. This leaves the audience with two conflicting pronunciations of the name Jacqueline. This naturally leads the audience to wonder why the substitute teacher would mispronounce her name. The audience finally reaches a complete understanding of the problem when they realize that the substitute teacher has “inner-city” experience. Now the mistake makes sense. Inner city children typically have unique spellings and/or pronunciations that aren’t found in white suburban culture. Thus, the 20 years of inner-city experience lead the substitute teacher to apply “inner-city pronunciations” to “white suburban names.” Importantly, the fact that the substitute teacher is black and the students are white serves as an ambiguous hint. If an audience member noticed that the substitute teacher was black and the students were white before the first punchline, then they would have been able to solve the pronunciation problem quicker. However, if they hadn’t noticed the racial difference, then the audience member would have solved the problem normally and then used the observation that the teacher was black and the students were white as a way to confirm that they reached the correct conclusion. Whether the first joke was a laugh-out-loud moment or not isn’t important. The purpose of this

initial exchange is to give the audience a “cognitive rule” (a.k.a. Why Problem) that they can apply going forward. The But Statement could be written as “The substitute teacher thinks the student’s name is (violation pronunciation), but it’s actually (safe pronunciation).” The Why Problem is that the teacher is misapplying his experience with inner-city names. Once the problem begins, the audience can then apply the last piece of information given in the setup, the teacher’s aggressiveness. When the teacher aggressively said “Don’t mess with me” he was helping the audience both predict and understand how he would react to perceived insubordination. This is important because the teacher’s willingness to be confrontational is the fuel that repeatedly magnifies the Comedic Tension into various Comedic Conflicts. If the teacher were willing to let the students correct his pronunciation, then it would instantly defuse the tension in the situation. When the teacher interprets the correction as the students playing a joke on him, we understand why the tension would escalate. With each conflict, we can perfectly predict how and why the teacher is responding the way that he is. We have enough information to empathize with the students as well, which is what makes their reactions so funny. Everybody is the good guy, and yet each misunderstanding explodes into an entertaining conflict.

Setup Lines vs. Wording You can set up any joke using a combination of introductory lines, introducing the Comedic Tension, and extending the Comedic Tension. Conventional comedy strategies, such as wording and structure, can definitely be helpful in achieving these goals, but they aren’t completely necessary. What is always important is being able to frame a situation or idea in your audience’s head in a way that will make your punchlines hit hard. Obsessing over the perfect wording for a joke can help you achieve that goal, but you can also achieve it by completely ignoring word-choice and instead focused on how the audience would be constructing and interpreting your situations and ideas. While word-choice is an excellent tool, there is a very fine line between “finding the perfect wording” and “sounding like a robot on stage.” Unfortunately, new comedians (especially firsttimers) tend to struggle with this. They don’t mean to, but it’s just so easy to find reasons to secondguess yourself or make constant changes. By far, the top two causes are stage-fright (“I’m not confident enough yet, so I need to rewrite the joke or write something funnier”) and my own Achilles heel, perfectionism (“If I make one more change, it might be slightly better.”). Here’s a great rule of thumb: Anything that brings out your natural, off-stage voice is helpful. Avoid anything that feels fake, sucks the fun out of the writing or performing process, makes you feel like an imposter, as well anything that you’re doing simply because you believe comedians are “supposed to” do it.

Delivering Material: Act-Out vs. Commentary Stand-up comedy is unique in that it offers comedians a choice of whether to deliver material by acting out a scene or through talking directly to the audience. Other forms of comedy typically require comedians to act out their material as if the audience didn’t exist. So if you’re a stand-up comedian, you might want to decide which parts (if any) you want to “act out” and which you want to deliver through commentary. Your decision should depend more on your own comedic style and the individual needs of the joke rather than any rules. When you use commentary, you talk directly to the audience. Commentary is excellent for setting up jokes because it’s a very quick way to explain the situation. You can cover a lot of ideas in a short time. You might be telling a story (“I went to the store last night…”), clarifying parts of that story (“My friend John is fine, but when John and Frank are together they get really crazy.”), making an observation (“Have you ever noticed that…”), giving an opinion (“I think the most difficult test questions are multiple choice questions”), or even interacting with audience members (“Sir? Have you ever gone skydiving?”). When you act out, you pretend to be a character inside the story. That character might be someone famous, another person in your story, or even “You from a minute ago.” The line is delivered to a separate character and the audience watches the scene play out as if it was live theater or a movie. While acting-out a punchline might seem unnatural to new comedians, it’s actually a normal part of daily conversations. Phrases like, “and then he was like…” are so common that it’s hard not to say them without using a stereotypical blonde girl voice. We’ve already seen comedians combining commentary and act-outs in our earlier examples. In Romano’s bit, he used commentary in the setup and switched to an act-out for the punchline. He played himself and delivered the punchline to his grandmother. In Sykes’ bit, she used commentary in the setup and switched to an act-out for the punchline. She played herself (or how she “imagined she would be in that situation”) and delivered the punchline to the people at the family reunion. In Jeni’s bit, he used commentary in the setup and then switched to an act-out for the punchline. He played both the man and the woman. He differentiated each character by rotating his shoulders and changing his voice. As the man, he spoke the setup directly to the woman. The woman then spoke the punchline back to the man. Neither character ever acknowledged the audience. It’s likely that your punchline is already pushing you one way or the other. Asking a PIJ Question like, “What’s a Playfully Inappropriate way to show…” naturally creates opportunities to act out the punchline while questions like, “What’s a Playfully Inappropriate comment to make…” lead to commentary. Questions like “What’s a Playfully Inappropriate thing to say…” could be delivered either way.

How To Polish Your Material Experimentation is how your material improves. You find something you’re not happy with, try to determine what the problem is, run an experiment, make an adjustment, and then run more experiments until you find a solution you’re happy with. Experiments can be big or small. They can focus on your material or performance. They can be silly or serious. You can do experiments when you have a good guess at what will happen or when you have no idea what to expect. Experiments don’t require that you have answers. They require that you allow yourself to have questions. A little curiosity can go a very, very long way. Using the Stepping Stone strategy with a healthy dose of curiosity can lead to some amazing results. You should always be experimenting and playing around with your material. When you are working with newer material, you should be doing bigger experiments and doing them more often. As the pieces of the joke come together, you’ll experiment less often and focus on smaller parts of the joke, such as word choice. One of the most effective ways to polish your material is to run through the story in your mind several times. The first couple of minutes of going through the story will probably feel awkward. You’ll hit the play button in your imagination and then almost immediately notice something you don’t like about your material. So you’ll hit pause, take a hard look at the offending line, run a few imaginary experiments in your mind to see if you can fix the problem, and then play the entire story over again to see if it feels better. After a few minutes of this, everything that didn’t feel right should be gone. You’re able to hit the play button in your mind and watch the entire joke, story, or bit play out from start to finish without anything feeling wrong. If you stop here, you’ll have a joke, story, or bit that flows naturally. If you continue even longer, you’ll start finding new opportunities that you missed earlier. It becomes so easy to go through your material that it no longer requires your complete focus. That extra brain-power gets put into experimenting and playing. You don’t even need to consciously run the experiment. Think about the last time you were listening to someone tell a boring story. Even if you wanted to be polite and focused all your attention on the storyteller, you’ll fight a constant stream of thoughts popping into your head. This same process starts happening after you have practiced your material for a while. Whether you are trying to or not, you’ll notice new ideas popping into your head. You’ll find yourself extending your current story or recognizing new violations as well as exploring ideas that are separate, but related. It’s as if every joke, story, bit, or set begins as a short, rocky, dirt road. After using the road many times, all the rocks and rough spots get worn away until it’s smooth. As even more time goes by, you get so comfortable driving down the road that you stop paying close attention to what’s directly in front of you. Eventually, you notice a different small, rocky, dirt road that you’ve never seen before. Your curiosity spurs you to change, so you exit your well-worn road and the entire process begins again. You can build hours and hours of material in this way. It’s far more effective than starting over each time you write a new bit because you don’t have to start from scratch each time. You can use what is currently working to help you create something entirely new.

Your Ultimate Goal While it’s not possible for every type of joke, a storyteller’s ultimate goal is to come up with setup/punchline combinations that feel so natural that you could sneak them into 100 conversations and not raise a single red flag. If you’re telling your story correctly, the listener should have zero chance of guessing that your “doing material.” This is actually easy when you tell a story properly because the setups and punchlines feel natural to the listener. Parts of the story come together to create and release tension the same way all great stories do. Your story feels like any other story the listener has heard… it just happens to be a helluva lot funnier. Again, not every joke must be like this, but it’s a great goal to shoot for.

This page squeezes every drop OuT oF LIFE.

Troubleshooting What To Do If You Get Stuck Or Can’t Find A Good Punchline If you get stuck halfway through a joke, the first thing you should do is simplify what you have. Ignore all the unnecessary details and only work with the main idea. The details are fun, but keeping track of them all is very difficult. Again, this is one reason why veteran comedians have a huge advantage over new comedians. Experienced comedians are able to look at complex or ambiguous situations and quickly figure out what’s important and what isn’t. Once the unnecessary details are gone, it’s often clear what should come next. To get this same clarity, beginners should get into the habit of periodically taking a step back and think about what they are trying to say. When I’m coaching new comedians, I find I’m the most helpful when I’m doing one of two things. Once you’re comfortable with the writing process, you can use these two strategies as a way of self-coaching. The first strategy I use is simplifying students’ material. It’s taking one or two paragraphs and condensing it down into one or two sentences that clearly state what the real situation is and what opportunities are available as a result. Once I do this, I often don’t even need to suggest a punchline because they can see the path forward just as well as I can. The other helpful strategy is pointing out missed opportunities. Beginners can get so focused on what they think will lead to a great punchline that they don’t realize when they moved passed an even better one. It’s not uncommon for those side opportunities to be even better than what the student was actually trying to do. Even simple, short stories have multiple opportunities to create Comedic Conflict. Regardless of where your story is leading the audience, there’s probably a great punchline at the halfway point between the start and finish… and there’s probably a great punchline halfway to that halfway point. You can keep slicing and dicing your story as much as you want. That’s how comedians like Eddie Izzard can spend 15 minutes on stage talking about laundry! Between every idea is space for another idea. The only important decisions are whether you’ll spend time looking for those ideas and whether you’ll want to include them in your story.

Common Issues With Comedic Tension The first thing I do with every comedy coaching session is to try to identify where the tension is in a student's material. Imagine a comedic story as a long line that leads to the punchline. The safety line is where you set up the situation before introducing the Comedic Tension. Ideally, you should get into the Comedic Tension a quickly as possible (line 1-3). The Comedic Tension can be long or short. What is important is that it is easy to follow and has enough tension to keep the audience interested. Now let’s look at how creating tension can go wrong. While the first two problems we’ll discuss in this chapter are common (Buried Tension and Chaotic Tension), fixing them is straightforward. We’ll be spending the majority of this chapter discussing Weak Tension, which is much more difficult to diagnose because there aren’t any concrete rules for what makes tension good or bad.

Buried Tension The tension is there, but it’s buried in a HUGE setup. There is way too much information in the setup for the audience to easily figure out what the problem is. The audience is unable to find the violation because there’s too much information in the setup. To give you an analogy: A “Rule of Three” (a.k.a. List Joke) is a joke structure that creates a list with two regular items (safety) and an irregular one (violation). This structure makes it easy for the audience to compare the three items and realize the third is a violation. The first two items create “a rule,” and the 3rd item breaks that rule. If it were the "Rule of 15” then the joke structure wouldn't work. Since the audience doesn't know what the punchline will be, they have to assume that all the information in the setup is important. By the time you say the punchline, there’s too much information for the audience to remember. Fixing these issues is easy. Once you unbury the tension, go back to the beginning and treat it like a new joke. Rewrite your “Exploration + But Statement” to be more concise and then jump to your Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition.

Chaotic Tension Chaotic Tension is the opposite of Buried Tension. In Buried Tension, there is so much safety that the violation is hard to identify. With Chaotic Tension, there are so many violations that the audience isn’t sure what’s safe. Everything is so crazy that the audience gets exhausted trying to keep up. The audience ends up feeling like they walked into an action movie 15 minutes late (or into “A Good Day To Die Hard” on time). Excellent comedy material is a lot like a great action movie, there are slow points where the audience can rest, put everything together, and understand the “big picture” between the fast-paced moments with violations and craziness. Safety isn’t “the boring part” of material. It’s how the audience figures out what the violations mean. Chaotic Tension and Buried Tension both end up killing a joke by making it too difficult for the audience to keep track of all the information needed to understand the punchline. By the time the punchline comes, the audience is either confused, exhausted, or has lost focus altogether. To fix Chaotic Tension, simply choose a single idea (Exploration + But Statement) and then expand on it using ONLY Exploration Questions. That will give each idea some room to breathe and allow the audience to fully grasp the situation before you introduce the punchline.

Weak Tension Violations that are strong and obvious are easy to highlight. If you accidentally cut yourself with a knife, you don’t need to stop and think about why that might be a problem. If you accidentally sneeze at a restaurant and blow snot all over your hands, then not only is that an obvious social violation, but your friends should stop bringing it up so often. They’re supposed to be your friends! Weak Tension is when a violation isn’t very inappropriate. Tension is more than “I want X, but Y.” Violations only create tension if they matter. The end-goal is to get the audience to recognize a violation and understand why it matters. If the audience is unable to do this (for any reason), the result is Weak Tension.

Here are two common reasons for Weak Tension: 1. Safety + Violation, but Why Problem is ambiguous or insignificant All But Statements create a contrast between the first and second half of the sentence, but that contrast isn’t always important. Earlier, I used the But Statement “My car is black, but your car is brown” to show how a But Statement can create weak or meaningless tension. Audience members are able to understand the safety and violation as well as put everything together, but they’re unable to figure out why it matters. Why Problems that are ambiguous are also insignificant, but only because the audience isn’t sure how to relate to ambiguous ideas. Recall the example from earlier “I walked into a party, but my exgirlfriend was there.” The violation is meaningless until the audience can successfully figure out why seeing my ex-girlfriend at a party actually matters. That’s why we want to translate generic, ambiguous problems into specific, relatable ones. 2. Safety + Safety, instead of Safety + Violation This is usually caused by a But Statement or Conflict Question that feels more like a second

safety than a violation. Using a But Statement or Conflict Question doesn’t guarantee that you’ll end up with something the audience will recognize as a violation. What is a violation to you might not be a violation to others.

Problems From Weak Tension Weak Tension can cause problems if a comedian tries to use the highlight and magnify strategy. He might find himself trying to highlight a problem between two safety statements or trying to magnify a meaningless problem. While it’s possible to do both, neither is recommended for new comedians because the path forward is rarely obvious.

Four Strategies For Weak Tension We have four overall strategies for dealing with Weak Tension. Regardless of which strategy is used, the goal is the same: We want a violation that creates an interesting, “significant” problem to highlight and magnify. The four strategies are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Make Sure There Is A Violation Highlight a Better Why Problem Make Your Current Violation More Significant Make a New Violation

Make Sure There Is A Violation If you can’t find any interesting Why Problems to highlight, make sure there’s a violation in your But Statement. This sounds obvious, but sometimes new comedians will focus so much on the task-athand that they forget to take a step back and think about the setup. One of the easiest ways to figure out if you have a violation is by imagining the reaction of the listener. As a general rule, good tension will grab the listener’s attention and make them curious to know more. It should be easy for your listener to both recognize and relate to the violation. Be careful of violations that are so common that they don’t actually feel like a violation. For example, we all have a friend that shows up late so often that we hardly notice. It’s entirely safe because, at this point, it’s expected. If your violation is extremely common, you will most likely need to put extra effort into highlighting an interesting Why Problem or add a new violation to the current setup. Weak Tension will lead the listener to think you’re still “getting to the good part.” In normal conversations, people don’t go through the trouble of bringing up a new topic or telling a story unless there’s a reason. If someone asks you about your day, and you say anything other than “Good,” you better tell them something worth listening to. There are only two appropriate responses to “How’s your day?” You can say “Good” if there weren’t any violations, or you can kick off a story that eventually gets to an interesting violation. What you cannot do is begin a story that never gets to a violation or makes the listener sit through a long story that climaxes with a meaningless violation. You would never do either of these in real life, but this mistake often slips through when writing comedy. Almost always, it’s because the writer isn’t being real with themselves. As a comedy coach, it’s really easy to spot this when I’m reading a student’s material. It’s painfully obvious when a comedian cares more about breaking my assumptions or fitting everything into a joke structure than being authentic. When material lacks authenticity and personality, it’s extremely difficult for the audience to identify violations and even harder for them to figure out what a violation means. Sometimes this happens because the comedian’s personality is too ambiguous to empathize with. However, a much more common reason is that the audience senses a disconnect between the words being said and who they think the comedian is on a deeper level. In real life, as well as on stage, whenever we sense that someone is being fake, we keep them at a distance. We put a psychological wall between us as protection because people don’t want to become vulnerable to a person who cannot be trusted. If a fake person comes to you and tells you about a “violation” that happened,

you’ll be skeptical. What the fake person thinks was a violation actually feels more like a “Safety + Safety” to the listener. It’s very easy to see this play out at open mic nights. The audience isn’t sure what to actually believe, so they don’t believe anything. For the audience, it feels like watching a movie with really bad acting. They are still able to appreciate what the movie is attempting to do, but the disconnect makes it difficult to stay involved with the story. You can’t be real with the audience on stage if you’ve been BS’ing them from the beginning of the joke-writing process.

Highlight a Better Why Problem Make sure you have given enough thought to all the potential problems that you can highlight. You don’t have to settle on the most obvious choice. The same violation can have different Why Problems for different people. You and I can both be mad about the same violation, but be mad for entirely different reasons. One of the easiest ways to find an interesting Why Problem is to make it more personal. Selfreflection leads to ideas that are more personal, unique, and interesting. You can take the most boring violation ever and make it interesting simply by over-analyzing it. For example, the But Statement “My car is black, but your car is brown,” is really boring. However, you could still get the audience interested in this topic simply by over-analyzing it. Imagine being ready to buy a car and deciding between two different colors. An indecisive person would likely blow this tiny problem out of proportion. They’d decide on black and then instantly change their minds. They’d imagine themselves driving a brown car, but then highlight a problem with brown and switch back to black. Then they’d imagine themselves driving a black car and highlight/magnify the dangers of driving a black car at night and switch back to brown. For an indecisive person, the stupidest decisions are often the funniest for the audience. Not only is it easy to highlight and magnify these types of problems, but it’s very easy for the audience to identify and relate to being indecisive.

Make Your Current Violation More Significant Not only can this strategy help you take a boring setup and turn it into something more interesting, but it can also take an average setup and make it great. Great comedy always finds the perfect safety/violation balance. You might find a good balance on your first attempt, but it usually requires several cycles of performing and rewriting before finding the perfect balance. All violations matter in the right context, even the most insignificant or inconsequential. Whether something is considered safe or a violation and whether a violation matters or doesn’t depends more on the context than anything else. Of course, some violations are so obvious and consequential that the context plays only a small role. If you told your friend that you recently broke your leg, he wouldn’t ask you which way you prefer it. The violation is so obvious and consequential that it overshadows the context. However, many violations live or die based on the context. In real life, people have very ambiguous rules for what is considered a violation. We might be offended in one context and think it’s

perfectly acceptable in another. Here are some examples of violations that are context-specific. Whether you think it’s a violation depends more on you than anything objective: Dirty words - Do dirty words like **** and **** and ************ offend you? How about **********? For some people, even a small word like *** is offensive, while others think those people are just being over-sensitive *****. Even a word like **** can be OK or offensive in different situations or around certain people. Whether a dirty word feels like a violation or a natural part of speech depends more on the listener and context than anything else. Pet Peeves - Pet peeves (such as chewing with your mouth open, blowing bubbles with your bubble gum, or standing on the “walk side” of a walkway or escalator) make great examples because, by definition, pet peeves are small violations that people can’t agree on. The people who commit the violation either don’t think it’s a violation at all or think the violation is so small that it shouldn’t matter. Some people think the violation is big enough to notice, but not big enough to care about. For others, the violation drives them crazy enough that they’ll ask the person to stop. Since violations depend on the context, you have to be very conscious of how the audience might view a situation. Small changes to the context can make a huge difference. For example, if I do something stupid in a story, I might begin the story by saying that I had just woken up or that I was drunk. Beginning the story this way makes it easier for the audience to believe that I did something stupid and didn’t think about my actions. This boosts the safety, which allows me to create a bigger violation without breaking the audience’s trust. There’s a safety/violation balance. Earlier in this book, I simplified Ray Romano’s writing process by assuming that he always intended for the Why Problem to be “insulting grandma.” This probably isn’t true. Most likely, the Why Problem was “Accidentally insulting someone.” It only became “insulting grandma” towards the end as a way of optimizing the safety/violation balance. Here’s why: Accidentally insulting your brother might be too safe. Brothers trade insults all the time. Accidentally insulting your daughter might be too big of a violation. The audience won’t immediately know whether the daughter will be OK or start crying. She’s too vulnerable of a target for a hardhitting violation. Grandfathers can be hit-or-miss in a person’s mind. Grandmothers feel different. Grandmas tend to be kind and sweet, but not vulnerable. They represent a place in society that is so safe, that even the worst violations can be taken as a joke. This makes them an easy target in comedy because it’s easy to find a good safety/violation balance. The same is true for mothers-in-law, though it works in the opposite direction. Mothers-in-law have the reputation of being difficult or annoying. If grandmas represent pure safety, mothers-in-law represent pure violation. This also makes them an easy target in comedy. Jokes about a mother-in-law tend to use put-down humor. The humor comes from a big violation hitting someone we dislike. The fact that they are generally disliked is what makes the violation feel safe. In fact, the meaner the mother-in-law, the funnier it becomes when something bad happens to her.

Add Consequences To The Context One of the easiest ways of making a violation matter is by adding consequences to the problem.

This shouldn’t be your only strategy, but it’s one of the easiest for new comedians. There are a nearinfinite number of ways to change the context of a violation. Don’t box yourself in. Big consequences make the audience think “Oh no!” while small consequences make the audience think “So what?” In most situations, your car not starting would be low-tension. The audience would think “So what? You can take a taxi.” That all changes if you make the problem have consequences: Put the broken car in a horror movie with a killer nearby. There’s a pregnant lady going into labor that needs a ride. You just finished telling someone about how good you are at fixing cars and now the car won’t start. You just robbed a bank and you’re making your getaway. These examples turn low-tension into high-tension simply by creating consequences to the violation. Doing this can give the audience a good reason to care about the violation.

Add a New Violation To Increase Tension This is easily my favorite strategy for Weak Tension. In fact, layering multiple violations on top of each other is an incredibly effective storytelling technique in its own right. Instead of trying to force a setup to work, add a new violation to what you already have. The Weak Tension then becomes a small bump in the road on the way to something bigger and better. This is essentially a different way of using the Stepping Stone Strategy discussed earlier in this book. We’ve already seen Ray Romano use this strategy in his Thanksgiving bit. He had three separate tensions. The first tension (I don’t want to be rude, but…) and the second tension (the TV was on, but the volume was off) weren’t used as a Comedic Tension. The tension is so weak that it doesn’t even feel like a violation. Most Americans would nod their head and think “Yeah, that sounds like what we do at our house.” Even though these But Statements help the overall joke, they don’t actually create Comedic Tension because there’s nothing abnormal or weird about them. There’s nothing the audience can point to that is clearly a violation. For all intents and purposes (as well as intensive purposes), there is no violation at the moment. If Romano stopped telling the story at this point, the listener would be left thinking “Why the hell did you bring that up?” The third tension was the first time Romano used a violation that actually mattered to the punchline. When Romano said that he had to pretend that he was talking to his family, the entire audience understood the potential problem. For the first time in the joke, the problem actually mattered. If Romano stopped telling the story at this point, the listener would be left thinking “Wait! What happened next?” The But Statement "I want to go to the store, but I have no gas" created very weak tension. The tension was so boring that it was difficult to find an interesting perspective. I wasn’t able to find a single Why Problem to highlight that I actually wanted to write about. Instead of trying to force one of

the Why Problems to work, I decided to select a Why Problem that might lead me somewhere more interesting and then began exploring until I found a new violation that I actually liked. The Why Problem became a stepping stone to something better. My new But Statement is “My girlfriend never fills up my gas tank. I tried to get back at her, but I suck at it.” Using a boring Why Problem as a starting point for a new But Statement isn’t necessary, but it does help you explore deeper into a single topic. By adding the new But Statement, the Comedic Conflict is now about how bad you are at “fighting back.” Instead of “You vs. Her” the conflict is now “Ideal You vs. Real You.” This is much easier than trying to “thread the needle” with a girlfriend insult. If the conflict is "You vs. Her” then there is a small margin of error between too much violation (The audience sees your insult/action as hurtful instead of funny) and too much safety (Your insult/action is so weak that there’s no violation). Ideal You vs. Real You is much easier. To create humor, all you have to do is highlight the problem (I’m bad at fighting back) and magnify it to show the audience that you’re incredibly bad at fighting back or getting even. You’ve also given yourself much more room for error. If “fighting back” is too safe, the audience will think it’s funny because you already told them you suck at it. They are able to find it playfully inappropriate because they see the weak insult and compare it to what you’ve already told them (that you're bad at this). It's safe because the insult is so weak, but it’s also a violation because the audience understands that "you tried hard to be mean.” You also have more room for error in the opposite direction. If the conflict is You vs. Her then an insult might backfire by making the audience empathize with the girl. However, if the conflict is Ideal You vs. Real You, then using an insult that's far too strong can actually be funny. The harsh insult will create a huge violation, but the audience will understand that you’re not good at insults. Instead of interpreting you as being mean, they'll be more likely to see your harsh insult as being an accident. The insult would be analogous to a child saying "That man has a walking cane because he's old and about to die.” Awful? Yes. Purposefully awful? No. Also, if it’s too mean, you can have the insult backfire or give the girl an even better insult as a comeback to restore safety. We now have multiple ways to elaborate on this But Statement that can lead somewhere interesting. Even though we started from a really boring But Statement “I want to go to the store, but I have no gas,” we've used a repeatable process (Exploration, Conflict Making, and identifying the Why Problem) to explore ways to create interesting conflicts. This is the power of effective exploration and strategic thinking. It doesn’t matter where you start if you're willing to freely explore. While I don't recommend that new comedians try to force lowquality But Statements to work, I do think it's important to understand that every But Statement can be used. Where you start doesn't determine where you end up.

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Wal-Mart Bit Walkthrough Let’s go through this process step-by-step to see how this method can be used to write material. This walkthrough is going to be about when I worked as a cashier at Wal-Mart in college. I’m going to begin by taking each joke through the entire process. I’ll also include my thoughts so that you can see how I completed each step and why I decided to use the setups and punchlines that I did. I’ve done my best to keep this section straightforward to make it easier to read and understand. That said, the creative process is never straightforward. There are always false starts, awkward setups and punchlines, and funky grey-areas where you’re not sure what to do. I have edited these out to make it easier to read. Don’t worry if your writing process isn’t as tidy as mine because mine wasn’t this tidy, either. One more important note: Don’t get caught up on the labels or stages. Everything is designed to be flexible. Skipping stages is not only easy, but it’s natural. When you’re relying on your natural humor, your mind will often jump ahead of you. There’s no rule that says you can’t go directly from an Exploration to a punchline or that highlighting and magnifying a problem must be two separate steps.

TOPIC: Wal-Mart SUB-TOPIC: Getting a Job at Wal-Mart I select my topic and sub-topic based on what I want to talk about, not what I think will be funny. You can make anything funny, so you might as well choose something interesting and personal to you. I chose the worst job I’ve ever had.

Exploration / Conflict Making My first task is to figure out what types of experiences, opinions, and observations I want to use in my material. I begin with very general Exploration Questions followed by But Statements or Conflict Questions to create conflict. This doesn’t need to be funny yet. I just want to create a framework for the story. I can change these, add new ones or take out old ones. For clarity, I’ve only kept the Exploration/But Statements that I will discuss in this book. The complete bit is around 10 minutes long.

EXPLORATION: I applied to Walmart C.M.: But it was stressful EXPLORATION: On my first day they wanted to talk about my career goals. C.M.: But I clearly don’t want to spend my life at Wal-Mart.

EXPLORATION: They put me out on the cashier line. They asked me to call a number. I thought I was calling the back office C.M.: But I was actually on the p.a. system EXPLORATION: I was surprised to hear my voice on the P.A. system C.M.: But I was so surprised that I froze EXPLORATION: My manager tried to help me C.M.: But it made things worse EXPLORATION: Cashiers have to check ID for Metabolife (weight loss supplement). C.M.: What does Walmart expect me to do if someone is underaged?

Joke 1: Applying To Wal-Mart EXPLORATION: I applied to Wal-Mart BUT STATEMENT: But it was stressful Next, we move to the Why Problem step. We ask ourselves “Why would it be stressful to apply for a job to Wal-Mart?” What’s the specific problem and why does it matter? Why Problem: Wal-Mart hires practically everybody who applies for a job. If Wal-Mart won’t hire me, who will? Wal-Mart hires practically anybody. It’s not like I’m applying to Harvard or NASA. The stress doesn’t come from a fear of being turned down by a “prestigious place.” It comes from the fear of being turned down from a really low one. Where do you go if Wal-Mart won’t even hire you? What company has lower standards than Wal-Mart? Rewrite For Clarity: You’d think applying to Wal-Mart would be easy, but it was surprisingly stressful. Wal-Mart hires practically everybody who applies for a job. If Wal-Mart won’t hire me, who will? This Why Problem already feels close to a punchline. It needs a little more Playfully Inappropriateness and a lot more Surprise. I have a lot of options with this setup. My favorite option is to convert the Why Problem into a punchline by magnifying it. However, this setup could lead to a lot of other potential punchlines. Here are a few premises I could explore. I’ll keep the unused premises around in case I want to use them later. There’s no reason to throw away a premise that might come in handy later. POTENTIAL PREMISE #1: Act out a hiring manager by showing how low the company’s standards are for accepting an applicant: “OK. First question. Is this a hand or a foot?” POTENTIAL PREMISE #2: Act out an applicant and hint that there will be future employment problems: “Quick question before you ask your questions. I don’t have to pass a drug test for at least 36 hours, right?” POTENTIAL PREMISE #3: Use put-down humor to make fun of a different company or organization that the audience will join me in hating. The joke would essentially say “Wal-Mart has low standards, but (name of a group you hate)’s standards are even lower.” Joke Premise: Use the punchline to playfully suggest that if Wal-Mart won’t hire you, you’re f****d.

You might have noticed that I magnified the inappropriateness when I wrote the premise. The consequences of being turned down by Wal-Mart went from “Oh dear, what will I do?” to “You’re f****d!” This was entirely accidental. It isn’t necessary for the premise to do anything other than point you in the right direction. However, if you find yourself with a free hint, you might as well use it. We know that the punchline will somehow lead the audience to the idea that “If Wal-Mart doesn’t hire you, you’re f****d!” Recall that when we magnify a Why Problem we take the slow, small and generic problem and make it fast, big, and specific. Since I already did this in the premise, there’s no need to magnify it further. I can just combine everything together. Why Problem (original): Wal-Mart hires practically everybody who applies for a job. If Wal-Mart won’t hire me, who will? Why Problem (Magnified): You’d think applying to Wal-Mart would be easy, but it was surprisingly stressful. If Wal-Mart doesn’t hire you, you’re f****d! This joke could be put on stage as it is already written, but let’s make the joke a little more lighthearted. The meaning behind the joke is highly inappropriate (if Wal-Mart turns you down, you have no hope to find another job). That is a pretty depressing thought. I don’t want the inappropriateness to overshadow the playfulness, otherwise, people might think “Ah. That’s sad.” To create a new punchline, I asked and answered a PIJ Question: P.I.J. QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate comment to make that will surprise the audience with the idea that “If Wal-Mart doesn’t hire you, nobody will/you’re f****d!”? P.I.J. ANSWER #1: “If Wal-Mart doesn’t hire you… The game is over.” P.I.J. ANSWER #2: “If Wal-Mart doesn’t hire you…You can no longer benefit society.” Both PIJ Answers could work, but “the game is over” is clearly more lighthearted. While PIJ-A #2 doesn’t require a dirty word, it is still very inappropriate. Instead of throwing away the other line, it can be used as a tagline to follow-up the first punchline. I could have gotten the same thing by using another PIJ-Q: P.I.J. QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate follow-up to this punchline? P.I.J. ANSWER: “You can no longer benefit society.” Now let’s combine these ideas into a solid joke. Almost all of the work is already done; we just need to put the pieces together in a way that flows well.

Spoken Material INTRO SENTENCE(S) TO AUDIENCE: (OPTIONAL) I applied to Wal-Mart And Wal-Mart finally hired me

Which was relief INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION: Cause if you get… turned down… by Wal-Mart… PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION The game’s over You can no longer benefit society.

Joke 2: Career EXPLORATION: On my first day they wanted to talk about my career goals. BUT STATEMENT: But I clearly don’t want to spend my life at Wal-Mart. The manager sat me down and asked me to consider working at Walmart as a career. The conversation was awkward because he was very enthusiastic about it, but there’s no way I’d ever consider a career there. Why Problem: I don’t want a career at Walmart, so it was really awkward. Rewrite For Clarity: On my first day at work, my enthusiastic manager wanted to talk to me about “my career goals.” I don’t want a career at Walmart, so it was really awkward. Now I need to figure out what to do with this setup. Before we continue, notice how easy it’d be to generate premises and punchlines for this setup. Like the last setup, there’s a lot of fun opportunities here. There’s a lot of Comedic Tension between the manager and myself. We have an enthusiastic Wal-Mart manager wanting to talk about Wal-Mart careers with an unenthusiastic new employee. It’s a situation ripe for humor. Not only would it be easy to create a punchline, but you could create a punchline with personality. There’s room for sarcasm, wordplay, put-down humor, blue humor, gestures, facial expressions, observational humor, opinion-based humor, a quick one-liner, a side-story, an analogy, and more. An easy way to create Comedic Conflict here is to make everything the manager says and how he acts incongruent with my obviously not wanting a career. The more contrast between his enthusiasm and my dismissal, the more Comedic Conflict there will be. POTENTIAL PREMISE #1: “Misunderstand” what the manager is talking about and launch into a long story about your hopes and dreams. You can entirely ignore Wal-Mart and talk about being an astronaut or you can talk about how you’re going to use and abuse this job to get what you really want. POTENTIAL PREMISE #2: Using an empathetic voice, reply to the manager “Let’s talk about what went wrong with your life. How’d you end up… you know… here.” POTENTIAL PREMISE #3: Instead of not caring (like the audience assumes) reply by magnifying his enthusiasm: “I wanna be a cashier! I love scanning things! I have a red laser at home. When I’m bored, I’ll put household objects in front of it and say ‘beep!” Joke Premise: Magnify the awkwardness of the situation. Make the manager “super-

enthusiastic” and then quickly turn his offer down with an unenthusiastic, lighthearted insult or refusal. While an insult (premise #2) would meet all the criteria for a funny reply, it could also be seen as insulting someone who didn’t deserve to be put-down. Like the last joke, this is more about personal preference than any formal technique or rule. Some people will do well to hit the manager hard with an insult. Personally, my rule is that if the audience doesn’t already think the person/group deserves to be insulted, don’t insult them. Insulting a helpless person or group tends to come off as punching down. There are a few subjects that I’m willing to be on the attack for, but if I’m not sure if the audience will agree with me, it’s better to take a pass on the insult. There are way too many opportunities for great punchlines that there’s rarely a good reason for an unnecessary put-down. This will also make your put-downs better when you decide to use them. Now I’ll use a PIJ-Q to figure out what the punchline should be. PIJ QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate response to the manager that will magnify the awkwardness and contrast with his enthusiasm? P.I.J. ANSWER: Flatly saying “No” instead of being polite Once we have the punchline, we put everything together to make the joke flow.

Spoken Material INTRO SENTENCE(S) TO AUDIENCE My first day at Wal-Mart my manager sat me down and says INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION: “Let's talk about your career.” PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION “… … … No…” SIDE NOTE: When this joke is in front of the audience, the audience often begins laughing once the “Let’s talk about your career” line is delivered. Even though the joke was written for the 2nd line to be a setup, it’s actually working as a punchline. The way the audiences sees the material looks more like this:

Joke 3: Cashier EXPLORATION: They put me out on the cashier’s line. They asked me to call a number. I thought I was calling the back office. BUT STATEMENT: But I was actually on the P.A. system. The problem is very clear… I’m about to embarrass myself on the P.A. system in front of the entire store. Why Problem: Public embarrassment Rewrite For Clarity: They put me on the cashier’s line. While I was still new, they asked me to call a number on the phone. I thought I was calling the back office, but the number was for the P.A. system. (I publicly embarrassed myself). POTENTIAL PREMISE #1: Tell the audience that the number was for the P.A. system and that I didn’t know, then use a punchline and taglines to say things I’d never say if I knew the whole store could hear me. Start with small embarrassments, but then magnify the problem until the manager is literally running back to stop me. POTENTIAL PREMISE #2: Set the situation up as a practical joke. Instead of the practical joke backfiring on management (like premise #1), make it work far too well. Magnify the awkwardness by stuttering over words, saying desperate phrases like “Oh God…” or just hanging up halfway through a sentence. POTENTIAL PREMISE #3: Tell the audience that the number went to the P.A. system and that you didn’t know, so you kept waiting for a dial tone. Act-out dialing the number, but then completely fail to notice that the phone isn’t ringing. Make the pause really awkward. Since this story actually happened to me, I’ll keep a lot of the details (and embellish others). In the “real" story, the manager was playing a practical joke on me. While I was surprised that I was on the P.A. system, the situation didn’t spiral out of control. So, we'll make this joke about "what could have happened.” In this version of the story, I’ll do whatever creates the most Comedic Conflict. I’ll say the wrong thing, have a meltdown, whatever. In the real story, I dialed the number and waited for the phone to ring (which it didn't because I wasn't actually calling anyone). Let’s use that. Joke Premise: Surprise the audience with the embarrassing outcome. Don’t explicitly mention that the number connected me to the P.A. system until the punchline. Once I realize I’m on the P.A. system, make a bad situation much worse by messing up what the manager wanted me to say.

Now I just need something to say over the P.A. system that is obviously wrong. It should make everyone in the store think “Oh. That's embarrassing.” PIJ QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate thing to say on the P.A. system that will lead to a big, obvious, publicly embarrassing moment? P.I.J. ANSWER: “This phone is broken.” I settled on the sentence “This phone is broken.” Not only does it make sense that I would say this in my situation (I was expecting to hear the phone ringing), but saying “This phone is broken” CANNOT be true if I’m saying it over the P.A. system, so everyone in the store will instantly know that I made a mistake. I could have gotten the same outcome by saying something on the P.A. system like “This isn’t the number for the P.A. system is it?” Anything that is obviously embarrassing will create the same kind of Comedic Conflict.

Tags There’s a lot of potential in this setup. After the first embarrassing moment, we can take the small mistake and magnify it into a bigger one. Let’s stack a few punchlines on top of each other and then end it with a “topper” (an amazing tagline to end a bit).

Tag #1 I always recommend thinking strategically when deciding on a premise for a joke. Since the audience is watching me speak on stage, this bit about me messing up public speaking might seem like a lie (“If you’re so bad at public speaking, why are you on stage now?”). Instead of trying to make my first tagline hit hard, I’ll use it to build Comedic Tension so that the next lines hit hard. PIJ QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate comment or response to this “practical joke” that will give me the right to make even worse mistakes? P.I.J. ANSWER: I’m fine with public speaking… Just TELL. ME. I’M. DOING. IT. This tagline is adding a lot more to the performance than just a laugh. Playfully responding to the practical joke is enough to set the audience at ease. It tells them “It’s OK to laugh at my expense.” More importantly, I just gave myself the right to make really stupid mistakes. The audience will know that I’m flustered. The audience will believe practically anything that comes next because they understand that I’m not thinking straight. They might even be identifying with me on a deeper level (“Ha! I guess I’m not the only one who allows one mistake to become another!”). That’s a great return on investment for only 11 words.

Tag #2 Let’s take this situation from bad to worse. The audience has already seen me dial the phone number, say something embarrassing, and realize that I’m on the P.A. system. In Tag #1, I spoke directly to the audience instead of acting out the situation. In Tag #2 and #3, I’m going to cash in on the playfulness and trust I created earlier by being really inappropriate.

Joke Premise: Everything goes from bad to worse. My manager realizes that the practical joke isn’t going like she thought it would and runs back to save me… but I’m beyond saving. I could have gone through the entire writing process again, but there’s no reason to use Exploration and Conflict Making if you are already where you want to be. Jumping straight to a new premise is a great way of keeping your momentum going. PIJ QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate way to act out how “panicked” I am? P.I.J. ANSWER: When my manager says “You’re on the P.A. system!” I let out a pathetic, whimpering “I know.” I tried a few variations of this line out on audiences. I settled on a “playful whimper/cry” because emotions like frustration weren’t getting the same results. A frustrated reply put the audience’s focus on the fight between me and the manager, which was only partly funny. A pathetic whimper put the audience’s focus on how the situation was devolving into chaos, which was way funnier. Hopefully, this will prove to you why it isn’t necessary to be able to put labels on everything. When you’re focused on creating Playfully Inappropriate Surprises for the audience, you’re going to find plenty of punchlines that land in these weird gray areas. If you require every joke to fall neatly into a category, not only are you going to throw away a lot of great material, but you’re only going to accept the material that “feels like something a comedian would say.” You’d be trading away your uniqueness for something that sounds hacky. It’s far better to experiment. Perhaps you’ll be able to explain why the audience reacts the way they do or perhaps you won’t. The only time a label is important is before a punchline is tested on stage. It’s used as a way to “convince ourselves” of why something should be funny so that we’ll be confident enough to put it on stage. If you’re playfully experimenting with material, there’s no reason to require a label in the first place. When you find a punchline that consistently gets laughs, you won’t care about the label anymore. When another comedian comes up and asks you what kind of joke that is or how it works, you’d shrug your shoulders and say “I dunno.”

Spoken Material INTRO SENTENCE(S) TO AUDIENCE: (OPTIONAL) My brain FROZE! INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION: My manager’s like “You’re on the P.A. system!” PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION I’m like “I know” (cringing, on the verge of tears)

Tag #3 Now it’s time for the topper. We want to end this bit on the biggest laugh. Let’s turn our attention back to the different mistakes I could make on the P.A. system. If I want to focus on the embarrassment of speaking on the P.A. system, then the worst possible scenario for me would be if the manager told me to say something that was really difficult to say correctly, such as a tongue-twister. Obviously, a tongue-twister would completely break the audience’s trust. There’s no reason why the manager would ask me to say one and the audience knows it. That doesn’t mean I can’t create something more realistic to mess up. Here are some different options to choose from. POTENTIAL PREMISE #1: The manager asks me to say something incredibly difficult, like a tongue-twister. POTENTIAL PREMISE #2: Use a Freudian Slip. The manager asks me to say something innocent, but I accidentally say something dirty, such as saying “sex” instead of “six.” Joke Premise: The manager asks me to say something normal, but I mix it up and make it super-awkward. There were two common tasks that required the P.A. system: Asking for associates from different departments to call me and trying to help parents find their stupid children. Let’s focus on the first one. What is an embarrassing mistake that I could make when asking for an associate from a department to call me? The mistake might be awful or silly. It just needs to be easy to believe and clearly embarrassing. PIJ QUESTION: What playfully inappropriate way of messing up “Can I get an associate from _____ to call me? To answer this question, I thought about the different departments I could call and identified the one I felt could create the most conflict, the infant’s section. P.I.J. ANSWER: Instead of saying “Can I get an associate from infants to call me?” I say, “Can I get an infant to call me.” I like this punchline because it feels like an “honest mistake.” The joke doesn’t require that the audience believe anything weird. There are a ton of “jokey” ways to finish this bit, but this feels natural and authentic. I might be able to get a slightly higher laugh with a different line, but I’d have to trade it for the audience’s trust. For me, that trade is almost never worth it. When the audience actually believes what you’re saying and empathizing with you, every punchline hits much harder. You have so many more options when the audience sees you as a real human being instead of as a robot that spits out highly formatted jokes.

Spoken Material

INTRO SENTENCE(S) TO AUDIENCE: (OPTIONAL) “What do I say?” INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION: “Associate from infants to call me.” PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION “OK-OK, Can I get an infant to call me?”

Joke 4: Metabolife Here's another observation that I made during my time at Wal-Mart. I was surprised to learn that I had to check someone’s ID for a weight loss supplement. It made me very uncomfortable because I’m an empathetic person. Saying “You can’t have cigarettes because you’re underage” is very different than saying “You’re only 17, you can’t get help losing weight.” The humor of this joke will come from a moral conflict. You can actually get to this punchline two separate ways. You can go the long route (Exploration -> Conflict Making -> Why Problem -> Premise) or you can skip a lot of the work and use a Conflict Question. EXPLORATION: Cashiers have to check ID’s for Metabolife BUT STATEMENT: But that seems wrong/evil. Why Problem: It feels wrong/evil to tell someone that they can’t have help losing weight. Premise: Highlight and magnify the evilness/awkwardness/immorality of the situation by turning down a sweet-hearted 17-year-old girl who wants to lose weight. PIJ QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate thing to say/do that would highlight/magnify the problem I have with this (evil) policy? Or we could have taken a shortcut and used a Conflict Question that already implies everything we want to use: EXPLORATION: Cashiers have to check ID’s for Metabolife. CONFLICT QUESTION: What does Walmart expect me to do if someone is underaged? The reason the Conflict Question works so well here is that the “evilness” was already implied. The reason I noticed this problem in the first place was that it felt wrong to me. I didn’t look for this violation. The violation found me. It’s only natural to keep this same Why Problem when I ask myself a PIJ Question. This path leads to the same exact PIJ-Q: PIJ QUESTION: What is a playfully inappropriate thing to say/do that would highlight/magnify the problem I have with this (evil) policy? My punchline is going to highlight and magnify the “evilness” of this policy. I won’t be “politely turning the nice lady away.” I’ll purposefully create a contrast between the needs of the situation (being empathetic and kind to the girl) and my own reaction (zero empathy) and blaming it all on the policy.

P.I.J. ANSWER: (Throw the bottle in her face) “YOU STAY FAT UNTIL YOU’RE AN ADULT!” This is a huge violation, so I need to make sure the audience sees me as the good guy. I’m not the one doing the violation. I’m playfully showing the inappropriateness of the policy. When I say “What does Walmart expect me to do?” the audience will know that I’m about to act out the policy, not my own wishes. If the joke is set up correctly, the audience will view me as the “empathetic, innocent person” who had to “do this mean-spirited thing.” This creates TONS of safety for me to work with, which means I can get away with a much bigger violation. Instead of saying something slightly mean, I can say something really, really awful and still be the good guy.

Spoken Material INTRO SENTENCE(S) TO AUDIENCE: (OPTIONAL) Didn’t take me too long to get into trouble at Wal-Mart You have to be 18 years old to buy Metabolife. INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION: You want me to card people… For weight loss?! EXTEND THE COMEDIC TENSION I don’t have that heart What do you want me to do about it?Throw that product back in some young, innocent girls face, be likePLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION “YOU STAY FAT TILL YOU’RE AN ADULT!!!”

Tag #1 This next tagline will create humor by using self-depreciation. Let’s face it, no matter how hard I insult somebody… I’m currently working as a Cashier at Walmart. That means I’m always going to be open for retaliation. I can hit someone with a big violation if I follow it up with a comeback or a “self-own.” Either way, I’m not allowed to have the last laugh unless the person I’m fighting with truly deserves to be hit hard. This is the same strategy I’ve been using throughout the walkthrough, just in reverse order. Usually, I try to create enough playfulness in the setup so that I can get away with a bigger violation in the punchline. This time, I’m going to use the setup to purposefully overdo the violation and then use the punchline to introduce safety. The setup will go too far for the audience’s comfort zone and then the punchline will relieve that stress. Joke Premise: I continue the evilness, but the fact that I work at Walmart somehow undermines my argument or gives her the last laugh.

To complete this tagline, I need to find a reason why her situation is actually better than mine. I settled on the phrase “At least she can take a pill to solve her problem.” I could rewrite the phrase like this: EXPLORATION: She can get help from pills BUT STATEMENT: But I can't. Why Problem: There’s no pill for a job at Walmart. This Why Problem has a lot of potential. We convert it into a useable punchline by magnifying it so that it becomes big, fast, and specific. PIJ QUESTION: What’s a playfully inappropriate way to surprise the audience with “There’s no pill for a job at Walmart?” P.I.J. ANSWER: (desperate voice) “I work at Walmart! There’s no pill for this!” Now I need to backtrack for a moment and figure out what insult (if any) I say just before this punchline. What I say to her isn’t that important. The only purpose of the line is to set myself up for a bigger fall. Anything slightly mean-spirited would work. I settled on sarcastically saying “Oh. I don’t like my body.”

Tag #2 I used a What If Question to discover the final tagline of this bit. The most obvious follow-up to saying “There’s no pill for this!” was asking myself if that’s actually true. If there is a pill, which is it? If there isn’t a pill, why not? Joke Premise: Realize that “there actually is a pill for Walmart employees” or realize that “there isn’t a pill for Walmart employees because working at Walmart is too big of a problem.” PIJ QUESTION: What’s a playfully inappropriate pill for Walmart employees? PIJ ANSWER: Prozac.

Spoken Material INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION: “I don’t like my body (sarcastic) PLAYFULLY INAPPROPRIATE JUXTAPOSITION

I WORK AT WAL-MART!!! (depressed/angry) There’s no pill for THIS! I’m lying there’s Prozac.

Once you accept the blankness on this page, you accept the blankness in you.

Conclusion This book has asked you to abandon many of your preconceived notions about comedy. If you weren’t open to new ideas then you would never have made it this far. Put differently, you are, at least on some level, OK with all the weird s*** I've said so far. Since I clearly don’t know when to stop, I’m going to try to push my luck just a little bit further. I want to take this opportunity to steer the conversation away from comedy and towards the idea of personal happiness. Since reading my first creativity book I’ve been obsessed with how creativity works and how it can be applied. My favorite strategy is known as “exaptation.” Exaptation originated from the field of evolutionary biology. It refers to animal traits that were originally intended for one purpose but were hijacked for a different purpose, such as bird feathers being originally used for warmth instead of flight. In creativity, exaptation is the practice of discovering ideas that at first glance might feel entirely unrelated to your own field and then finding interesting ways to use them. The more you attempt exaptation, the more you see that industries are far more interconnected than they first appear. Any problem that you have in one field has almost certainly already been solved in another. You just need to figure out where to look. My favorite part of this book has nothing to do with comedy. If you go back through the JokeListening Process (Construction, Recognition, Resolution/Juxtaposition, Judgement/Relation, and Response), you’ll notice that there isn’t a single reason why it must be applied to comedy. If you took the word "joke" out of the process, nothing changes. This drove me crazy while writing this book. How could I say this was the process for listening to a joke when the process never once required any type of humor to work? This book took on a new meaning for me once I gave up and accepted this. While struggling with the problem, I realized that my own joke-listening theory about how violations create humor was currently violating how I thought a joke theory should be. My brain was using the same system… it was just reaching different conclusions about how to respond. This made me curious about how I could apply the ideas of safety and violation to my personal life. If the theory doesn’t require humor to work, there should be no reason why I wouldn’t be able to apply it to serious situations, like violations that result in stress or anger. As mentioned at the beginning of this book, a violation doesn’t make any distinctions between what’s funny or unfunny or too small or too big. The only thing that you can say about a personal violation is that it breaks one of your rules about how things “should be.” When small rules are broken we have tension and when important rules are broken we get conflict. What makes a rule important or not? In daily life, it tends to be the Why Problem. Once I noticed this, I started realizing that violations weren’t nearly as important as how I interpreted them. I

realized that I wasn’t mad that my friend was late, I was upset that they “don’t respect my time.” Why I decided something was a problem was usually far more important than the actual problem. I also realized that violations mean nothing by themselves. You need both safety and violation to create a conflict. As I applied this theory to problems within my personal life, I realized that a violation’s ability to cause pain in life is directly tied to how committed you are to maintaining your anti-violation (safety), which is just a rule that you have about how things should be that is currently under attack. A violation cannot exist without an anti-violation. While we cannot control violations, we do have some control over our internal rules. Part of this is just a numbers game. The more rules you have in life, the more violations there will be. Furthermore, the stronger you believe that something “absolutely must be a certain way” the more power violations have. Alternatively, having fewer rules and being less committed to your beliefs about how things should be is a great recipe for happiness. This doesn’t mean that you are less committed to your goals. It simply means that you’re making it more difficult for violations to negatively affect you. Just like Benign-Violation Theory requires that you simultaneously interpret an event as being both OK and not OK in order to create humor, you must simultaneously hold up a violation and a belief that the violation shouldn’t exist to create pain. Over the past several months I’ve enjoyed exploring this new way of viewing my personal problems. Each realization made me wonder what else might be also true. I haven’t had this much fun discovering myself since I was 14. I will leave you with what I believe will be the biggest takeaway for myself: Psychological safety is everything, and the easiest way to get it is to let it go. There’s a strange type of invincibility that comes with not giving a f***. That “invincibility” has powerfully shaped my performances, writing, and creativity.

Rules and Performance Anxiety I struggled with stage fright for years. It wasn’t that my hands would shake on stage so much as they sometimes went numb. I probably couldn’t have taken the mic out of the mic stand if I tried. Eventually, I got better at hiding it… but it was always lurking in the background. Even the smallest shows were horrific. The achiever in me needed everything to be right and was quick to harshly criticize even the smallest mistakes. I had to memorize every single word, how it was spoken, and what gestures to do. It would often take me a week to prepare for each 5-minute show. There was literally a right and wrong way to say each individual word. I was so proud of this work ethic that I’d joke about it by saying “I rehearse my set so much that if you punched me in the stomach I’d fart a bit.” As a side note, this is one of the few puns that I’ve ever been proud of. Looking back on it, the stage fright makes complete sense. Panic is a perfectly rational response when there are harsh consequences to losing and you’re playing a game in which you can’t possibly win. I made the game unwinnable by placing unnecessary rules on myself and by making each violation into evidence that something was seriously wrong. At the same time, each good performance that I had was somehow automatically written off as an exception. I had essentially set up my game in a way that allowed me to use any negative evidence against myself but dismissed even the best positive evidence. Eventually, something in my psyche broke (it broke twice before, but I superficially fixed it and got back on stage). The third time everything came crashing down I refused to put it back together. I refused to memorize my next show or create a set list. I was just going to go on stage and start talking. My performances didn’t begin improving until I let go of my need to optimize everything. Ironically, my stage comfort came not from a desire to get it right, but from an acceptance that it can be wrong. Being OK with failure meant it was nearly impossible to make a mistake. Since my brain was no longer under intense pressure to be perfect, it started doing what it already knew how to do: put words into sentences like a normal human being.

Rules of Writing This was also the same time I tried telling a simple story instead of a string of jokes. I performed for around 5 minutes and only got one or two laughs that entire time. While that might appear to be a failed experiment, it was one of the most important shows of my life. I remember sitting in my car, the location where I’d usually begin berating myself for failures, and thinking “Wow. That felt good.” For the first time in my career, the critic in me fell silent. I had already proven to myself that I could get better at joke-writing just by putting in some effort. There was no reason to believe that storytelling wouldn’t be exactly the same. The first few generations of storytelling jokes that I wrote were hit-or-miss, but the same was true for the conventional jokes that I wrote. The only difference is that I actually felt like the real me. The belief that I had to write a certain way was just another set of rules that I needed to release. Comedy teachers had convinced me that there was a proper way to write and structure jokes. I was afraid to put down their rules because I believed that those rules were protecting me from bombing on stage. Had I not had this fear, I would have likely begun my career telling stories for the simple reasons that I had far more experience with storytelling than joke writing and that telling funny stories is what I enjoyed most about humor anyway. As with my performance anxiety, it was letting go of the rules, not being the best at applying them, that created a breakthrough. As my career continued, I started allowing conventional ideas back in. However, this time I understood that they were inferior to my natural sense of humor. I would allow myself to apply conventional writing strategies, but under no circumstance would I allow them to tell me who I needed to be, what I needed to write, or how I should perform. If comedy teachers didn’t have a label for what I was saying on stage, that’s their problem. I’m going to be myself.

Rules of Creativity My opinion about the rules of a creative field remains much the same today as they did years ago: Love the rules inside your industry so much that you are willing to learn what they are, why they work, when they don’t, and how to use them… but always be willing to put them down. There is no community game that is greater than what you are capable of creating. You were funny long before you learned your first comedy rule and you’d still be funny after you put it down. Setting aside the rules of one game doesn’t mean that you’ll instantly know how to construct a new game with a new set of rules. It simply gives you the opportunity to experience something new. Personally, I believe this is the most meaningful action a creative person can take because it has the most meaningful impact on the industry. No amount of playing the community game can ever result in a new game, regardless of how many people are playing it or how hard they are competing to win. When a creative person tries something new, it matters… even if the experiment fails. You cannot try something new without having an effect on your industry. You cannot claim your uniqueness without also helping other’s claim their own. Your actions matter.

Glossary Benign-Violation Theory (BVT) - BVT posits that humor requires simultaneously interpreting an event as both OK and not OK. Bit - A group of jokes that fit together into a larger piece. They are typically around 1-3 minutes. But Statements - A statement that inserts a ‘but’ into an Exploration Statement to create a violation. Butt-Load - Many, a lot of something. Comedic Conflict (CC) - A high-level comedic tension made up of the juxtaposition between safety and violation. Comedic Conflict Questions (CCQs) - Questions that generally lead to a Comedic Conflict or Tension Comedic Tension (CT) - A low-level form of Comedic Conflict (CC) that is used in the setup instead of the punchline. Like CC, CT has safety and violation, but the problem is too generic, too slow, or there isn’t enough tension to create a laugh. Comprehension-Elaboration Theory (CET) - A contemporary theory of humor that posits that the funniness of a joke depends on a listener’s ability to generate humorous elaborations after the punchline. Conventional Joke - A self-contained joke that uses the punchline to break the audience's assumptions. Elaboration Possibility - The number of interesting ways to elaborate on an idea. High elaboration possibilities mean that a writer has many interesting options to choose from while low possibilities mean there are few options or most options are low quality. Exploration Questions (EQs) - Questions that help you uncover new writing opportunities. Detail Exploration Question - Answer this type of question to fill in details about your story/material. Observation Exploration Questions - Answer this type of question to identify interesting observations to insert into your material. Opinion Exploration Questions - Answer this type of question to find interesting opinions to insert into your material. Storytelling Exploration Questions - Answer this type of question to help yourself move a story along. Joke - A self-contained “unit” of humor consisting of a setup and punchline. Juxtaposition - The overlapping area between safety and violation.

Keyword - The specific word in a punchline that introduces the violation. Magnify - Taking generic, slow, low-level tension and magnifying it into something specific, fast, and high-tension. Magnifying helps ensure that a punchline will be able to get a laugh. Misdirection - A conventional joke telling strategy in which the punchline contains some type of misdirection, generally a Broken Assumption. Playfully Inappropriate Surprise/Juxtaposition (PIJ) - How this book defines an effective punchline. Playfully Inappropriate Juxtaposition Questions (PIJ-Q) - Question designed to lead directly to punchlines. Point-Of-View (POV) - How you, another person, a group, the world in general, or a supernatural being views a particular situation. Premise - A generic (often abstract) form of your joke that contains the important information and the idea behind what you think will be funny. The Premise shares a lot in common with the magnified Why Problem. Psychological Distance - Psychological Distance refers to how people relate differently to ideas that feel more distant. Distance can be spatial, social, temporal, or hypothetical. Punchline (P) - The line that gets the laugh. It almost always introduces a violation. Recontextualization - Recontextualization creates humor by playing with the context of a Why Problem (as opposed to magnifying). The humor comes from something normal being placed in an abnormal situation. Relief Theory - A theory of humor that posits that laughter is a way people release nervous energy. Safety - Safety refers to the “normal half” of Comedic Conflict and is almost always found in the setup. Understanding “what is normal” helps the audience realize when a violation happens. Set - An entire performance. Generally, 3-5 minutes long for new comedians and 45+ for headliners. Setup (S) - The not funny, often factual part of your material before a punchline. Setups usually create the safety which is contrasted against the violation of a punchline. Superiority - A type of humor which gives the audience a feeling of superiority, such as when a group the audience hates gets insulted. Superiority Theory - A theory of humor that posits that jokes are a type of playful aggression in which there are always winners and losers. Stepping Stone Strategy - A way of elaborating on a story to find many comedic situations. Storytelling Punchline - A punchline that gets its humor without using a Misdirection Punchline. Storytelling Structure - A joke that creates Comedic Tension in the setup and then extends it to create a punchline. Tagline (T) - A punchline on top of another punchline.

Tension/Release - A type of joke in which the setup creates a violation (instead of safety) and the punchline creates safety (instead of violation). Trigger - A trigger is something that causes the audience to “start” laughing. It can be a keyword, gesture, voice inflection, or social cue. Violation - The “abnormal half" of the Comedic Conflict is usually found in the punchline. A violation is an idea that "breaks away from what's normal (safe).” Why Problem - A specific problem or reason why a violation matters. There are two sub-types of Why Problems that this book has ignored for simplification. Why Tension - The specific reason why the Comedic Tension matters. It is often magnified or recontextualized for a joke. Why Conflict - The specific reason why the Comedic Conflict matters. It is usually the last piece of the puzzle that the audience puts together before laughing.

Playfully Inappropriate The Fun Way to Write Comedy

Jared Volle, M.S. CreativeStandUp.com

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