Professional Documents
Culture Documents
© 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
“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 A-
List 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.
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.
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.
This page left infuriatingly blank.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
This page does not apologize for its blankness.
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.
… 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.
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?”
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.
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:
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 second-
guessed 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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
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:
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.
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 anti-
violation/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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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).
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.
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.
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:
WRITER “Well… What if they keep misunderstanding everything because they still think it’s a church?”
WRITER “OK… What if instead of accidentally joining a sorority they have a secret double-life playing beach
volleyball?”
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.
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.
Why Problem (Slow, Small, Generic, Low-Tension) x 10 = Why Problem (Big, Fast, Specific,
High-Tension)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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. When is a Playfully Inappropriate time to admit that you’ve been drinking alcohol?
10. Who’s a Playfully Inappropriate person to have as the best man at your wedding?
11. Who’s a Playfully Inappropriate person to vote for if you couldn’t vote for a regular candidate?
12. Where a Playfully Inappropriate place to get advice about medical procedures?
13. Where a Playfully Inappropriate place to lose your virginity?
14. 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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
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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.
This page is a team player.
Applying New Tools To Conventional Joke-
Writing
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-and-
white 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 Three-
Count 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.
“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.
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.
“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
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.
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 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 surface-
level 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 meaning-
based 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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.”
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.
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.
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 exaggeration-
based punchlines, you should get so skilled at exaggerating details of your story that the lies and truths
blend together until they’re indistinguishable.
STRATEGY: Look for opportunities to react to big violations. Many times, your understatement
will benefit from using specificity.
1. PIJ-Q: If this situation wasn’t so extreme, what is a comment I’d make or thought I’d have?
2. PIJ-Q: What would be a surprising comment to hear from someone in my position?
3. BUT STATEMENT: Everyone would expect me to X, but I Y.
4. 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. PIJ-Q: What’s specific product would be Playfully Inappropriate to have/use in this situation?
2. BUT STATEMENT: I need X, but all I have is this Y (Y = specific)
3. BUT STATEMENT: I need X, but all I have is this Y (Y = specific)
4. CONFLICT QUESTION: Why can’t I use a Y (Y = specific)?
5. 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.
and…
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.
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
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.
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?
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
“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
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.
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-and-
take 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.
Keyword
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ex-
girlfriend 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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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?”
Why Problem: It feels wrong/evil to tell someone that they can’t have help losing
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:
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.
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:
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.”
Spoken Material
INTRODUCE COMEDIC TENSION:
“I don’t like my body (sarcastic)
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 Joke-
Listening 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
© 2019 CreativeStandUp
All rights reserved.