Developing Our Funny Bones

Again, we're reading Comedy Writing Step by Step by funny man Gene Perret

But first, I just had to type this in. (so funny and well put)

You don’t remember that your sister was choked right in front of you? Tell you what, you choke my sister, I’m remembering it because I’m sitting in jail because I just whooped your ass.

--Keith in The Law Firm

DEVELOPING NEW SKILLS

Write faithfully and experiment with new skills, new talents. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.”

Listen and Read comedy. Ie. Tape and type out monologues, study for form, rhythm and style.

You will adopt styles unconsciously.

learn what does and doesn’t Works: note type of responses certain jokes get

find the latest Joke Forms Ie. Knock-knock, who’s there? … or Your mama is so fat (fill in the blanks)

have New Topics and Slants Ie. Use current events

have a Definite Style Ie. Adopt character’s speech patterns/rhythms of speech (get acquainted with as many different styles as possible)

expose yourself to varied styles Ie. Learn from the greats (study the best sitcoms, faves like Will and Grace, Mama’s Family, Threes Company, Golden Girls, Night Court, etc.)

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Tip for overcoming Writers Block – Can’t think of anything funny? Watch a sitcom. Put on a tape of John Stewart’s America The Book

3 Skills to Comedy

Recognize relationships and ironies
Use visualization and Imagery
Have a facility with words

(learn vocabulary words, words found in jokes, funny words, etc.)


Be inventive… let your meanderings lead you where they may.

1. Relationship and Ironies:

2 or more ideas = humor

Ideas can be very similar,
Quite different,
Appear to be different but are really the same
Appear to be the same but are really different


Any time you see a man open a car door for his wife, either the car is new or the wife is.

Simple, yet a delightful observation.
Joke stands on its own. (Joke that needs an explanation needs to be edited)
Why funny? Statement is partly true. (Married men get lax about the nicety of opening car doors for spouses)
Observation is recognizable and expressed tightly.

Have you ever noticed how those Jehovah’s Witnesses are always at your door? Hey, I got an idea. Why don’t we let them deliver the mail?

Why funny? Statement is partly true/Recognizable.
It recognizes the irony and relationship.
Expressed beautifully.

2 Visualization and Imagery

Jokes – words that create funny images

Distortion or ridiculousness of Image = Humor

Puns/word play can be funny but make sure it creates a graphic image

Gene Perret’s jokes for Phyllis Diller:

Talk about fat people, you ought to see my mother in law. She’s so big, she has two zip codes.

She’s a nice woman, though. Nicest three acres of flesh I’ve ever met.

Take liberties with imagery.

Our minds easily accept distortions and impossibilities.

Minds also tend to fill in the gaps, continuing the image to a natural conclusion, supplying info.

Humorists manipulate this tendency by leading an audience’s thinking in one direction and then suddenly changing that direction.

It’s like a man slipping on a banana peel. He’s walking contentedly along then, suddenly, he slips.

Take advantage of human thinking patterns.

Facility with Words

Norm Crosby – malapropisms (clever ways to misuse words) “An ounce of perversion is worth a pound of cure.”

Sam Goldwyn –“Goldwynisms” misuse phrases so that meanings conveyed