Comedy Writing Secrets

Question 1

What is the most important thing a sense of humour indicates?

Answer 1

Leadership

Question 2

What do frowns indicate to others?

Answer 2

Fear and paranoia

Question 3

What is the very first goal if you want to develop a sense of humour?

Answer 3

To become uninhibited

Question 4

What is a great exercise to practice to uninhibit yourself?

Answer 4

What if..

Question 5

What is the dynamic between a laughing ape and one that doesn’t laugh?

Answer 5

The laughing one is submissive.

Question 6

In a social power equation, what position does the person laughing hold wrt the person making them laugh?

Answer 6

Lower on the pole.

Question 7

What happens when you’re making people laugh?

Answer 7

You’re controlling them. You’re MAKING them laugh. You’re in charge.

Question 8

What are the 3 Rs you get when you’re humorous?

Answer 8

Respect, Remembrance and Reward

Question 9

How do you get remembrance with humour?

Answer 9

People remember your message, what you’re teaching, and YOU, if you use humour well.

Question 10

What is the comedy triangle?

Answer 10

Material - Audience - Performer

Question 11

In what way does comedy relate the audience to the performer?

Answer 11

You both have the same goal. You’re on the same team. You want them to laugh, they want to laugh! You both reach the goal together.

Question 12

What are the subjects the audience is most interested in?

Answer 12

Themselves! They want you to talk about observations of THEIR own interest.

Question 13

What do the audience NOT care about?

Answer 13

They don’t want to know about you, your friends, your pets, your bar buddies.

Question 14

As a peformer, how much time do you have to win the audience over?

Answer 14

30 seconds.

Question 15

What does the audience do within the first 30 seconds of you talking?

Answer 15

The decide just how comfortable they feel with your comedic persona.

Question 16

What do you do with your obviously imperfect physical characteristics?

Answer 16

Target them. Take advantage of them rather than fight them. “I’m a bald red headed cunt”

Question 17

What is the single most important aspect that will make your material evolve to its highest level?

Answer 17

Dedication. Learning is easy, but dedication is very very very hard.

Question 18

How do you stay dedicated to your material?

Answer 18

You stay switched on all day. Keep noting down different things that make you laugh. Tag them by topics.

Question 19

Once you dedicate yourself to humour, what is a daily consistent exercise you have to take up?

Answer 19

Keep looking for new material to use as building blocks for your humour writing

Question 20

What can you use as material for building blocks for your humour writing?

Answer 20

ANYthing that you find funny in -

• News
• Internet reading
• Everyday events
• Ideas
• Observations

Question 21

Key criteria for daily humour building blocks

Answer 21

• NO censorship
• NOT intended to be funny
• Serve as STARTING POINTS for writing humour

Question 22

List the reasons why we laugh

Answer 22

• Surprise
• Superiority
• Instinct
• Incongruity
• Release
• When we solve a puzzle
• to Regress

Question 23

What is the core tenet of the structure of something tha creates surprise?

Answer 23

Get the audience to assume the ending, and then derail them.

Question 24

What are 2 basic techniques to create surprise?

Answer 24

• Misdirection

- Incongruity

Question 25

How would you describe misdirection in simple words?

Answer 25

You know the facts, and the audience doesn’t.

Question 26

How would you describe incongruity in simple words?

Answer 26

The audience know the facts, and a character in your story, doesn’t.

Question 27

What do we mean when we say, people laugh when they’re surprised?

Answer 27

When we intentionally embarrass people, they laugh to cover their embarrassment

Question 28

How can we create embarrassment in the audience?

Answer 28

By tricking them

Question 29

How do we trick the audience so that they’re embarrassed, and then laugh?

Answer 29

By misdirection or incongruity

Question 30

What are the various targets you can… target to generate feelings of superiority in the audience?

Answer 30

• Inferiors
• Superiors
• Those we fear
• Others who’ve recently accomplished something
• The “outs” to your “ins”

Question 31

What parts of our inferiors can we target to generate feelings of superiority in the audience?

Answer 31

• Intelligence
• Social standing
• Physical and mental infirmities

Question 32

Why does targeting superiors make us feel superiority?

Answer 32

We disgorge our feelings of inferiority by equalizing those superior to us

Question 33

In what WAY do we equalize those superior to us?

Answer 33

By ruthlessly publicizing and mocking EVERY shortcoming

Question 34

Who would you define as “those superior to you”?

Answer 34

People who are -

• in positions of authority
• richer
• more famous
• physically stronger
• more admired

Question 35

If your audience is itself filled with “superior” people, how do you use the concept of “superiority” to make them laugh?

Answer 35

By relieving their insecurity abut how long they’ll keep their superiority.

Eg. “i could take over canada in 2 days”

Question 36

How would you classify those you fear?

Answer 36

• Individually - more authoritative figures

- As a group - groups that don’t conform to our social, religious, national and sexual mores

Question 37

How does Freud define comedy?

Answer 37

As the weapon of the “ins” against the “outs”

Question 38

How is comedy used to maintain the status quo?

Answer 38

Comedy is used to ridicule deviant social behaviour, so that the majority is reassured that their way of life is proper.

Question 39

When targeting superiors, why do we feel good and laugh?

Answer 39

You discover their blemishes, and understand that you are NOT in the same predicament as them