How To Set Up A Joke

Writing a good joke is a genuine art class. The idea that a joke just springs into being, conjured from thin air, couldn't be further from the truth in most cases. However outwardly uncomplicated they may appear, a joke is a complex beast and volition take been tweaked and endlessly rewritten, trailed on audiences and refined some more earlier it is finally ready. In this article, we notice out how some of the biggest and brightest talents on the comedy scene go about writing their jokes.

Comedy Secrets Revealed…

Tim Vine

Typical Joke: "I decided to sell my Hoover… Well, it was just collecting dust."

Tim Vine is the primary of the 1-liner, having won the 'Funniest Joke of the Fringe' laurels twice – no hateful feat! In 2022, he won with his to a higher place effort on vacuum cleaners.

Vine told the Guardian that he writes xv new jokes per day on a postcard. What method does he utilize to generate and then many one liners?

In an interview with the Independent, Vine revealed that he often works backwards, writing from punchline to set up-up. "I hear punchlines in everyday conversation and recall, 'How could we get there in a different mode?' If someone says, 'Serves him right,' I'll think, 'Right, OK… A friend of mine's got a left arm missing. Serves him correct.'"

In one case perfected on paper, Vine volition then test his jokes on an audition until they are at their most strong. "I know it sounds daft, merely sometimes you think to yourself, 'Which style round shall I put it?'" Vine says. "'I've got a friend who's a tent peg. He'due south driven himself into the ground.' It doesn't really get much. Merely you could do, 'I've got a friend who'south driven himself into the ground. He'south a tent peg.' It may never get beyond a weak express joy and I'll drop it. Or I'll tell information technology and shout, 'Come on!' after information technology."

Shappi Khorsandi

Typical Joke: 'What Iran needs at present is a more mod leader – a mullah calorie-free.'

Shappi Khorsandi is an Iranian-built-in British comedian who started out in one-act dorsum in 1997. It wasn't until her 2006 sell out Edinburgh show Asylum Speaker that things actually took off and she established herself as one of the UK's leading comedians.

In an interview with Beyond the Joke she talked virtually her writing procedure: "In stand up up, the important stuff goes on before any actual writing happens. I'll take a potent emotional response to something, an incident, something I've seen or heard. If it dances about in my caput bothering me, I get on a stage and say it in forepart of an audience. If I'm relaxed enough, a punchline will eventually arrive. So I write it down, do it again better, write that down. Each time I tell information technology, information technology becomes sharper."

Khorsandi goes one footstep farther than most comics and actually uses the live environment to discover her jokes, relying on her comic encephalon to detect the punchline. The process of refinement so begins.

Demetri Martin

By Tammy Lo from Brooklyn, NY (Demetri Martin @ Revenge of the Bookeaters) [CC BY two.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Typical Joke: "The worst time to have a centre set on is during a game of charades."

Demetri Martin started his joke writing while at work, stealing seconds to play with cloth: "I would sit there and open up a word document and just put like jokes and the date and then outset writing. And I think in the very start I institute pieces of paper in my old notebooks that say, like 'South' colon, 'P' colon. It was for setup and punch line. So I think I was actually trying to get it down to exactly where the joke itself shifts, similar what word becomes the punch line. I e'er liked trying to brand things have the fewest words possible. It seems more interesting and kind of more elegant to tell these short ideas."

An understanding of the basic mechanisms of a joke seems to be part of many comedians development. As well equally this, Martin soon realised the demand for jokes to be concise, fifty-fifty when working inside a larger narrative. "I like to take out as much as possible…My building blocks are fiddling jokes and curt ideas. I think that even when I try to write longer things, I still tend to think incrementally, and information technology almost gets kind of fractal in a sense, where you have the larger structure, and it has a certain arc to it, and then fifty-fifty if y'all cut the affair in half, you'd have the same structure, then on."

When it comes to his stand up-upwards performances, Martin uses a organisation that allows him to develop and refine his newer fabric whilst notwithstanding getting guaranteed laughs. He explained his approach to Fast Co Create:

"I had dissimilar columns on these cards I brought with me to do standup. On the far correct were the jokes that were brand new—boiled down to a single word or idea. If I'one thousand doing the set correctly, it should all be from that cavalcade. The only problem is, a lot of those jokes really suck, and if I stay in that column, I'1000 gonna bomb and the audience loses confidence in me. Ane cavalcade over, in the center of the page, those are jokes that work half the fourth dimension, and I go along to rewrite them onstage. The topic will be something similar "revolving door," and maybe this evening'south the nighttime I effigy out how to get it to work. If I do, and so I move it to the far left of the page. Those are jokes that I know work something like ninety% of the fourth dimension. The evidence is kind of a failure if I just stay on the far left of the folio, considering I already know those work, rather than moving forward. A success would be if I did everything to the correct of the page and it worked, then I suddenly have 5-10 minutes to add to my act. Sometimes I just write onstage, though. I'll have this rambly thing and the audience helps me figure out how to make information technology work."

Eddie Izzard

Typical Joke:

The 'action transvestite' actor and surrealist stand-up stalwart has been performing since the late eighties, delighting audiences over four decades with his idiosyncratic style.

Although Izzard recognises how difficult joke-writing can be, he finds that existence himself makes the process easier. He explained to the Guardian: "In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk most your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if yous're just talking about what yous think well-nigh Ten, Y and Z."

Like many of the comedians featured hither, Izzard stumbles upon and hones textile in the live environment: "Sometimes I write down notes about what I want to talk about and commencement trying to flesh them out with the toing and froing of the chitchat, but it's still tricky. It's so much easier to find that on phase. Most of it is adlibbed at some point."

Joe Lycett

Typical Joke: "Went to come across the owls at the zoo today, dressed as a mouse. Turned a few heads."

The Birmingham-built-in comedian has now established himself every bit one of the country'southward leading comedians following numerous appearances on Goggle box panel shows and several successful pun-based stand-up tours. His Twitter feed is full of hilarious Tweets and is deserving of its huge following.

In an interview with at present defunct arts clemency Ideas Tap, Joe explained: "My style is quite conversational, so the best stuff usually comes out of me having that conversation – really talking – out loud. Only, that said, a lot of stuff is written on stage, considering you go into this weird zone where the panic of having to get a laugh forces something out of you, from somewhere. So information technology'southward a mixture of all things."

Like Izzard, Joe as well believes that a successful show needs honesty: "It doesn't necessarily mean that all your stories are exactly what happened in a certain scenario, but your opinion must exist your own. Don't just give an opinion that you think the audience want to hear."

When speaking to comedy.co.uk, Joe revealed how he takes an initial idea and develops it until it is prepare to get part of his stand-upwardly fix: "I'll make an observation when I'g out and almost; I'll jot information technology down on my telephone; then I'll become through those observations and call back 'what scenario might this fit in?'. I draw spider diagrams. That becomes a comic routine possibly, or it doesn't. Those that do have potential, I try at new textile gigs…"

Jerry Seinfeld

Typical Joke: "According to virtually studies, people'southward number one fearfulness is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're meliorate off in the casket than doing the eulogy."

When information technology comes to observational comedy, Jerry Seinfeld has been leading the way for decades. As the above video highlights, Seinfeld develops his material in a labour-intensive hand-written process – something he'southward done since the Seinfeld show on which he worked with Larry David. Rather than advert-libbing on stage, he uses a pen and paper and a longhand method to strop his material. Similar many of the all-time comedians, Seinfeld understands the importance of rhythm in comedy, to the extent that the words must be the correct length with the correct number of syllables. He also focusses on finding the "connective tissue" that allows the jokes to fit together and work within a larger set up.

Harry Colina

By phil chappell [CC By-SA 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Typical Joke: 'Gamblers Bearding: how practice they know where to send your winnings?'

Famed for his piece of work ethic (this may accept something to practise with his onetime life equally a dr.), Harry Hill is a prolific comedy author and a 'national treasure'.

In an interview with One-act United kingdom, he explained his approach to comedy writing: "A lot of the fourth dimension it's but sitting down and thinking of ideas. That'due south the boring answer. Very rarely do you walk past something in the street and something pops into your head. It's just an imagination. It's only the way you're wired really. The more than you exercise information technology the more weird you go in that sense."

On the other hand, he continues: "Stand-up is so immediate. You can have an thought in the morning and get a express mirth for it in the evening. No one else can tell yous what to practice, apart from the audition. The audience is the ultimate arbiter."

Milton Jones

Typical Joke: "If you're being chased by a law canis familiaris, endeavor not to go through a tunnel, then on to a lilliputian seesaw, so jump through a hoop of burn. They're trained for that!"

Jones deals in one-liners – precipitous, surreal, and often silly. Since winning the Perrier Best Newcomer in 1996, he has appeared regularly on radio and Telly panel shows as well as touring.

In an interview with Brian Logan for The Guardian, he explained his joke-writing method:

"It's about turning things upside down. Looking at the things people say and thinking: what's the opposite of that?"

Jones has a potent visual aspect to his comedy: "If there'due south a mindset in my example, information technology's that I recall in pictures. What I do is put funny cartoons in people's heads."

Similar many comedians, Jones too exhibits an attending to detail where every word has its office to play: "I discussion can brand all the difference," explains Jones. "When y'all eventually get it right, yous think: this must exist, surely? In that location can be a purity about perfect one-liners. It'due south as if it's non from you."

Tim Key

Typical Joke (Poem):

Having starred in Alan Partridge Mid Morn Matters and Blastoff Papa as Sidekick Simon, and enjoyed a stint equally resident poet on Charlie Brooker'due south Screenwipe, Tim Cardinal is a prolific comic talent whether equally performance poet, actor, or writer.

In an interview with Now And so Magazine, Key explained how he creates his poems: "I have quite a dispensable writing process. I write poems all the time and then try most of them on phase or on Instagram or somewhere. I accept a remarkable tolerance for them, merely I know some are improve than others."

Similar Demitri Martin, Key also has a organization for sorting his stand-upward material, having his poems written on cards, laminated pornographic playing cards to exist precise. 'It was a style of hands separating them when trying out material: the poems that were definitely going well I would go along to use, the poems that weren't I'd put to one side.' The cards are laminated, to stop them being damaged," Fundamental told Time Out.

"I tend to just bring together about 30 or forty poems that make me laugh and do a load of piece of work-in-progress nights. And so I try and talk around them a bit and throw in a few anecdotes," he tells The Skinny

'In one case I accept all the bits, I then put it all on a corkboard – into the categories of: poems, talking, ideas that may or may non fit, and films – and then work out how they can fit into a structure that will concord it all.'

How to Write Jokes – In Summary

– Discover a writing method that works for you.

– Write as much as possible – not every joke has to be skillful.

– Pay attention to every give-and-take, even syllable, likewise as the syntax, grammar, rhythm and even the length of pauses in your joke.

– Exam material on a live audience – work-in progress nights are perfect for honing your jokes.

– Allow yourself to pursue tangents, ad-lib, interact with audiences when live on stage – you never know where it might take yous and what textile y'all may observe.

– Be honest – write about your ain opinions and experiences as much every bit possible – don't deliver textile that doesn't feel like you lot.

– Effort and connect your material – work on how each jokes fits with the next and the overall ready.

– Exist succinct – remove anything superfluous from your joke until you have the bare bones.

– Constantly refine and rewrite your material.

London One-act Venue for Hire

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Notice out about our all time favourite London comedy gigs – did we miss any? How about running your ain comedy night – our guide has all the information you need.