have you play “I Am Mr. Middle C.” It’s a simple drill, but as you repeat it, you learn many things—where middle C is on the keyboard, where it is on the music staff, and how to relate one to the other. In short, you’re learning to play that note.
In keeping with our golf analogy, if you want to learn to hit a golf ball, a teacher shows you the correct swing motions. However, you don’t really learn to swing correctly until you practice what the instructor told you. Your exercise then is to hit golf balls on the driving range.
To develop dexterity: After you learn a skill, you must become proficient at it. That’s why you spend time on the driving range—to translate what you’ve learned into a golfing skill. You transform knowledge into technique. Pianists practice scales in order to develop a quickness and finesse in moving along the keyboard. A beginning guitarist who learns new chord formations may repeat them over and over in order to become adroit at playing them to tempo. The adage “Practice makes perfect” applies here.
To learn new techniques: Even accomplished performers can learn new skills. Like the beginner, they must then practice these to perfect them.
To reveal preferences and tendencies: Various exercises can reveal different techniques. Often you not only will learn new techniques, as we mentioned, but you also may discover that you are very skilled in this new style or that you have a preference for it. Either revelation can be beneficial.
To develop consistency: Ability is only useful when you can depend on it. When a pianist plays a recital, he or she should be fairly confident of getting through the selections flawlessly. Returning to our golf example again, the prevailing wisdom is “to hit the shot you know you can make.”
To foster confidence: Amateur golfers often can’t understand why they hit the shot perfectly at the practice area but then mishit it terribly on the course. One reason is that the practice area is stress free. The pressure is off. You won’t be penalized for executing the shot badly. Anxiety can affect performance. Doing exercises helps develop consistency, as mentioned, and that promotes confidence. Your practice exercises should prove to you that you can perform under pressure. That’s confidence.
To enhance strengths: All of us, in whatever area we work, have strengths—certain facets that we execute better than others. Naturally, these are useful. In competition, they may give us the edge we need. They’re valuable, and we should rely on them. However, they’d obviously be more valuable if we could improve on them. Performing strategic exercises can make our strong points even stronger.
To eliminate weakness: All of us, in whatever area we work, have weaknesses, too. Those are the failings that competitors may take advantage of. Exercises can eradicate those flaws. Or at the very least the exercises can make the flaws less problematic. When we lessen our weaknesses, we strengthen our entire performance.
To serve as a warm-up: In watching any sport, you’ll see players warming up. Basketball teams come out on the court and start shooting basketballs. Pitchers throw balls in the bull pen. Tennis players hit the ball back and forth. Golfers hit various shots on the driving range or drop a few balls and stroke them on the putting green. It’s a way of easing into the strenuous activity gradually. Exercises can do that for the writer.
One comedy writer began each day by writing a humorous limerick. His philosophy was “When I’m sharp enough to create a funny five lines of poetry, I’m ready to begin writing real comedy.”
So the way to use this book is any way you want to. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say any way you need to. There is no strict order to the exercises in this book. If you want to start at page one and complete all the exercises in progression right to the last page, that’s commendable. However, you can also randomly select an exercise and work on that. You may find an exercise that emphasizes a technique you’ve never tried before. It might be fun to give that one a try. You decide where you need work, find an exercise that helps develop that skill, and devote your time and efforts to that one. The choice is totally yours.
This book has a limited number of pages, and we could include only a certain number of exercises. However, that shouldn’t restrict your practice time. You should keep this volume handy and use it often. Many of these exercises can and should be repeated several times. You don’t practice the scales on a piano just once. You can return to any exercise in this book anytime you feel that specific skills need fine-tuning, or for whatever reason.
In some cases we will offer specific items to work on; for instance, in Exercise 5 we ask you to come up with new punchlines for the old gag “What’s black and white and red all over?” You can always return to this exercise and generate new gags for the same setup. You are also free to create a new setup for the exercise. Pick a new “old” joke (forgive the oxymoron) and generate new and unique punchlines for that.
This collection of exercises is extensive, but it’s not exhaustive. It doesn’t contain every possible comedy writing exercise imaginable. That’s where you can add some creativity to your self-education. You can devise new exercises. Using the exercises in these pages as a springboard or going out completely on your own, you can design comedy writing practice sessions to build your skills. The possibilities are endless.
The main thrust of performing exercises is to keep you writing and keep you learning. As we’ve mentioned, many experts feel that there are three ways to learn to write. They are to write, to write, and to write.
In the following pages you have many and varied exercises, so now is the time to write, to write, and to write.
Have fun with them.
Exercises 1 to 24
The exercises in this section are designed to help you develop creativity and general joke writing techniques.
Collect Fifty Great One-Liners
You just read how we want you to write and the purpose of this book is to get you to write. Now we are on to our first exercise and guess what? We don’t want you to write.
Your first assignment is to collect fifty great one-liners. These should be jokes that in your opinion are above all others. Not just lines that make you laugh, but ones that make you say, “I wish I had written that.”
Even though you won’t be writing right now, this exercise is important. If you were building a house, you wouldn’t just start nailing walls together. First you would need to lay the foundation. But even before the foundation you would need to do some groundwork. You need to decide what style of house you are going to build. Will it be one story or two? What will it look like? You need to draw up plans. Consider this exercise the blueprints for your future writing.
You may be saying to yourself,
