but then you would miss out on the benefits of this assignment. Also you would have a list that was geared toward us and not one that is your own.
There are a number of benefits to tackling this assignment and devoting care to it. Don’t just pick the first fifty lines that make you laugh. There is a difference between enjoying a comedy performance and analyzing it. We want you to do the latter. Look at the material with a critical eye—at least while doing this assignment. Afterward you can go back to just enjoying the humor. Watch all kinds of comedy—young comedians, old comedians, newcomers, and seasoned professionals. Record some comics on TV as well as go to a few live performances. Read various joke books. Immerse yourself in comedy and capture the lines that really stand out.
You may not realize it while you are doing this, but you are actually learning quite a bit about comedy. You are focusing on it and absorbing it. You are learning what makes you laugh. You’ll start to pick up on the different styles of comedy and develop an awareness of what kind of comedy you prefer. You may find you like the rapid-fire one-liners of the old-time comics or you may prefer a storytelling type of delivery.
Your list will provide you with a database of great material to refer to when you need inspiration. If you were a painter, would you like to paint like Van Gogh or your eighth-grade art teacher? You want to strive to be the best. And your list will do that for you—consider it your very own Comedy Louvre. Anytime you like, you can relish in or surround yourself with the great lines that you want to produce. Surrounding yourself with great comedy can inspire you to write the same.
This is a valuable tool when you are hit with writer’s block. At one time or another we all struggle with that blank sheet of paper. When that happens, take a gander at your list. See what has been done and know that you can do it, too. Use these lines to springboard new ideas.
Most likely your list will contain jokes that use different formulas and styles that you can draw from when generating your own material. Your list may have a “series-of-three joke,” a “definition joke,” and so on. Whatever you are working on, try generating the same style of joke, that is, a series of three, a definition, and so on. It gives you a starting point to generate material on a given topic.
Your list can also be used as a comparison for your own writing. Sometimes we write a line and know it has all the makings of a great joke, but it just isn’t great yet. Compare it to the lines that are on your list. What do they have that your line is missing? Or what have they cut out that you are including? Use the great lines to influence your own material.
So start collecting. Look for great gags. Keep the list going. Whenever you hear a great line, jot it down.
Oh yeah, this may be a good place to mention that if you wrote a joke that you think is superb, put it on the list. We don’t want any false modesty. If the joke is great, it deserves to be on your list. Seeing your own line among other great lines can be the best encouragement of all.
This exercise is also in the companion book, Comedy Writing Self-Taught. We felt it was important enough to include here. However, if you completed this exercise while reading the other volume, there’s no need to repeat it here . . . unless, of course, you want to.
Get ready, though, because now we are going to get you writing.
Cartoons are an excellent starting point for learning to write solid one-liners. Cartoons consist of a drawing and a funny caption. Of course, some are captionless, but we’ll concentrate on those that have a word joke attached. The drawing provides the situation and the caption provides the humor. That’s a similar structure for many one-liners.
Studying cartoon humor is a good basis for teaching yourself to write effective humor. Cartoons are visual. They’re drawings so they must be a drawing of something. The image is an integral part of the comedy. Sometimes it’s easy for us to overlook the value of the visual in verbal comedy. But it’s often the image that the word joke presents to the minds of the listeners that gives the gag added impact. A vivid picture painted in the audience’s mind gives a boost to the joke’s effectiveness.
Also, cartoons prepare the reader for laughter. Cartoons should be funny. Otherwise, why would they be published in the paper or magazine? When a reader sees a cartoon drawing, he or she is predisposed to being entertained. A good, solid oneliner should prepare the listener for the laugh to come. It should time the punchline for the maximum effect. It’s a lesson well learned from cartoons.
You’ll begin teaching yourself to write good stand-up material by learning the mechanics of writing captions for cartoons.
For this exercise, begin collecting good cartoons from magazines or papers. Gather at least ten or twelve funny cartoons. Either cut them out and paste them on paper or scan them and print them out. Save them one way or another.
Each cartoon will have a caption affixed to it. It should be a good caption, too. You don’t want to collect weak ones. You want solid ones. So the first benefit of this exercise is that you will have a few laughs.
But you’ll have even more laughs as you work your way through this exercise. You’re now going to create several alternate lines for each cartoon that you’ve gathered. These new lines can be variations on the original cartoon caption, or you can take the drawing in an entirely new direction and generate a funny caption that has no relation whatsoever to the one that was published.
As a humorist, you’re certainly going to try to “outfunny” the cartoonist. However, since the original was bought and printed, it’s probably pretty effective. Sure, you should try to “top” it, but even if you don’t, you’ll gain some valuable lessons from this exercise in writing comedy.
This exercise is similar to the previous one. However, it’s probably going to be a little tougher. You may find that to be true throughout this exercise book, but that’s how you develop skills. If you take violin lessons, your first practice piece will probably be an easy one. But as you progress, the music will become more complex and the lessons a bit more challenging to master. So as the writing exercises become more demanding, you will realize that your knowledge and skills are growing.
In the previous exercise, the caption was included with the cartoon. That provided a direction for the humor. You could use that “slant” to create your new captions. Or you could have, as we suggested, taken the humor into a whole different area. But in either case you had something to start with.
In this exercise, you won’t have that luxury.
Here, you should have a friend do your research for you. Ask this associate to cut out ten to fifteen cartoons from the newspaper or magazine and remove the caption from each one. If you’re terribly disciplined and promise yourself that you won’t cheat, you can select the cartoons yourself. But be sure to cover the caption before you snip the cartoon from the paper.
