Make Me Laugh

(Jokes)

In the late 1970s there was a very simple, very straightforward game show called Make Me Laugh.

The premise was that one at a time, for sixty seconds each, three comics would get a shot at making the contestant laugh. For every second the contestant didn’t laugh, he or she would receive one dollar.

Yes, the maximum prize was $180. This was the 1970s. A McDonald’s hamburger was a dime, and students still wrote their assignments with quill and parchment.

Perhaps the most successful comedian on Make Me Laugh was a guy known as the Unknown Comic, who performed with a paper grocery sack over his head with holes for his eyes and mouth. He told terrible jokes that dated back decades, but he could sometimes get a laugh by twirling the bag on top of his head to reveal a funny face drawing on the back, the surprise of which would instantly crack up the contestant.

(It’s funnier to watch than to hear it described. Check it out online.)

It is very hard not to laugh—in shock, in embarrassment, or genuine humor—when someone in front of your face is trying to make you laugh.

It is much harder to make someone laugh when they are merely reading your joke, rather than having it be performed.

The latter is your task. This may be the hardest thing I’ve ever asked students to do. It’s also the most fun.

EXPERIENCE

Write five jokes that would be appropriate for a host to deliver on a topical late-night show (The Daily Show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Saturday Night Live Weekend Update, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, etc.)

Note that this work is often best done collaboratively. All of these shows rely on what are called “writers’ rooms,” which are collaborative spaces where individually talented people are made better by the chance to work with other talented people toward a common goal. Gather a group together to practice this one.

AUDIENCE

Your first audience is the host of the show. You are a member of the writing team and you are going to pitch your jokes for inclusion in the show’s monologue. Ultimately, though, the audience is the viewers who tune in.

PROCESS

1. Figure out how jokes work (structure).

How are they structured? Do you see patterns? What makes the jokes that are funny, funny? What is the subject material of their jokes?

2. Analyze the audience.

Based on your study of the jokes themselves, how would you describe the audience? What do they like? What do they believe? What are their interests? How old are they? Remember to link your conclusion to your observations from the jokes you’ve been studying.

3. Brainstorm.

Throw out ideas for your team of joke writers to bat around. Get access to a dry-erase board or a way to project a computer screen onto a wall for all to see. What are some funny ideas for jokes? (Not the jokes themselves.) Build on each other’s ideas and don’t hold back. No judgment, just ideas.

4. Write rough jokes.

Try converting your funny ideas into the joke structures you identified earlier.

5. Try out your jokes.

Seek out an audience who hasn’t been privy to the creation of your jokes. Try them out. Ask some of your test audience just to read the jokes. For others, you can try to deliver the jokes as a host would. Does your audience laugh? If yes, the jokes are funny. If not, they are not funny.

6. Revise the jokes.

The most effective jokes—as you noticed in your study of the form—use exactly the right word for the moment and often are as concise and tight as possible. They also rely on rhythms, almost like poetry. Go back to the example jokes you thought were best and see if you can polish your jokes so they work in similar ways.

REFLECT

That was really difficult, wasn’t it? If you got anything other than blank stares from your audience, you’ve done tremendously well. If you got blank stares, you’ve experienced what every comedian in the world has been through the first time they tried writing and telling jokes.

Why, do you think, is joke writing so hard? What are the skills that go into writing jokes? If this was the kind of career you wanted to pursue, what sorts of things should you be doing to train for that eventuality?

Think of it this way: If your goal is to become a concert violinist, there are things you’re going to do to achieve that goal. What if your goal is to write jokes? What should you be doing?

Do you have something in mind for your own future? What are the experiences, what is the knowledge, that stand between you and what you might like to do?

COLLABORATION

There is a paradox at the heart of writing, in that as we’re doing it, it is largely a solo pursuit, and yet, at the same time, we can see all writing as essentially collaborative.

Writing without an audience to respond to you is like the old parable about a tree falling in the forest: if no one is around, does it make a sound? Only when writing intersects with an audience do we create meaning. That is a collaborative act. The meaning would not exist without the work of both the writer and the audience. Sometimes those meanings are different from what the original author intended, which highlights how difficult collaboration can be.

Sometimes that disconnect is the fault of the writer failing to carefully craft their message. Other times, though, it is the reader who is not holding up their end of the bargain and is misinterpreting a message by not reading closely enough or even by being fogged by bias. The collaboration breaks down when either one of the parties doesn’t fulfill their responsibilities.

One of the things I like most about trying to write humor (as in the jokes experience) is that the audience feedback is instantaneous and cannot be faked. Either people laugh or they don’t. Their laughter is the audience fulfilling its part of the collaboration. Occasionally, a silent audience can be blamed on the audience itself, but almost always the fault is found in the writer. There’s something very pure about this, knowing when you’ve succeeded and when you haven’t.

Writers and their editors have an inherently collaborative relationship. Ideally, the editor is focused on helping the writer best express their message, which requires the editor to understand the writer’s intent, and the writer to be open to accepting the editor’s feedback.

And there are types of writing where even the writing itself is collaborative. Technical writing often involves collaboration in putting together long and complex documents where different parts are farmed out to different people. In this kind of work, the collaboration tends to require a lot of upfront planning, after which individuals go off to fulfill their part of the project.

Writing for television often requires a blend of collaborative styles. There is always someone in charge, a host (as in a late-night show) or a “showrunner,” who must manage a team of writers. In some cases, like in a TV drama, a season-long arc will be established, and then the writers go off to craft individual episodes, which are brought back to the group for feedback, which leads to revision. Ultimately, the person in charge makes the final decision.

Other times, writers will literally be in a writers’ room collaborating in real time to generate ideas or propose particular jokes. Participating effectively in this kind of atmosphere requires a healthy mix of ego and humility. One must be confident enough to throw ideas into the mix, and humble enough to accept when someone else’s idea is better. Not easy to do.

I find thinking of writing as collaborative makes the act of writing considerably less lonely. It can be highly motivating to know that our work is going into the world and other people will get to make something of it for themselves.