Funny isn’t born, funny is made. Many people believe the myth that you’re either funny or you’re not, and if you are then you were fortunate enough to be born with the funny gene. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quite simply, as human beings we become what we learn and practice, and we learn and practice what is meaningful and important to us until those things become qualities of our personality. Being funny is a unique quality that is composed of a special set of skills. And as a skill set, that means it can be learned and developed by first understanding the underlying principles of humor and comedy, and then practicing them until one has achieved a certain degree of proficiency or even mastery.

As an example, let me share with you how I learned to be funny. It’s one of my fondest memories. When I was a kid my dad would come home every night from work, and soon after, the family would sit down for dinner together. Then at some point during dinner my dad would tell a joke. We all knew it was coming at some point but never quite when, which was part of the fun, the delicious anticipation. Then, when we least expected it, he would surprise us with his latest joke of the day and give us all the gift of laughter. And we loved it.

Kids learn a lot about what’s important from their parents. I learned at an early age that having a sense of humor was a valuable quality to possess. Being funny got you attention while it made everyone else laugh and feel good, a win-win situation. Before long, I was telling friends at school the jokes my dad had performed the night before. It went over so well that I started memorizing jokes from joke books, stringing them together into a routine, and telling them to anyone who would listen. What I didn’t realize, though, was that during all that practice I was also unconsciously learning the “rules” for good comedy and making people laugh. I was learning to be funny.

As I got older, people would say things to me like, “Oh, you’re so funny. How’d you get so funny?” And since I honestly had no clue but felt like I had to come up with something clever I fell back on the old myth and would blurt out, “Guess I was just born that way.”

When I finally became a professional standup comedian in my early twenties and started performing in clubs around the country, people would often talk to me after the show and ask, “How do you come up with all those jokes?”   Again, being clueless, I’d look at them and say, “I dunno, guess I just think funny.” At which point they would look at me and say, “Huh,” then shrug and walk away in disappointment.

I was always shocked by their lack of response, and it really got to me. Coming up with jokes and finding the funny in things seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I couldn’t grasp how other people just didn’t get it. In fact, other people’s lack of understanding about how I did what I did and my inability to explain it to them caused me to become passionate about finally finding an answer.

For the past fifteen years I’ve thought, read, analyzed, and studied this wonderful but nebulous quality called a sense of humor, and tried to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to think funny, speak funny, write funny, and ultimately, be funny. The world can always use more laughter and no one should ever need to rely on others to find it. Most people have a much better sense of humor than they realize or give themselves credit for. But we can all learn how to make ourselves laugh even more, as well as, give the gift of laughter to others by understanding what it is that makes for a great sense of humor and how to be truly funny. And that’s what ‘Everybody’s A Comedian’ is all about.

EVERYBODY’S A COMEDIAN!

THINK FUNNY:

Thinking funny is a skill that can be learned just like any other. Essentially, what professional comedians or anyone else with a great sense of humor is doing when they “think funny” is saying to themselves, “Show me the funny!” Funny people are always looking for whatever is humorous in a given situation, and they’ve been asking the question of “what’s funny” for so long until it has finally dropped out of their conscious awareness and become a part of their subconscious mind. Their subconscious is constantly in search mode for something to laugh about.

Reality is what you focus on. You don’t see the world as it is, you see the world as you are. If you’re an optimistic “glass is half full” person then what you focus on in life is the positive, what’s right with the world. Conversely, if you’re a pessimistic “glass is half empty” person you tend to focus on what’s wrong with the world. Funny people focus not so much on what’s right or wrong about the world, but on what is incongruent about a thing or experience.

The key to humor and comedy and finding what’s funny is finding what’s incongruent in any situation. Roget’s Thesaurus includes as synonyms for the word “incongruent” the following: paradoxical, absurd, capricious, fickle, twisted, screwy, bizarre, contradictory, conflicting, juxtaposed, and unpredictable, just to name a few.

So, the root of all humor and comedy is ultimately what is incongruent.

Now, if we can get philosophical for just a moment, go a little deeper and look a more closely, we find that what is incongruent isn’t the world so much as it ourselves. The reason why is because we are finite beings, and as such we are incapable of perceiving everything at once. We can only perceive a small portion of Reality, and that portion we focus on is what becomes our “reality” in any given moment. And that’s where the comedy starts. Since we can’t take in everything we end up engaging in three kinds of mental processes to make sense of our experience: distortion, deletion, or generalization. These three processes are at the heart of humor and comedy because they’re all about incongruence. Most of the time we’re not consciously aware of this process at all, but comedians and people with a great sense of humor are. They’re always looking for what’s distorted, deleted, or being generalized where maybe it shouldn’t be. They’re looking for what incongruent.

Just look at some of the different forms of comedy and try and match up how they relate to incongruence, distortion, deletion, and generalization:

Irony, Sarcasm, Whimsy, Satire, Camp, Sardony, Burlesque, Deadpan, Caricature.

Finding what’s funny is a matter of holding the gem of experience in your hand and slowly turning it around to view it through the different facets until you finally find the one aspect that strikes you as humorous and makes you laugh. It’s merely a matter of getting good at reframing your experience. The trick is to keep doing it until it becomes second nature. That’s what “thinking funny” is all about.

WRITE FUNNY:

Building on what we learned in the last section, let’s take a look at how we can apply the idea that all comedy and humor is based upon incongruence, specifically, distortion, deletion, and generalization.

There are many kinds of humorous writing, but for our purposes I’m going to focus on writing that is meant to be performed, the spoken word.

Speakers tell stories, and all stories are comprised of three parts or acts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Similarly, all jokes, from one-liners to humorous anecdotes to full blown funny tales, are also comprised of the same three parts. Only in comedy they’re called: the premise, the set up, and the punchline.

Here’s the three part structure of all jokes:

Premise: You give the basic information for the joke or story.

Set Up: You create tension or conflict and lead the audience in the direction you want them to. It’s is actually misdirection but the audience doesn’t realize it yet.

Punchline: You give the surprise ending and resolution to the story.

As an example, here’s a joke I wrote for a speaker friend of mine:

“A lot of people are skeptical about self-help motivational material, but it really works!… Five years ago, I bought Tony Robbins’ ‘Personal Power’ CDs, and then somebody stole them out of my car…Today, that kid runs the biggest chain of illegal chop shops in the entire Midwest!”

Now, let’s break it down:

Premise: “A lot of people are skeptical about self-help motivational material, but it really works!…

Set Up: “…Five years ago, I bought Tony Robbins’ ‘Personal Power’ CDs, and then somebody stole them out of my car…”

Punchline: “…Today, that kid runs the biggest chain of illegal chop shops in the entire Midwest!”

As you can see, it follows the three part structure quite nicely. In the premise, we establish the general story. In the set up we misdirect the audience with information that leads them in the direction we want them to go. And in the punchline, we “cut for the punch” as they call it.

In the same way the secret to magic is about the misdirection created by sleight of hand, the secret to good comedy is about the misdirection resulting from sleight of mouth. In both cases the performer is continually setting up the audience and then defeating their expectations. It is a constant process of creating tension in the audience’s mind and then releasing it. The reason audiences play along is that in participating in the game they’re rewarded at the end with laughter.

WRITE FUNNY:

Now that you know the structure of a joke, let’s look at the kind of content that makes material really funny. The following is a short list of bullet points to help you in creating your own humorous material or for “punching up” the material you already have to make it even better.

Writing Techniques For More Humorous Content:

As Shakespeare wrote, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Cut out all superfluous words. The tighter the better. When in doubt leave it out.

Write your material so that it has a certain rhythm and meter. Think of spoken word poetry when you write. When you speak your material it should flow. Rhythm grabs the audience’s attention and holds them just like music with a good strong beat.

Use language that grabs the attention of the ear.

Be specific in your word choice so that you ensure the audience is picturing and thinking exactly what you want them to.

Use sensory based language as much as possible and abstract language as little as possible. Again, you’re trying to create a clear picture in the audience’s mind so they will follow you.

Write the punchline with as few words as possible.

Write your punchline words with hard sounds as opposed to soft sounds. For example, a hard “K” sound is always easier to hear and process as opposed to a soft “S” sound.

Always place the key punchline words as far at the end of the line as possible. You want to hold the tension as long as possible and release the

Use Tags. Tags are smaller punchlines that follow the original punchline of a joke and build upon them. In essence, you are drawing out the maximum amount of laughter from your joke that is possible. Tags keep the audience laughing

Use Triples. The three part structure here again but on a smaller scale. In writing tags for your punchlines it is often best to write two more punchlines after the first. This is what’s known as a triple.

Use Callbacks. Callbacks are basically bringing back a punchline used earlier in your performance. Look for ways to drop the key words of previous punchlines into later material. It gives a sense of cohesiveness to your show and is a fairly easy way to milk another laugh from the audience.

Never throw any material away. Keep everything. People often write ahead of their ability to perform. While you may not be able to make it work now you may figure out how to make it work later and use it somewhere else.

If a joke doesn’t work the way you’ve written it, rewrite it until it does work. Sometimes the order or syntax of a joke can be altered by only one word and end up being the difference between silence and a huge laugh that gets an applause break.

Write what you know. Write honestly and write material that is congruent with who you are or who your stage persona is. It’s the joke that needs to be incongruent not the performer. When performers are incongruent it breaks rapport, you lose trust, and you lose the audience.

BEING FUNNY:

There are two aspects to “Being Funny”: Presentation and Presence. Presentation is about technique, whereas, presence is a quality of your Being. Presence is something that comes from within and is aided by the use of execellent presentation techniques.

PRESENTATION:

Your presentation is all about what you do onstage and how you do it with your voice and body. Presentation is divided into two primary skill sets: Voice and Movement.

Voice:

Your voice is an incredibly powerful tool for communicating humor. There are two components to voice work: your voice itself, and your best friend onstage, your microphone. The following is a short list of bullet points for maximizing the comedy and laughter in your presentation. These are just a few of the vocal techniques that the greatest performers know and use all the time in their shows.

Vocal Techniques:

Speak and project your voice fully from your diaphragm.
Vary vocal tonality as much as possible to keep the audience engaged.
Vary vocal rhythm for variety to hook the audience and keep them engaged. Think of your vocal delivery as more for a poem or song.
Match vocal tempo to the suit the emotion, intention, and style of comedy.
Make sure your voice expresses the emotion and intention clearly.
Use words that sound good to the ear and grab the audience’s attention.
Be specific in the words you choose. Precise language helps paint the picture you want the audience to be seeing in their heads as they’re listening to you. For example: “car” isn’t nearly as interesting, picturesque,  or funny as “jalopy” or “rust bucket”.
Use sensory based language. The audience should see-hear-feel-smell-taste the material you’re talking about. As Woody Allen said, “Stand up comedy is the art of creating verbal cartoons.”
Vocally “punch” your punchlines. It sets up a subconscious pattern so that the audience knows when to laugh.
After the punchline, hold for the laughter fully before proceeding.
For ‘Tags’: wait for the laughter to die down 1/3, then tag it out with additional punchlines, preferably in sets of three, known as ‘Triples’.
Punch ‘Callbacks’ with exact same vocal tonality you used with the original punchline.

EVERYBODY’S A COMEDIAN!

Voice:

Microphone Techniques:

Make the microphone your friend. It is your single biggest ally onstage. Learn all the things it can do for you to help make your show riveting.

Use the microphone as a prop whenever possible for better presentation. A microphone can be anything from a phone to a hammer to a microscope to whatever you want it to be. It helps convey your story more visually. Your imagination is the limit here. Get creative, improvise and see how many things it can “be” for you onstage.

Use the microphone to help you create sound effects you could never do on your own. Again, this helps to make your stories more “real” for the audience.

Vocally “punch” punchlines with projection into the microphone. When you get to the word or words that make up the punchline, push them harder than normal into the microphone.

Doing so, says to the audience, “hey, listen up this is the funny part to laugh at.”

Use more bass in the sound mix for better comedy. Low frequencies penetrate the physical body better and result in more “gut” laughs.

Movement:

Body Techniques:

Physicalize your material. Act out your stories with your body. Remember we live in a visual culture. Entertain first and you will inform.

Make your body language congruent with your emotion and intention. Incongruent body language is confusing to the audience and can distract them just long enough to rake them out of the moment.

Use accents and dialects wherever possible to help realize your characters onstage. People like and pay attention to “people” not simply words and information.

Get into your characters and exaggerate them. Exaggeration and distortion is the essence of humor. It is the unexpected that creates surprise and thereby laughter in the audience.

Use Spatial Anchoring for punchlines. Pick a spot onstage and return to that spot each time you’re ready to deliver a punchline. It sets up a subconscious pattern in the audience so they know when to laugh. Repetition is the key. If you do it effectively, you can move to that spot and the audience will start laughing even before you deliver the punchline!

Use the 1-2-3 Punch when delivering humor or comedy. Deliver your premise to one side of the audience, your set up to another side, and then deliver your punchline front and center. This creates both a physical and visual rhythmic pattern that the audience will hook into subconsciously, letting them know when to laugh.

BEING FUNNY:

PRESENCE:

Presence is a quality that while often difficult to describe or define is immediately obvious when we see or experience it. In it’s more positive aspect, it is often described as charisma or charm. It’s that magnetic quality an individual radiates and thereby draws the attention of others.

Presence is about identity. Whenever your are completely I-dentified with something then your are it. Whatever it is, you don’t just believe it, you know it. It’s more than just a part of you. You and it are one. It is you. You don’t even think about it. It’s simply a given.

People who possess comedic presence don’t just believe they’re funny they know they’re funny. Funny is a part of their Being. They are literally “being funny”. Comedic presence is a kind of presence with a slightly different flavor. It feels light and playful yet confident. When we are around someone who possesses comedic presence we find ourselves feeling much the same. We feel lighter, more playful, happier, and we laugh heartily and easily, because presence, like laughter, is wonderfully infectious.

As you learn, practice, and apply the techniques shared here, bear in mind that, ultimately, they are just that, techniques, and nothing more. As such they aren’t what makes you funny. They are what allow you to fully express the unique sense of humor that you already possess quite naturally. What makes you funny isn’t something outside you; it’s what’s inside you. The best advice I was ever given in comedy was, “Remember kid, it’s not the jokes, it’s you that’s funny.” The more you practice using the techniques the more you will see your sense of humor grow until you experience the direct truth of that statement; It’s not the jokes, it’s you.

Since everyone has a sense of humor, everyone is funny, and that means everyone has comedic presence, too. It’s merely a matter of recognizing that felt presence within – that light, playful, happy way of seeing and experiencing the world – and allowing yourself to tap into it. We all have many wonderful and humorous stories to share that are uniquely our own. And it is because we know them by our direct lived experience that we own them. They are our stories and no else can tell them like we can. Use the techniques, be patient with yourself, and make them your own. Feel free to experiment with the techniques. Get curious and play with them, because play is just another way of saying “experiment” but with a lot more fun involved. It’s also a way of coming to know something more deeply. So enjoy and have fun because life’s too important to take seriously. And remember, Everybody’s A Comedian!