I've only watched a little bit of the video so far, but using the tips I picked up I came up with a random topic by looking around my room (Alarm Clocks) and I delved into what Alarm clocks are typically associated with (Sleep, Snooze button, annoyance, agony, awakening, etc) until eventually I came across dreams and after that Nightmares. Here's what I got out of it. Maybe it's worth a chuckle, I don't know, but here it is: "Alarm Clocks are nice if you want to wake up from a nightmare to get ready for a new one".
I love it! I first read your comment and the second stanza hadn't loaded. The first stanza was funny in its own weird way (in the context of the "how to make jokes" video, and it was sort of a non-joke.
Lots of people complaining over this, did you really expect him to write 15 killer jokes in the length of this video? He'll polish these up and work on the delivery and all that! It's fascinating to watch someone creating things from nothing, and it is very useful.
People have opinions. Most of the people who are commented can't sit down and generate material from scratch. So they just complain. The thing is that I state in the video that I'm writing in real time and some jokes are gonna suck. That's the nature of generating material. You're going to have people that don't think it's funny. There are people that don't think Jerry Seinfeld is funny. There are people who think Kevin Hart isn't funny. So I don't worry too much about people who don't dig the video.
Man...these past two weeks, I've been listening to your RU-vid videos while working. I bought your ebook Breaking Comedy's D.N.A. some time back and so far you are the real deal. You really break things down. I'm gonna sit down and try this listing method a few times to see how it goes for me. I'm constantly writing things down on my phone's notepad and I really want to work on a set and try stand up for the 1st time soon. Thanks for all your tips on RU-vid.
Yes. It is incredibly helpful and, importantly, it's reassuring. Because a lot of the stuff that Jerry writes down in this video is somewhat similar to what I put on paper the first time I approach a topic -- i.e., a good start but not necessarily a killer joke yet. This shows me that *maybe* I don't suck fundamentally. Now I'll take Jerry's techniques to increase my output and be more strategic about the writing process, and practice, practice, practice, and perhaps something good will come out of it, eventually. Thank you Jerry.
Remember Ace, these are all first draft jokes. They don't all make the cut, but you NEVER cut during the writing process... what if that joke wasn't great for my voice, but was better suited for another comic who was doing the ESPYS and needed some last minute Tiger jokes. I could sell it. So cutting that joke out of the writing process would've killed a potential revenue creator... and it cost me nothing to write it...RIGHT?
Its 2020 and this still helps me as a new comedian ....all of your videos actually im doing my 1st one on Monday thanks for acknowledging my process in writing i write things i see and write off memory in what happened to me i hope you see me on comedy central one day 🙏appreciate everything ..i remember 1 thing never quit
This style of comedy is not my personal favorite, however, I must admit that it is a great place to start when learning how to develope your creative mind into making jokes. Thanks for this. I have a starting point now.
Sergio, the craft of comedy is to create laugh points. Whether you tell stories or jokes, there has to be laugh points. If you're a story teller, you can finesse some of the jokes into your stories to create laugh points. There's a craft and structure to stand up. Take, for example Bill Burr. Fantastic comedian. Tells stories. But within his stories you will find pure comedy structure. Here's eleven minutes of Burr deconstructed. It's a great lesson in learning the structure of jokes and stories: www.standupcomedyclinic.com/3513/how-bill-burr-uses-comedy-structure-too/
Superman: The Man of Steel Says the low life loser who is a Superman fan.Do you know what kind of people superheroes attract?Wimps, gamma males, social outcasts.
I went to the library n asked to borrow their DIY Suicide book. NO! - the librarian replied angrily and when I asked why not, she said "bc you're not going bring it back!
Jerry, I respect you so much for sharing your "Listing" technique and approach to writing jokes. Thank you for taking the time to help out the comics who are just breaking out. This tutorial is priceless.
''Tiger has today, issued a statement saying that he never wanted to hurt his wife, all he wanted from the women was to get his balls washed.'' Does that work?
Sorry so late with this, I just ran across this in 2024 lol how about this ending!!! He wanted from the other women was to get multiple hole in ones 😂😂😂😂
Thanks Jerry. Dear God it's great to have someone reach out with writing tools. When the coincidental comedy runs dry, it's nice to have methods to manufacture :-)
This is a great tool for developing a general sense of humor. If you want to develop improv jokes instead of fully scriped routines like me, this is a good start.
A famous rapper was so moved after witnessing his grandma’s touching funeral that he decided to quit his job to become a coroner. Now instead of hittin’ them verses, he worries about who can fit in them hearses
Always love how you break down jokes and joke writing. It has been a great way to brainstorm punchlines as well as help me when I come up with funny dialogue in screenplays. Thanks for the information.
I appreciate this video so much. 2019 I mean to dedicate myself to this craft as I've put it to the side so long. I'm late to start, but I want to make this a part of my life and this video is perfect. Thank you Jerry.
Wow! Thanks for posting this Jerry. I have been the funny guy all my life in social settings, but that is more improv and just riffing on what other people are saying. When I finally starting doing standup, I realized very quickly that it is HARD. I'm learning how to mold my raw ideas into standup material and this helped a LOT!
How can anyone give this video negative reviews. This video gives you tips on how to write jokes and gives you specific ways to help you in the writing process. If you don't want to do it this way, then don't. Don't trash someone for taking the time to give people free advice to help them. I'm a comic and always looking for new ways to find and develop material. I don't think this ways is the only way, but the more you know, they better off you'll be. Thanks for posting this vid.
Hi Jerry! Thank you so much for taking your time to put up this video and sharing a few techniques with us. People tell me I'm a funny guy but the stuff I do is just totally off the cuff and unrehearsed. Kind of like those weird Seinfeld observations. I never realized until now that being a good comedian takes work and that telling good jokes is both an art and science. I just went through your video twice and absorbed what I could. If I make any money from comedy, I'll take my first paycheck (after deductions for a soda and pub fries) and buy your course as a way of saying thank you. :)
when you started talking about sex and said "worried that we might not perform well", i then said to myself "well Woods clearly didnt perform well. he's out of the top 20."
I've always loved jokes and comedy of all varieties and facets, and am known around the shop to tell corny one liners to make my friends and coworkers laugh or groan. But more of late been more interested in actually coming up with my own jokes, because I'm finding my online joke sources are running flat, and seeing people post the same jokes over and over. As well as listeing to a podcast where the 3 hosts are comedians(of varying quality). But one of them just comes up with the most random stuff off the cuff, and made me want to understand the mindset more. And so in my searches i found you Jerry. And am slowly working through your videos. Anyway, in this demonstration when you mentioned "Ball washer" along with other news you were reading off i came up with this in my head while listening at work. "One of the only reasons Tiger Woods was caught having multiple affairs with over 120 women, was that after having that much sex, he decided put an ad in the paper for a professional ball washer." Thank you for sharing all that you do, and i will continue to listen to more of your videos.
Take out half those words: You know why Tiger got caught? He needed his balls washed. Something like that. Nobody like a loooooooooong set up. Let my brain do the work. I can fill in the blank. The difference is once I do the work, I naturally laugh. If you sell me the joke, I'm already bored halfway through.
16:43 that's not where I thought he was going at all. My instant thought was "especially considering that, as a golfer, he'd think that the lowest score wins." Or something like that.
This is without a doubt the best information I have found on writing stand up comedy. Thank you so much for sharing and not feeding us a bunch of BS. I am going to try to take one of your weekend workshops in Vegas. PS. I saw your evening at the improv video and thought it was hilarious. Thanks again!
You include phrases and cliches too! In fact, sometimes that's my favorite way to write. Phrases and cliches give you an opportunity to respond to either something that someone has said or hit a cliche and change the ending thus creating strong surprise.
I had this notebook where I would write some of my jokes and told my 6 year old sister that when I become a famous prestigious comedian my grandchildren could sell it for a shitload of money. That's when she tells me that someone would have to want to marry me for that to happen :(
you could have delivered it better i think. In the last sentence.."she told me marrying her would be the only way I was getting kids" or something similar
I've been watching you for a while. I've been trying to write jokes. I just tried the listing technique for a story I'm working on and I get it now. After listing, I thought oh God, now I have to be funny and I looked at all the raw material I just generated and calmed down. I thought "piece of cake" Thanks. I came up with jokes and it was easy. Before it took so much out of me that if I came up with 2 or 3 funny lines, I was done. I came up with 7 and I only need 1. Thanks.
Thanks for putting this out. Been getting a lot of speaking engagements lately and nothing saps my confidence more than seeing some disinterested faces in the audience. Hopefully this will improve the demeanor of some of my audience.
I'm starting to learn stand up comedy. I really enjoyed your clinic on youtube. The knowledge you have is incredible. The information you provided was awesome. I will utilise your techniques in helping me writing my material.
The more i start to understand the actual dynamics of jokes the more i feel like im losing my ability to be funny on the spot. Like I'm over thinking joke opportunities that would just go terrible if i executed them, letting these beautiful puns just pass me by
REPETITION IS the key to mastery. so starting today 4/1/2019 i'm watching 15 minutes of this video over and over again several times a day. move on after three days then watch the next 15 minutes several times a day for four days. then repeat over and over again. i should master the material in a couple months
This has been very helpful considering I'm an amateur comedian myself. I sort of dove into it on a whim a loved it. Now that I found this is direction I am headed-- I found that I have already applied a lot of these tools to my acts and never knew how they came about. But this helped me use more tools to hone my newfound craft and I appreciate you greatly
I still use this video as a reference point when I'm writing. I can't seem to find the video that you posted about writing for a corporate gig. Maybe it was this one but I remember you saying to write 5 to 10 minutes about their company and they'll think the entire show is about them. That helped me kill my first big corporate gig for a bank.
Jerry, By accident, at a senior center sing-along I showed the Laurel and Hardy movie clip " Way Out West" that contains the song "On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine", but better yet, Laurel and Hardys joking around the bar while the audience watched and sang with the music. This went over so well, I decided to add stand-up comedy to my music act thereafter. Now when I hold sing-alongs I interact with the audience using comedy too, and it works great. I could never go back to just music alone. So I've decided to create my own comedy. One of which is to tell the senior audience how to improve their aging memories by translating abstract things into pictures- this was the best sing-along/comedy show I ever did. For example, I told them how to remember who killed who - Abel and Cane by picturing Cane using a cane on Abel. Needless to say, it created a lot of different opinions and pictures in the minds of the audience as well as plenty of laughter from the double entendre. Your video of How to Write Comedy - Write 15 Jokes in 30 Minutes couldn't be simpler. Thanks again.
Isn't it amazing. This is probably material for 1 to 2 minutes. And it takes 45 minutes to create. So, to have one hour of stand up comedy, you have to write for approximately 20 to 25 hours (if we assume that this is 2 minutes of material). And then you have just the first draft.
Well most of it is explanatory of the process. In reality the process is internal and happens while the writing is happening - at least thats how it is with me
I'm sad to hear that you think 20/25 hours of work and writing is too much for a full hour of stand-up. No offence, mate, but good luck succeeding in any area of life if you expect to only work for a few hours and turn that into a business.
ROB DIRNENS you have assumed he thought 20 hours of work was a lot. What he said was "isn't it amazing..." take your preachy business shit craic elsewhere because you're boring af
This is great for jokes about celebrities, news, etc. But how about writing from a personal story/experience? How do we come up with the lists to compare and contrast? I'd love to watch a video on that!
“Last Sunday, ESPN reported that tiger woods had been pulled out of the top 20 golfers. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if Tiger didn’t pull out so much”
I just started making writing a habit and prepparing for my first open mic night. Your videos are amazing thank you! I bet everytime he shot a eagle one got spread.
Great videos! I have to record a short presentation and was doing some research on humor in hopes of peppering some in. I stumbled upon your videos and am finding them all VERY elucidating as well as entertaining. Just subscribed. Thanks for sharing 🙏👍🏼
Personally I am glad that someone made a video without background music drowning them out.... I get sick of everything on youtube and television being ruined by rap.... Good Job
Thank you for sharing!!! Thanka so much, that's amazing!! You know, maybe even if we dont ant to be comedians, but "distorting" events in our lifes in this way makes it much better to live life!!!
This is funny but the joke writing thing makes it seem bland and lacks personality. The best comics have personality oozing out of them to make them much funnier.
Absolutely. The beautiful thing about being able to write jokes from scratch is you don’t have to wait for inspiration, you create inspiration. Then the joke is still only in its infancy. You take it on stage and new inspirations occur that illicot tags, toppers and act-outs, turning that one joke into a bit.
I really want to get into stand up, its been a dream of mine since high school. This video helped me a lot-- because i was only using the coincidental comedy. Now i can make jokes of nothing. I was wondering if i have any questions, or jokes i want to bounce off of you. Can I? If you dont mind?
For those who want the TL;DR Comedy comes from making something funny not looking for something funny. Comedy can be COncidential or manufactured. In the case of this video, comedy is manufactured. One of the ways to do comedy is taking an idea and giving it a twist. YOu could do lists of things, situations, subjects or ideas and fill them with anything thats realted or not. So you can then combine everything by creating stuff.
the second I saw the first jokes in this vid would be about Tiger, I wrote this joke: for a golfer, Tiger as a "playa"/player was really good at rounding the bases.
Wow!! That was pretty genius! Loved watching your process it shows you're a true master. I know how hard that is and that was really epic...tons of takeaways so thank you very much!! And, some killer jokes and fantastic ideas! You make it look so easy ...that's the art!
The first joke I ever wrote was sophomore year of HS, when that Steve Carell movie came out about the 2008 financial crisis: "I saw The Big Short yesterday at the movies. I liked it, but I thought it was a little long."
I have just done this exercise, and I have never until now tried to write comedy or jokes. Always been funny, and wanted to try it, so this was my first attempt. Is there any way at all I could send you what I did for a critique? So I know if I have something or not. Thanks so much for this video, it really helped me with the first approach.
