"What's So Funny?"

by Jerry Corley, founder of the Stand Up Comedy Clinic

Several people have contacted me asking me a simple question: “How do I write a joke.” The question doesn’t stay simple for long. Soon it explodes into an argument of whether they want to do “jokes,” or “stories.”  “The simple fact is: A joke is a story! Sid Caesar, master comedian, performer and writer once said a joke is a story with a curlicue.” People argue with me all the time that formula and structure have no place in today’s comedy. In fact, those folks are either completely naive or they are lying to themselves, because every great comedian—whether he knows it or not—is using comedic structure.

To understand how to write a joke, we must first understand why people laugh. Fact: the number one element that triggers human laughter is SURPRISE. It’s like magic, only with words. A magician surprises the audience when he does his trick. If there is no surprise, there is no trick. The formula for any magician is to have surprise. Without formulating surprise, you’re gonna have one hell of a boring act.

It’s the same with comedy. Once you understand this, you can do one of two things: 1. You can start to ramble and figure out how to surprise your audience… or 2. You can develop an understand of the structures or “formulas” in comedy that create surprise for the audience, whenever you want. Two other major reasons humans laugh are embarrassment and recognition, but we’ll get to those later.

The key is for any joke to work, there has to be some kind of surprise. So the next question is: How to we create surprise? The easiest way to create surprise is to  lead the audience to assume one thing—then surprise them with something different. (See how it’s similar to magic?)

• I woke up in the hotel this morning and the housekeeper was banging on the door, just banging… Finally, I had to get up and let her out.

Let’s look at the joke. It’s a common situation. Most people have been in a hotel room and been disturbed by a knocking housekeeper. She knocks because she’s outside and wants to come in. That’s what the audience assumes! So as a comedian or humorist, you switch the ending at the last minute to surprise them. This is called a “reverse” in comedy and it works all the time. The key is that you don’t want to use this same formula repetitively, because the ending will then be expected to be switched and you’ve given away the surprise. Remember, without surprise, there is no laugh. Let’s look at a couple more jokes that come out of talking about personal setbacks in my life that I formulated into jokes:

• “I’ve been losing my hair…some guys say it doesn’t bother them when they lose their hair. It bugs me a little bit…like, in the mornings, when my wife is running my fingers through my hair—but I already left for work!
• I remember one relationship this chick broke up with me and I went over to her house at two in the morning to beg her to take me back. I was banging on the door, yelling, “Stacy! Stacy!—which is weird, cuz’ her name is Emily.

Each of these jokes use the formula of leading the audience to assume one thing then shattering that assumption with something different.

This is just one formula for writing jokes. Of course each of these can be weaved into a story and disguised as a story so it not so obvious that you’re telling jokes. If you disguise it into a story the audience is less likely to see the joke coming and be surprised.  And, like a magician if they don’t see it coming if makes for a better act.

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About the author:

Jerry Corley is a professional comedian with 25 years experience touring the globe. He was also a contributing writer to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno for 8 years. Currently, he is still touring and also teaching comedy classes in Los Angeles at the Stand Up Comedy Clinic. 

I was driving today listening to the radio loudly (it hides the strange new noise coming from my front end–I mean who needs to pay $600 to a mechanic, right?) and a commercial came on. It was that Dos Equis commercial; “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” I like this commercial. It’s interesting. It’s funny. It has a nice film-quality, tension-building score, and when you’re listening to a radio commercial who doesn’t want a nice film-quality, tension-building score, right? Bottom line: I dig the commercial. I doesn’t get me to buy the beer but who cares? Well, besides the marketing folks doling out the mil to pay for it…

Anyway, you’re probably asking what this has to do with comedy being easy? What I mean by that, is sometimes–if you fine-tune your ’sense’ of humor you can see things funny that other people don’t necessarily see as funny, with practice and a lot of work, (you knew there was a catch, huh?)–then comedy can be easy. In fact sometimes comedy just writes itself. I’m a big structure guy when it comes to comedy. Formula and structure win out all the time and they are time-tested and ageless. No matter how you slice it, or what comedian you are talking about. Structure wins. Because with structure you can create surprise and since surprise is the number one trigger to produce laughter in humans, you create comedy. Watch any comedian who was on top for a while, then suddenly they aren’t. They can’t seem to turn it around…they aren’t funny. It’s usually because they lost their structure or they never knew what it was in the first place. I won’t mention any names because it would be indiscreet–’Dice’ Clay.

Back to surprise. There are several ways to formulate surprise in humor. One of them is to use incongruities; match two things together in a relationship that normally don’t fit together, (ie: Brittany Spears and motherhood) and you have surprise…surprise creates laughter. You have comedy! Easy? The key is, it takes a lot of work to hone that sense of humor so that you can more readily recognize inconguities not recognized by the masses and present them. (Otherwise known as observational comedy)…

Back to the Dos Equis Commercial…the humor in this commercial is evident in the body of the commercial. But, to me, it’s not as funny as the stuff that shows up that they didn’t plan to be funny. In this case it’s the product tag at the end. The announcer says in his announcer voice: “Imported by ‘Cervezas Mexicanas’…  (here comes the incongruity..), White Plains, New York.” Of course he utilizes the spanish accent on the words “cervezas mexicanas” and goes back to the professionally-trained announcer voice on: “White Plains, New York.” The incongruity of something so authentically Mexican would be imported by something so white-bread that it even has the name ‘White’ in it, strikes me as funny! It’s like seeing a sign on a restaurant: “Authentic Chinese Cuisine…Se Habla Espanol.” Again: Incongruity.

In fact, with “Cervesaz Mexicanas…White Plains, New York,” you can actually imagine Conan O’Brien using that and then plugging in the running gag…”White Plains, New York” throughout an entire show; “…and later on the show, we have George Clooney paying us a visit, (pause for applause). He’s coming all the way from…(Conan flips his hair) “…White Plains, New York.”

Like I said…comedy is easy!

Jerry Corley is the founder of The Stand Up Comedy Cinic in “White Plains, New York”…just kidding! Burbank, CA.