Scattered Writing Tips

 
 
 
 

Transcript:

Speed Bumps, Signposts, Expensive Laughs, and Cheating.


These are all writing tips I try to keep in mind.


It’s exciting when you think a’ something funny.


Feels like a little sprinkle of magic.


I’ve never been able to find any pattern for when I think a’ funny things.  They just pop in my head.


So whenever you think of a funny thing, it feels precious.


Unfortunately, you can’t hold on to all the precious things.  Sometimes they get in the way, an you gotta chuck ‘em over your shoulder in front of an oncoming train.


What am I talking about?  Why would that be?


Well, often when writing and performing jokes, you come up with really funny lines.  And they get a great laugh.


Unfortunately, they disrupt the rest of the bit.


They veer off the main path.


They mess with the momentum you were building toward a larger piece of the bit.


They shift the energy in the room.


Gary Gulman is a comedian who wrote a bunch of tips for comics several years back on Twitter, and I thought he had used the term “speed bumps” to describe that type of joke within a larger bit.


However, I tried searching on Twitter for that reference and couldn’t find it.  So, not sure if it was Gary Gulman or someone else who came up with the term.


But speed bumps.  You can accidentally put funny speed bumps in your joke that mess up the rest a’ the bit.  You gotta sacrifice the precious thing an’ let it go.  It’s not worth it if it derails the train from headed the rest a’ the way to the station.


Here’s another one: this one I made up.  Continuing with the road analogies: Signposts.  Signposts are things that aren’t funny that you need in the bit to keep driving the story forward.

Your audience always needs to know where the story is headed.  If the audience gets disoriented within the bit, they will lose interest.  You need to give ‘em signposts that usher them along in the right direction and make them feel like they’re on their way toward something valuable.


Signposts don’ have to be funny, but they can be.


So, speed bumps are funny ideas that get the audience off track.


Signposts are not necessarily funny parts, but they keep the audience moving in the direction you want them moving.  They keep the emotional momentum, interest, and engagement on track.


Two more things: Expensive Laughs and Cheating.


Expensive Laughs.  I generated a lot of these when I first got into comedy.


What’s an expensive laugh?  This is a laugh that costs you in terms of believability.  It doesn’t seem like something you would actually think, or feel, or express.  It’s not consistent with who you are.  At least as the audience perceives you.  It may be consistent with who you are, but to the audience it feels like you’re lying to them; like you’re playing a trick.  You’re doing a cover song.  It’s not in your voice.


Not worth it.  Much like a speed bump, it’s gonna throw off the rest of what you’re doing on stage.


Again, always somewhat painful to chuck something funny you thought of onto the railroad tracks, but it’s worse if you try to hold onto it.  Maybe turn it into something you can put in a sketch for one of your friends or something like that.


Or, if you really do think or feel or believe that thing on some level, but it doesn’t blend with the rest of the material you’re currently working on, put it on the back burner.  Humans contain multitudes – we’re very complex.  Make an album where you do weird jokes.  Make an album where you do dark jokes.  Make an album where you do dirty jokes.  Make an album where you do clean jokes.  There are no rules as long as you’re being honest.  However, it will still be complicated to jump between those styles and forms all on the same album or within the same set.  Unless people know you in all your complexities, that’s going to cost you with the audience if you don’t plan it out a little bit.


It doesn’t have to get this extreme, but there have been some stories in the news over the years since I’ve paid attention to comedy about various comedians lying about the details of their lives for jokes.  Be careful with that.  Those are expensive laughs.  I’m not a believer that when you’re on stage you have to only say things that actually happened.  That can be limiting.  Unnecessarily creatively limiting.  I think emotional truth is more important in art.  However, you gotta be careful about saying “This is 100% true.  True story.  Check this out.” and then lying to peoples’ faces and saying something that isn’t true.  That’s gonna cost ya.  There’s a way to conduct thought experiments and play around with ideas on stage without straight-up lying to people.


So that’s expensive laughs, basically, it’s getting a laugh at the cost of being dishonest on some level.  You lose some integrity.


Last writing tip here: cheating.


Some people would call this being hack.


Cheating is unoriginal.  It’s not your own work.


It’s punching a laugh button you know will do the job because not everyone is a sophisticated stand up comedy connoisseur.  But, ideally you want your jokes to work with everyday people AND with sophisticated stand up comedy connoisseurs.


If you’re cheating, doing hacky stuff, there’s no risk in it.  It’s a fart joke.  Not to say you can’t write original fart jokes.  Fart jokes can be wonderful.


But generally people will laugh at a well-placed fart joke.  But how good do you really feel about that if there’s nothing unique or a little more nuanced about it?  “Nuanced fart jokes?”  Yea, that’s what I’m talking about on this podcast.


I struggle with this one, cuz I’m also a person who thinks most of what human beings are capable of saying and doing has already been said and done.


At least in Western culture, we’re all just repeating Shakespeare and The Bible at this point.  Human psychology only runs so deep.  There’s not that much new and fresh to say about the human experience.  We’re stumbling around in a modern context creating fresh commentary on things that have already been thoroughly commented on in art and literature for thousands of years.  None of this is fresh or new at the end of the day.


So, in that sense, it’s all cheating.  There’s nothing new under the sun.  We’re all influenced by what came before us and what other artists are doing.  None of us have any ultimate ownership over this stuff in the final analysis.  You can kind of be a filter, but you’re not a source of any of this.


Even so, there’s art that gets closer to originality than other art.  You may not be completely unique, but you can get further away from generic.


A decent test is, could anyone do the joke and be as successful doing it as you?  If you put enough of yourself in the joke, it will get more difficult for other people to reproduce.  And you’ll get further away from cheating.


So, to review, look out for funny speed bumps that throw off the mojo of a longer bit, make sure you give the audience enough signposts that they can follow where you’re going and not get lost, don’t lie to people for a laugh – they’ll trust you more if you maintain your artistic integrity, and try not to cheat by doing unoriginal things, even if that’s sort of impossible.


It’s kind of impossible and you’re going to feel like a fraud on some level if you experience enough of any art form.  There’s a tremendous amount of incredible stuff out there most people simply aren’t aware of.  The more you become aware, the more you’re exposed to enough work in your art form, it’s hard to feel like a complete original.


Here’s another way to think about it:  Part of what makes you an original is actually your flaws.  People can’t mess things up in the same way you would.  You might think it’s better to cheat and get an A on the test.  But actually, you’ll end up with a more interesting, original sound if you just go ahead and get B’s and C’s.  They’ll be your B’s and C’s.  The mistakes make it more distinct.


So, don’ go for the easy laugh.  Go ahead an’ fail an’ see what people think a’ that.

Michael Franke