Get Better Taste

And how to turn your raw ideas into jokes or headlines...

We all know the standard advice to become a better writer: “read more,” “write more,” “work on your voice.” Etc.

That’s all good and necessary advice.

But I think there’s a more subtle type of growth that all humorists (and all artists) need to flourish in the long run. And that is to improve your taste.

It’s odd that we hear this advice much less often.

I wonder why? The more I think about it, the more glaring this omission becomes.

Why do I believe this? Well, do you want me to quote the Ira Glass quote?

Don’t make me quote the Ira Glass quote! I’ll do it!

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. - Ira Glass

Your craft is your ability to hit your writing target.

And your taste is instrumental in defining that target.

But it would be weird and sad if my taste as a beginning humor and fiction writer were the same as my taste five or ten years later. I hope that I grow as a writer over that time—and that includes my sense of what great writing is.

I want my aspirations and my intuition of what counts as a “killer work” to become more refined, more evolved, more interesting. My taste—and the kind of work I want to do—should evolve.

When we hone our craft, we close the gap between ability and taste. We become increasingly able to hit the mark that our beginner self imagined. And that’s a nice feeling.

But when we hone our taste, we push that gap a little wider again, in a good way. Our artistic aims become more lofty, or at least more refined and nuanced. With a more refined picture of what kind of writing pleases us, we have to stretch even further to write what we love.

If you tilt your ear a little bit, you could hear this as kind of sad and futile. It sounds like pushing on our taste means that we never really hit our target, since our target keeps moving. It sounds like the artist’s version of the hedonic treadmill.

But I don’t think that’s quite right.

Improving your taste carries a sense of pleasure, a deeper appreciation of your craft and your art. There is always another layer to unfold.

Growing our taste keeps us hungry.

I don’t want to publish something then think, “this is what Alex of three years ago wanted, so I guess I’m done now.”

I don’t want the journey to end.

So what does honing your taste as a comedy writer or humorist mean? I think it involves, at a minimum, periodically asking and re-asking these questions:

1. “What kind of writing do I love? Why?”

2. “What kind of comedy and writing do I dislike? Why?”

I want to keep asking these questions. Not so frequently that they drive me insane, but every now and then. And I want my answers to evolve and deepen.

Some taste refinement will surely happen naturally over time as you do your writing, editing, and reading reps. To a certain extent, as long as you’re committed to the comedy-writing process, you don’t need to worry too much about improving your taste. It will happen automatically.

But I think there’s value in periodically reflecting—maybe journaling if you’re into that—about what kind of writing you enjoy.

Moreover, when you read anything great, or encounter any special comedy, stop. Ask: “Why do I like this so much? What’s so good about it? Why is it special?”

Periodically revisit these questions: “What’s funny to me? What’s not funny to me?” Hopefully, you’ll find this answer to shift over time, perhaps subtly. That shift is your taste getting better. It’s a beautiful feeling.

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Reader Q&A: Turning raw idea snippets into headlines or jokes

“Hey Alex, you mention that a writer should have way, way more ideas than they could write. I struggle with being generative here. I might have snippets of an idea but they often feel like lines of a piece, less of a headline/theme. Any quick tips for over generating headline/themes?” - Sarah

Great question. It’s common to have idea snippets that feel incomplete, or overly broad, or underdeveloped. Most raw ideas are half-baked. Or maybe totally unbaked. That’s just part of being in the idea business.

So, my first observation is to tell Sarah this: You’re doing it right, and you’re on track.

The trick is to take these snippets and mold them. Work on them, and use them to create more refined ideas. That’s a normal part of the comedy development process.

Here’s what I recommend. Take one idea snippet that you like. View it as basically a writing prompt. Put it at the top of an otherwise blank page. Then use that idea snippet as your base prompt, and refine it into anywhere from three to six specific short jokes or headlines. (More than six is fine if you want to go whole hog ass wild, but I think three to six is a good number.)

Here are a few common snippet cases:

a. your snippet is quite general or vague. It needs more detail or specificity, or it needs one or two layers less abstraction.

b. It’s too specific or loaded with extra details. It needs to be simplified, or it needs to have a higher level of abstraction.

c. It’s too wordy or long.

d. It just needs the right format or packaging.

Not all snippets fall into those cases, but a bunch will, I reckon. So, here are the corresponding questions to ask:

1. If the idea is too general or vague: How could I make this idea an order of magnitude more specific? (That means roughly 10 times more specific.)

2. If the idea is too specific and overloaded with details: How could I abstract from this? What is the general idea that’s “up a level.”

3. If the idea is too wordy/long: How could I use this idea to generate one, short, simple, clear joke that’s about 4 to 16 words long?

4. What’s a format—like a list, a letter, a monologue, a FAQ, etc—that would easily fit here?

Often, refining a raw idea into a proper joke or headline means giving it the right level of abstraction and detail, and the right number of words. Sounds kind of easy when you say it like that, right?

This topic is easier shown with examples, and, happily, Sarah was kind enough to supply some of her example idea snippets. Let’s take a look at four of Sarah’s idea snippets.

1. Tired of hearing how AI is either coming to save us or kill us all

2. Hot take: summer is just a 90-day countdown to the best season (Fall)

3. Neighbors as an immersive experience (ie were subjected to everything that spills out— smells, sounds, general oddities, obsessive yard care)

4. Woman seeking transformational midlife crisis that doesn’t involve hiking/moving back to hometown to date high school ex/ self-funded trip around the world

I liked all four of these as topics/snippets, and all four feel like they could lead to some promising jokes, headlines, or concepts for comedy pieces.

2. Hot take: summer is just a 90-day countdown to the best season (Fall)

This snippet feels the closest, of the four, to a completed, ready concept. It’s the right length, and it has the perfect level of detail. Good subtext too: the idea of someone counting down to their favorite season brings up many interesting personality issues and ideas about the passage of time.

So, with this snippet, I would just keep the core idea the same, and I would try several re-writes of it, until it rolls off the tongue the right way. In fact, I think it’s not a bad headline at all if you just remove the pre-colon (“Hot take:”) and leave the rest as is.

Another possibility is to play with the voice by giving the narrator some kind of emotion or affect. e.g. “Summer Sucks. I Want Fall, Now!” or “Oh Dear Me, How I Tire Of Summer And Long For Autumn.” Adding a voice-y element to a joke or headline gives it a slant that can often make it feel more rounded.

1. Tired of hearing how AI is either coming to save us or kill us all

This one is a fabulous snippet because the POV is siting right there, like a cat on the kitchen counter.

To riff this into some headline options, we can simply write jokes or observations that someone who has this POV would make. Here’s one that comes to mind.

“How much money would I have to pay you right now to shut up about AI?”

3. Neighbors as an immersive experience (ie were subjected to everything that spills out— smells, sounds, general oddities, obsessive yard care)

The first thing that comes to mind here is this: what are the names of things that count as immersive experiences? “Theme park” comes to mind. So here’s a simple one:

“My Neighbor, The Theme Park!”

This is a case of abstracting and simplifying. A theme park covers all the immersive elements. Now all we need is a concise packaging. And the ideas in the snippet, like the obsessive yard care, give us a head start on what kind of jokes could appear in the draft.

And lastly…

4. Woman seeking transformational midlife crisis that doesn’t involve hiking/moving back to hometown to date high school ex/ self-funded trip around the world

Here’s an example of one where we get exactly what this is about: a woman having a midlife crisis without the attendant outdoor adventure cliches.

So this is another one where we can simplify the wording and perhaps add a subtle format idea. Here are a couple:

“I’m Happy To Announce That My Midlife Crisis Will Not Involve Hiking”

“Everything I Will Do During My Midlife Crisis Besides Hiking The Appalachian Trail”

The first one gives a social media announcement post format, the second a simple list format.

The point is not that those headline ideas are gold. The point is they were quite easy and straightforward to write. I could write them pretty fast given the initial idea snippets.

I daresay any humorist could use each of those snippets to come up with 3 or more headlines or jokes. Can you?