A Weird Comedy Trick to Improve Your Jokes

Day 8 of The Comedy Writing Challenge: On Weird Specifics

Welcome to day 8 of The 21 Day Comedy Writing Challenge.

New to The Challenge? Start here. And here’s every Challenge post.

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Okay, onward.

Today we’re talking about getting weird and specific.

Comedic writing thrives on surprise. Nothing kills your funny writing quicker than clichés, familiar jokes, or a premise that feels like it’s already been done.

How do you surprise your audience? Well, there are many ways to do that.

But here’s one: Ditch bland generalities in favor of interesting or weird specifics.

Toy example: Imagine we’re drafting a humor piece, and we introduce a quirky character named “Sheila.” Now think about the difference between these two sentences:

• “Sheila’s signature move was giving great birthday gifts.”

• “Sheila’s signature move was giving birthday cheeses.”

Without knowing the details of how this sentence serves the piece/story overall, the second sentence is more interesting. Not only is the weird detail—birthday cheeses—kind of amusing, but it’s infused with more comedic potential.

The specificity of “birthday cheeses” makes it easier to escalate Sheila’s personality quirkiness. Think about all the questions the second sentence raises: How do people react to Sheila’s birthday cheeses? What does she do when someone is dairy-intolerant? Is Sheila a cheese snob, or is she just a cheese lover who wants to spread the joy of great cheeses? You can answer these questions in all kinds of interesting ways.

One easy way to upgrade your comedy is to replace a bland generality with an interesting specific.

But when should you make this upgrade? When should you be more specific in a headline, a joke, a line of dialogue?

The answer is, “when it makes things funnier” and “when it serves the premise.” Which is just another way of saying, “sometimes. It depends.”

Let me give you two examples from comedy pieces I’ve written. These are headlines that were served by an interesting specific or two.