Act 1 — Learn to see funny · Week 1 of 52
What is funny?
Why do humans laugh at all?
Make a stranger laugh without telling a joke.
Writing & work rate
Jimmy Carr
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Three sets from three eras: a 1970s club set, a 1990s special, something from this year.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
Mark every laugh. Write one sentence on what the audience was released from.
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
Your first Comedy Hypothesis: one paragraph on what you believe makes people laugh.
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Tell one true, unpolished story to a human being who is not a comic.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Where did they laugh that you didn't plan? That's your first data point.
Watch the tape. Log what the room did, not what you felt.
The Comedy Genome
Tag what made you laugh.
Tag every joke you studied this week. After a few months the pattern stops being an opinion and becomes your comedy DNA.
Your twin asks
Eleven questions, every week.
- What made you laugh this week?
- What did the audience laugh at?
- Where did you lose them?
- Which jokes feel most like you?
- What are you afraid to say?
- What's the funniest version of this?
- What would Pryor do with this?
- What would Carlin attack?
- What would Hedberg remove?
- What would Rock repeat?
- What would Bamford make uncomfortably specific?