Act 2 — Build the joke machine · Week 15 of 52
Analogies
Why is 'this is like…' a comedy superpower?
Explain something everyone knows using something nobody expects.
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Rock, Hicks, Mulaney — argument by comparison.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
Collect 20 analogies. Note how far apart the two objects are.
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
20 premises, each with three competing analogies. Keep the strangest that still fits.
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Test the best five.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Did the comparison illuminate or just decorate?
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?