Act 1 — Learn to see funny · Week 3 of 52
Incongruity
What happens when reality violates expectation?
Write a joke that is only funny because two things don't belong together.
Understatement & timing
Nate Bargatze
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Absurdists: Hedberg, Wright, Bamford, Nanjiani's early club work.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
Find 20 moments where two frames collide. Name both frames.
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
15 premises built by forcing two unrelated worlds together.
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Test 5 of them out loud, mid-conversation, in real life.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Which collisions were funny and which were just weird?
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?