Act 1 — Learn to see funny · Week 4 of 52
Surprise
How do you steer an audience somewhere so you can pull the floor away?
Take one setup and write ten endings nobody expects.
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Misdirection specialists. Watch for the sentence that plants the wrong picture.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
20 jokes: write the assumption the setup installed.
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
20 punchlines that each break a different assumption.
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Open mic or a live audience of three. Watch the faces at the turn.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Did they see it coming? Where did you leak the ending?
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?