A current student recently emailed me with a great question: “How do I get to the humor in a story?” She understood all the different comedy tools we had covered in class—exaggeration, analogies, rule of three, act-outs, etc.—but when she looked at her own stories, she couldn’t figure out how to turn them into punchlines.
She compared it to sculpting: You can look at the slab of marble, know where to chisel and know there’s a statue hiding inside, without knowing how to hammer it. First of all, it’s about time someone compared me to Michelangelo. Second, I think the marble analogy is actually making this harder, because it assumes there’s already a perfect joke hiding inside every story and your job is to uncover it. Sometimes there is! But sometimes you have a slab of marble and you just need to glue a funny (metaphorical) penis onto it.
Instead of running the entire story through every comedy tool you know, start by asking: Why do I want to tell this story? What part is strange, frustrating, embarrassing or shocking? Where did you have a strong opinion or emotional reaction? What moment do you keep thinking about? Usually that’s where I’d start looking for the comedy. You don’t necessarily need to make the entire story funny at once. Find the part where there’s some comedic tension and start there.
Then zoom way in on that moment. What did you actually think but didn’t say? What’s the exaggerated version of how you felt? What’s strange about the other person’s behavior? What would an insane person do in this situation? What’s the opposite of the reaction you’re supposed to have? If your story is about getting fired, for example, “I got fired” isn’t necessarily the funny idea. Maybe it’s that your boss used the phrase “exciting new chapter” while removing your health insurance. Now we have somewhere to chisel.
Another trick I use is much less intellectual: say the setup out loud several times and see what your brain wants to put after it. Don’t stare at a blank document for forty minutes trying to construct the mathematically perfect punchline. Say, “The weird thing about my mother is…” five times. “What pissed me off was…” “I couldn’t believe this guy would…” Sometimes your brain naturally starts completing the thought differently. Write down all the endings, including the stupid ones. Especially the stupid ones. Your first usable joke might be hiding three bad ideas after the one you thought was brilliant.
Once you’ve identified the funny idea, that’s when the comedy toolbox becomes much more useful. Can you exaggerate it? Make an analogy? Act out what you or the other person was thinking? Find an opposite? Add a rule of three? The tools aren’t slot machines where you insert a story, pull the “exaggeration” lever and a joke falls out. They’re ways to explore an idea you’ve already decided is worth playing with.
And if you can’t see those opportunities yet, that’s normal. Finding where to look for the joke is itself a skill. Any attempt at a chisel is better than none. The more stories you break apart, jokes you write and sets you perform, the faster you’ll start noticing the interesting spots without consciously going through a checklist. Eventually you’ll ruin perfectly normal conversations because while your friend is spilling their guts about their divorce, you’ll be thinking, “There’s definitely a punchline here.”