Keep a Notebook
Don’t let the title fool you. This is easily the most useful chapter for learning how to write funny.
You never know when inspiration will hit you. You might be driving or stuck at a bus station with nothing better to do than write. There is no better motivation than boredom and you never know when it will strike so your should keep a notebook on you at all times.
When you have time to sit and think, apply basic writing styles and joke structures to the thoughts in your notebook. Try to find the version of the joke that flows off the tongue the easiest. Economy of words is like Occam’s razor in stand-up. The best jokes usually have the fewest and simplest words.
Test your material. Write a set list of the jokes you just wrote and go to an open mic and record yourself saying it.
Once you know a joke works, research it! If its original record it in your book of winners. If its not you can either scrap the joke or rewrite it. There are all sorts of lateral movements I can’t show on the flow chart below but this should give you a general idea of what comedians are doing on a constant basis.
ALWAYS keep a notebook, you never know when an idea is going to come, even in your sleep. Consider digitizing your notebook by uploading it to the cloud because losing a notebook is AWFUL! Google keep is a popular one, but there are other apps out there that allow you to organize your thoughts and develop sets almost effortlessly once you have a wide enough body of work. For this reason, don’t share your notebook with anyone. It’s one thing to workshop ONE joke, its quite another to pass your entire notebook around. Every joke has a lifespan and there’s enough “parallel thinking” in comedy as it is. For this same reason its a bad idea to stagnate once you know a joke is good and beat it to death. Unless you’re trying to get booked, don’t show off at open mics. They’re mostly there to test new things. If your are in a new city and want to retest jokes or get booked that’s obviously a different story. Test a joke 5 or 6 times in different places before you truly judge it. Also, write/test different versions of jokes and different approaches to them from other jokes you’ve already tested. You’d be surprised how some jokes just need the right segue to land. This is a particular good reason to RECORD your sets. You never know when you might accidentally switch something up and it works better. Unless you have the game tape to replay it might be lost forever. Listen to the good and the bad. If it makes you cringe… GOOD! You’ll want to improve it that much more.