Learn to Be Funny - Creating Timeless Humour
Whenever I develop humorous material I always try to develop it from the standpoint of it being timeless.
What do I mean by that? I mean material that can still be performed whether it's six months from now or six years from now.
When I learnt to be funny in my stand-up comedy days, I used to watch many open mike comedians take to the stage and do routines and jokes about the latest reality TV show or the newest pop band or the current TV commercial.
But as soon as they started to work on the material in different venues their topic was out of date.
They usually then got rid of the material and would wait until the next reality TV show, pop group or whatever came round.
This to me seems like a never ending struggle to constantly come up with new material.
How do you manage to get your material to the point where it's getting solid laughs, if it constantly goes out of fashion and you cannot keep working it in front of an audience? That's not an efficient way to learn to be funny by any means.
This is why I set about developing timeless humour.
Sure, I am not still using material I was using 10 years ago, because my sense of humour has developed and things that were true for me then, are not true for me now.
But the material that I develop is not dependent on a given time, place, or circumstance in order to be successful.
You need to develop a method of creating vast amounts of humorous material, whether you're a comedian or whether you're just looking to inject a bit of humour into your speeches.
You also need to develop a way of testing and re-testing that material until it's getting solid laughter.
That said, once you have developed your sold, timeless material you can absolutely develop current or topical material, just don't be dependent on that for generating laughs on a frequent basis.
Say for instance you develop material about the latest pop group.
You might also consider keeping those laugh lines for use in the future on some other new band.
Jokes and humorous material can, and should, be adapted to suit different situations.
Your material would have already had an airing by the time you get to re-use it.
Comedy writers of the past had the opportunity to re-use their mother-in-law jokes once Margaret Thatcher became British Prime Minister.
Talk about recycling and creating "green humour".
So that is definitely something that you can do.
However, I would spend most of your time developing material that can be tested and then re-tested in front of multiple audiences until you are getting regular frequent laughs.
How many laughs are we talking about? Well, if you consider that the average headline comedian gets 4-6 laughs per minute that it is something that you should aim for, even though you might not be planning on a career in comedy.
What do I mean by that? I mean material that can still be performed whether it's six months from now or six years from now.
When I learnt to be funny in my stand-up comedy days, I used to watch many open mike comedians take to the stage and do routines and jokes about the latest reality TV show or the newest pop band or the current TV commercial.
But as soon as they started to work on the material in different venues their topic was out of date.
They usually then got rid of the material and would wait until the next reality TV show, pop group or whatever came round.
This to me seems like a never ending struggle to constantly come up with new material.
How do you manage to get your material to the point where it's getting solid laughs, if it constantly goes out of fashion and you cannot keep working it in front of an audience? That's not an efficient way to learn to be funny by any means.
This is why I set about developing timeless humour.
Sure, I am not still using material I was using 10 years ago, because my sense of humour has developed and things that were true for me then, are not true for me now.
But the material that I develop is not dependent on a given time, place, or circumstance in order to be successful.
You need to develop a method of creating vast amounts of humorous material, whether you're a comedian or whether you're just looking to inject a bit of humour into your speeches.
You also need to develop a way of testing and re-testing that material until it's getting solid laughter.
That said, once you have developed your sold, timeless material you can absolutely develop current or topical material, just don't be dependent on that for generating laughs on a frequent basis.
Say for instance you develop material about the latest pop group.
You might also consider keeping those laugh lines for use in the future on some other new band.
Jokes and humorous material can, and should, be adapted to suit different situations.
Your material would have already had an airing by the time you get to re-use it.
Comedy writers of the past had the opportunity to re-use their mother-in-law jokes once Margaret Thatcher became British Prime Minister.
Talk about recycling and creating "green humour".
So that is definitely something that you can do.
However, I would spend most of your time developing material that can be tested and then re-tested in front of multiple audiences until you are getting regular frequent laughs.
How many laughs are we talking about? Well, if you consider that the average headline comedian gets 4-6 laughs per minute that it is something that you should aim for, even though you might not be planning on a career in comedy.