Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler. – Albert Einstein
When it comes to being funny and making people laugh, one theory stands apart from the rest and that theory is SURPRISE.
Why do people laugh? In the book Comedy Writing Secrets, Mel Helitzer shares that psychologist Patricia Keith-Spiegel has identified two primary reasons for laughter, one of which is surprise. The other reason is superiority but for now, let’s focus on surprise.
Surprise is the focus for a couple of reasons:
- Mel Helitzer actually includes surprise as a necessary element of humor. So, it’s not just a theory, it’s a necessary ingredient.
- In The Ten Commandments of Comedy, Gene Perret boldly proclaims that, “Surprise is such an essential element of comedy that if your joke, story, anecdote, or piece of business doesn’t have a twist or a surprise to it, it’s not comedy.”
And, SURPRISE just so happens to have a mechanical element that allows anyone who understands it to use it to make people laugh.
How do we surprise people?
We are going to create surprise by using our audiences’ human nature against them.
In the book Understanding Interpersonal Communication: Making Choices in Changing Times, the authors discuss something called the listening gap. Basically, we can understand up to 800 words a minute but most people speak in the 150 to 200 words a minute range.
As a result, our audience is ahead of us. Each member is creating a visual and even anticipating or expecting what is going to be said next.
It’s human nature and cannot be avoided.
In addition, all the words and phrases we use have an expected and assumed meaning behind them. Likewise, out tone and body language add to that expected, assumed meaning.
As a result of the “listening gap” and the assumed meaning of words, we can play with this visual and assumed meaning and “surprise” them when we don’t agree with the visual or assumption.
If I asked you, “Do you ever wake up grumpy?” What am I asking you? It’s not a trick question. I’m asking you “do you ever wake up in a bad mood” which is the assumed meaning and that assumed meaning carries with it assumed responses.
What if we twist the assumed meaning? What if our answer is “No, I just let him sleep” or “No, I just let her sleep.” If we answered that way, we would get a laugh.
Because we twisted the assumed meaning and created a surprise.
The key skill then to creating a surprise and generating a laugh is to recognize the assumed meaning and expectation.
The second sub-skill is to twist the assumed meaning to be something else.
Brian Kiley: “The other day our boy talked back to my wife. She told him to do something and he said “No. I don’t want to.” So I had to pull him aside and said “Listen, you have to…”
Up until this point, what is the assumption? What is the expected or acceptable way for Brian to complete the sentence?
Now that the expected conclusion is formed in your mind, you are primed for a twist.
The other day our boy talked back to my wife. She told him to do something and he said “No. I don’t want to.” So I had to pull him aside and said “Listen, you have to…”
Here is Brian Kiley’s twist: “ … teach me how to do that.”
Note on timing: the three dots, an Ellipsis, is used to indicate a pause and allow the audience time to solidify the assumption and expectation in their mind prior to twisted it for the laugh. See…Timing can be taught and learned too.
To generate a laugh by using surprise, the idea is to twist the statement’s expected meaning until the statement has a new meaning.
The literal interpretation is a common way to twist a statement:
“I just flew in from Chicago and boy are my arms tired.”
“Call me a cab.” “Ok, you’re a cab.”
A common way to twist a statement is to use exaggeration.
Brian Kiley: “My wife is the one who talked my into shaving my head, she said I’d look much younger and I do. I now look like I’m a week old.”
We can also twist on double meanings of words.
Rodney Dangerfield: What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol’ man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away.
We can twist with an afterthought:
Rick Olson: My wife and I were about to embark on this bicycle ride with 8,000 other cyclists. That is a lot of spandex.
We can twist by clarifying the meaning:
Jim Gaffigan: Babies are a lot of work, I try to pitch in, I do diapers. I don’t change them I just say ‘you need to do this diaper.’
Statements often contain expectations or assumptions centered around: who, what, when, where, why, how.
Who: Rick Olson
I love high-heels and I beg my wife to wear them. She finally agreed and said this weekend she would… let me.
What: Brian Kiley
One thing I remember, we used to do something called family night, where we set aside one night a week for each of us to spend a night with a different family.
When: Brian Kiley
You want your kids to be perfect and they’re not my wife told me today that my daughters been shoplifting and now I have to deal with that…I’m going to wait until after my birthday.
Why: Brian Kiley
I call my wife pumpkin because she always gets smashed around the holidays.
How: Brian Kiley
I found out today that my wife’s parents are coming to visit and my wife hasn’t mentioned anything yet. I can just tell the way the animals in my neighborhood are behaving.
Time to practice.
Statement: When I cook I use wine.
1. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Simple. Sometimes we quite too early and miss out on the best joke. Also, when we start a creative act we tend to be “in our heads” and simply spending a little time in the act allows the process to really gain momentum.
Also, if you remove the burden of being good and go for quantity, you will have more fun and will enjoy the process.
Finally, because John Vorhaus says so in his book The Comic Toolbox: How to be Funny even if You’re Not.
John Vorhaus, THE RULE OF NINE:
For every ten jokes you tell, nine will be trash. For every ten ideas you have, nine won’t work. For every ten times you risk, you fail.
Depressing? Not really. In fact, the rule of nine turns out to be highly liberating because once you embrace it, you instantly and permanently lose the toxic expectation of succeeding every time. It’s that expectation, and the consequent fear of failure which give your ferocious editor such power over you. Remove the expectation and you remove the power. Simple, clean; a tool.
Go for 10.