Here are some tips on how to be a better storyteller from some of my favorite comedy writers.
I’ve always loved funny things.
Part of it is because I grew up in a big family full of jokesters. Another part of it is because my family loves comedies.
When I was a little kid, I spent a lot of time with my uncles because, like most immigrants, my parents spent most of the day working or at school.
So, after I did my 9-3 at school, I went home and my young uncles, who lived with us (also an immigrant thing), babysat me.
And one of the things they did a lot of was pranking me. They would get me to do all sorts of stupid things to satisfy their humour.
I remember one time, I was maybe 8, they made me dress up like an ancient Chinese mystic with a fake beard made of BBQ charcoal so that they could record a parody music video.
It was like they were trying to be YouTubers (way) before it was even a thing.
Anywhoo…
After they were done humiliating me, we would often times rent and watch comedies or watch sitcoms together.
We would watch the movie (or show), add in our own little jokes, act out certain scenes that made us laugh the hardest, and re-tell the funniest scenes a day after we finished the movie.
It was a blast! But most of the time, it was just them making the jokes.
I would try to get in my own jokes but they always ignored me. And being the youngest in the house, I didn’t like this one bit because I wanted all of the attention.
So, as time went by, I started to pay attention to the funniest jokes in the movies so that I could:
- Tell them during comedy downtimes in the house and get the laughs that I deserved
- Tell them to my friends at school and get the attention I craved
- Remix them and make them more ridiculous and outrageous so that I could get even more laughs (and attention)
I did this so frequently that it became part of who I am.
I didn’t even realize that I was recording jokes into my memory so that I could one day use it.
It’s as if I was a copywriter who was unconsciously saving good advertisements into my swipe file for future use or inspiration.
A flaw that arose from trying to be the alpha funny guy was that sometimes, it made me extra annoying, especially when I was younger and couldn’t read when enough was enough well.
I sometimes took jokes beyond the laughing point or overused jokes and it just made people upset or irritated with me.
However, learning to be funny has helped me as a writer.
Because I always wanted to make people laugh, I started to study how jokes are made in movies, music, and stand-up so that I can better inject comedy into my writing.
I watched comedies and tried to figure out why a joke worked. I listened to songs and analyzed why a punchline made me giggle. And I watched stand-up specials to see how jokes are set up.
And, needless to say, none of this worked.
I would just end up cackling my lungs out.
So, I did the next best thing –I watched interviews and read books and quotes from comedy writers on how they come up with funny stories and how they tell the stories. I studied their process.
And this, (not) surprisingly, worked so much better!
And while I was learning how to make my writing funnier, I inadvertently learned how to be a better writer.
Writing Advice from Comedians
So, here’s what you all came onto this article for –here is the best writing advice (that I try to apply every time I sit down to wordsmith) from some of my favorite comedic writers:
Seth Rogen on how to write a basic joke:
“Say the premise or thing you don’t like; say why you don’t like that thing by making a humorous observation; then do an “act out,” an impression of the target of the joke, bringing it all together.”
Seth Rogen on why you should just get to writing and not try to make your story perfect with planning:
“I think a lot of writers are very like precious with their work and don’t want to actually write things. They’d rather talk about it… they’d rather talk about something for way more time than it would take them to just write it. And they put so much time into writing the thing that it’s too elevated. It’s too revere… You shouldn’t be afraid to write.”
In the following video, Rogen also talks about his process for creating stories (as well as the topic from above):
Donald Glover on how to write stories that get people to respond:
“The more I am myself in all of the things I do the more, I think, people respond because it’s not bullshit. I think the fact that I’m rapping about stuff I know, the more people are like, ‘This isn’t bullshit.’ I think Tina Fey does the same thing.”
Donald Glover on why you should sometimes go into something without fully knowing how to do it:
“Hiro (Murai) had never done narrative before, never done television. Everybody kept asking, ‘Are you sure you want to do it with him?’ And I’m really glad, because when I’d ask him, ‘Is this normal for a show?’ he’d be like, ‘I have no idea, I don’t know.’ But that’s how we made something personal. We’d do something and then start giggling and be like, ‘That’s tight, this is dope, I’d like to see that.’”
Kevin Hart on how he doesn’t make jokes, but rather he just re-tells (and exaggerates) funny occurrences:
“I don’t write material. Funny things happen to me in the course of a day, and I just make notes.”
Joe Rogan and Tom Papa on how an interesting and fun life helps them come up with jokes and how being disciplined with writing is necessary for coming up with the best material:
“I need to socialize… I come up with a lot of great ideas for bits when I’m having fun with people. Having fun with friends or even with people I don’t even know. Occasionally, you’ll meet someone that’s really cool and you enjoy talking to them. Then you have these cool conversations and you see this perspective from a stranger that’s interesting. Then they say something and it fires something in your own brain.”
“Physical writing, to me, is a must. I don’t necessarily write jokes. I just write. I like sh*t and then the jokes just come out of that. Premises come out of that stuff.”
Andrew Phung on why you have to fail to be a good artist:
“My biggest piece of advice is to be willing to fail. Failing is so key to growing as a performer. My journey in comedy is full of failure, bad shows, unfunny jokes, characters that didn’t land. I was lucky enough to start at the Loose Moose Theatre Company, a place that encouraged failure. If I had a bad show, I got to come back and do it again. I’ve seen people fail, and give up completely. Failure is what makes us better. No one wakes up and is perfect at comedy, it’s a process. Fail big, fail hard, fail often.”
Jerry Seinfeld on the early stages of his joke-making process:
“In front of me there’s 15-20 pages of stuff that’s in various stages of development. And then there’s a smaller book of just really, really random things… I don’t know what to do with [these ideas] but it’s so stupid to me and funny. So, that to me is like an archery target 50 yards away. Then I take my bow and my arrow, and I go, “let me see if I can hit that. Let me see if I can create something that I could say to a room full of humans in a nightclub that will make them see what I see in that. There’s something very stupid and funny about that to me. That’s the very, very beginning.”
Jerry Seinfeld, pretty much, saying “writers write”:
“I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy really young and that principle is: you learn to be a writer. The profession of writing –that’s what stand-up comedy is.”
Final Thoughts
Writing is not easy.
But if you make it fun and turn it into a habit (like what comedians do), sitting down and composing becomes way easier.
So, take these tips and apply them -they’ll help you craft better material while enjoying yourself.