10.4 How to Write Comedy Like Demetri Martin

Instructor:
Jerry Corley

Demetri Martin has built a distinctive comedy style by combining dry wit, clever wordplay, visual comedy, surreal observations, and unexpected logic. His mostly clean and relatable material often begins with an ordinary word, phrase, behavior, or familiar experience. He then examines it from an unusual angle, exposes a hidden contradiction, or combines it with a second idea to create a surprising new meaning.

In this course, you’ll break down Martin’s approach to writing concise one-liners, paradoxes, collocation mashups, two-way comparisons, and three-way build-ups. You’ll learn how he uses nostalgic recognition, altered phrases, drawings, music, and deceptively simple observations to make audiences reconsider things they normally take for granted.

Through guided exercises, you’ll experiment with changing familiar titles, combining contrasting word pairings, and creating jokes from everyday topics such as food, family, relationships, and common social situations. You’ll also use the improvisational principle “If this is true, what else could be true?” to extend an initial premise, explore its comic consequences, and develop one small observation into a stronger joke, bit, or series of connected punchlines.