One of the most common questions I get as a stand up comedian, writer and now coach is: What is the key to comedy?
And although there are too many variables for me to even suggest that I have all the answers when it comes to comedy, I can give you the key. That’s right I can give you the key to comedy.
The key is SURPRISE.
If we break comedy down; I mean, really break comedy down into parts, then we can start to design solutions. So let’s do that briefly in this blog post.
I guess we can all agree that for comedy to be comedy, we need to get the audience to laugh, right? So that’s our problem. We need to make people laugh.
So let’s find a solution…
Somebody has to be laughing in order for someone to say that something is comedic or humorous. Now that we know that, we need to know what causes people to laugh.
According to several psychologists, the number one element that triggers human laughter is surprise.
Create surprise and do it well and the audience almost has no choice but to laugh.
Imagine that power as a comedian; to put the audience in the position where they have no choice but to laugh!
Now that we have that psychological element in place we are part of the way through solving our problem. The next question is how to we pull that trigger?
We create surprise in our writing or our dialogue, conversation, speech or script.
There are several ways to create surprise in comedy. I’m going to share with you the simplest and one of the most commonly used strategies to create surprise:
- Double Entendre
Surprise also occurs when something happens that is unexpected, right? So do or say something unexpected and you have an increased possibility of creating a laugh.
Here’s another example of using surprise:
When I was in the grocery store, the check out girl said to me, “Did you find everything you were looking for?” The word “everything” really stood out for me. What did she mean when she said “everything?” Her intended meaning was probably did I find everything I was shopping for.
What is my comedic meaning of everything? The meaning of life, a soul-mate, eternal love, etc.
I went with that interpretation. So, when she asked “Did you find everything you were looking for?” I said, “Well I found the wine and the candles, but I couldn’t find a soul-mate. You had Mahi-Mahi, but I’m not into twins.”
That got big laugh with her.
Word play makes up the majority of all comedy out there. But the comedian has to be careful not to overuse it. It’s easy to get “punny” if you use it incorrectly. And you’ll wind up getting groans.
Then that key to comedy will just wind up breaking off in the lock.