Tag Archives: comedy

How to Write a Desk Piece

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“Children grow up so fast these days. That’s the reasoning behind this latest addition to a beloved series of children’s books. It’s [HOLDS UP FAKE BOOK] Curious George and the hole in the wall of the girls’ locker room.”

Curious George and the hole in the wall of the girls' locker room

That’s an example of a joke in a Desk Piece, a type of short-form comedy that’s popular on many comedy/talk shows. A Desk Piece is a segment of fully-scripted comedy that the host performs by himself while sitting at his desk.

 

Here’s how I wrote that joke. The process was very similar to that of writing a topical monologue joke, a process I cover in detail in my book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

 

I started with the topic of the Desk Piece. The topic is typically a collection of things in a particular category, in this case “New Books.” Next I brainstormed a long list of angles off that topic, that is, types of real books. Here’s a partial list of those angles:

 

stacks of bookscookbooks  *  dictionaries  *  puzzle books  * coffee table books  *  The Lord of the Rings  *   thesauruses  *  novels  *  atlases  *  children’s books  *  Mark Twain  * celebrity memoirs  *  paperbacks  *   etiquette books  *  Curious George  *  biographies  *  encyclopedias  *  guidebooks  *  pop-up books  *  how-to books  *  photography books  *  manuals

 

To create the punch line I chose one angle–Curious George–and used my Punch Line Maker #3 on it, asking the question “What might a curious person do?” I answered that question using a surprisingly unwholesome association of “curious,” which is “spy on people.”

 

Finally I used my Joke Maximizer #9 (“Get specific”), devising a very specific Peeping George scenario, and arrived at the punch line: “Curious George and the hole in the wall of the girls’ locker room.”

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“New Books” is what I call a Graphic/Prop Piece, one of the seven types of Desk Pieces I analyze in my own new book, Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

 

A footnote: I wrote that Curious George joke for Late Show with David Letterman in May 1998 but you’d never know it. It’s an example of evergreen comedy, comedy that has a long shelf life, usually because it’s not based on something topical but on a more lasting pop culture phenomenon.

 

If you’re preparing a writing sample to submit to a comedy/talk show, include a generous portion of evergreen comedy. That way your submission won’t seem too dated if it winds up sitting on the credenza of some head writer for months before it’s read.

How Jerry Seinfeld Writes a Joke, Revealed

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Jerry Seinfeld appears in this frustrating New York Times video teasingly entitled “How to Write a Joke.” In the video he calls comedy writing “a secretive thing.” He also says about his handwritten draft of a bit revolving around Pop Tarts, “I’ve never shown anybody this stuff.” Jerry then proves how secretive he is by hinting at, but never actually spelling out, some key techniques for writing jokes.

As one example, at 2:23 Jerry tells a joke that ends with the line “and we were like chimps in the dirt playing with sticks.” He explains, “What makes that joke is you got ‘chimps,’ ‘dirt,’ ‘playing,’ and ‘sticks.’ Seven words; four of them are funny.” But he never tells you what makes those words funny. So I will. There are two reasons:

 

1) Shorter words are funnier than longer words. One of Jerry’s four funny words has only two syllables. The other three words have only one. The four words are short.

 

Diagram of the larynx2) Words with stop (or “hard”) consonants are funnier than words without them. The stop consonants, in which the flow of air through the vocal cords stops completely, include B, D, G, K, P, and T. (Why are stop consonants funnier? My theory is that the sudden change in air flow they cause is a little surprise, and surprise is one of the keys to generating laughter.) Jerry’s four short words contain a high concentration of stop consonants: six.

 

Why didn’t Jerry explain those comedy principles to us? Maybe he thought that viewers of a New York Times video, even one entitled, “How to Write a Joke,” wouldn’t be interested in the nuts and bolts of how to write a joke.

 

The cast of "Seinfeld"Or maybe Jerry thinks that comedy writing really should be a secretive thing. In the documentary film Dying Laughing, Jerry says that comedy is “beyond art–it’s magic.”

 

Maybe he feels that if he reveals the techniques he uses he’ll be like a magician who reveals how he works his illusions and he’ll lose the admiration of the audience.

 

But Jerry, with his stand-up comedy and his brilliant show Seinfeld, has already more than earned our admiration.

 

Whatever Jerry’s reasoning, people who want to learn how to write a joke will have to turn elsewhere. For more techniques that Jerry doesn’t want you to know, buy my book Comedy Writing for Late Night TV.

The book "Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV"

How to Create Funny Products

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Short-form comedy, the kind on comedy/talk shows, often turns up in consumer products. That’s why the same writing techniques used on late-night shows can also be used to create funny products like tee-shirts, bumper stickers, and novelty gifts.

For example, here’s how I used late-night comedy writing techniques to create two greeting cards that the staffers of Late Night with David Letterman sent out to their holiday mailing lists.

1986 holiday card from "Late Night with David Letterman" promotes General Electric products

“Late Night with David Letterman” holiday card, 1986

In both cases I started with the joke topic “Late Night holiday card.” The two handles—the distinctive elements—of that topic are “Late Night” and “holiday card.”

One association of the handle “Late Night” is “General Electric,” the show’s new corporate parent at the time; a sub-association of General Electric is “stuff for sale.”

And one association of the handle “holiday card” is “gifts”, which also has the sub-association “stuff for sale.” Linking those two sub-associations together gave birth to the official Late Night holiday card of 1986.

 

 

1989 holiday card from "Late Night with David Letterman" features Dan Rather's credit card

“Late Night” holiday card, 1989

 

 

 

 

 

For the 1989 holiday season I started with the same joke topic: “Late Night holiday card.” This time I linked the “Late Night” association “Dan Rather” (a CBS newsman and friend of the show) to the “holiday card” association “buying gifts” by using the shared sub-association “credit card.” Here’s the greeting card that resulted.

 

 

 

 

Headline of 1989 "New York Times" item reads "'Late Night' Makes Santa of Dan Rather"

“New York Times” item, December 15, 1989

 

 

That holiday card generated some nice publicity for the show, including a mention in The New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing techniques like these are used to craft Monologue jokes, Desk Pieces, Joke Basket Sketches, and a lot of the other comedy on comedy/talk shows. Learn these techniques by reading my book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.