Yes that’s the name of my first

humor writing book (Finding the Funny Fast), and it’s also the prominent words in a couple of my keynotes (Finding the Funny in Change and Finding the Funny in Communications). But today I want to talk about finding the funny in the obvious.

We found lots of humor at the Grand Canyon

I’ve mentioned

How it’s sometimes hard to find out where the punchline is in a joke. I’ve written jokes in which I realized that people were laughing half-way through, during the set-up. This causes me to say the joke slower and pause for the new punchline. But while writing for a client this week, I was reminded of how we need to pay attention to everything we write, and stop focusing solely on what we THINK is the joke.

I wrote some jokes

And then sent the client an email. In my email I just joked around about something, and it turns out she liked the joke in the email and bought it. I didn’t focus at all on this joke – no sweating or rewriting or wondering if it was funny. All I did was be myself and goof around when sending her the email, and that is how I found the joke.. . and made some extra cash!

So when writing jokes, look at all

Of the things you’re writing about. . . don’t focus too much on trying to be funny; instead I just was funny and it worked. Years ago, when I was struggling to put together my humor keynotes, a colleague told me not to worry about trying to be funny. Since I’m a comedian, it will just happen organically and as he said “you can’t help but be funny”. . . and it worked.

So this week’s joke writing advice is to just “be” . . .not worry about “doing.”

Jan

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