Made to Schtick

I recently read Made to Stick. It has a ton of great insights into why some ideas are stickier than others, and how we can take our dumb ideas and make them stickier. Which got me thinking: I wonder if I can take their advice any apply it to comedy?

I think so.

The authors discuss how the stickiest ideas are generally Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credentialed, Emotional, Stories. Or SUCCESs for short. I think the best jokes contain the same principles.

The best jokes are Simple. They write that “if we’re to succeed, the first step is this: Be simple. Not simple in the terms of ‘dumbing down’ or ‘sound bites.’ You don’t have to speak in monosyllables to be simple. What we mean by “simple” is finding the core of the idea.” The same principle applies to comedy. If an audience is thinking, they’re not laughing. Often when I write new material, my first instinct is to make it clever. Or I’ll try to say too much too quickly. But clever isn’t funny. When’s the last time a double entendre made you shoot milk out your nose? In general, humor that works in The New Yorker doesn’t work on stage.

I once heard the definition of a joke as a sentence that ends in a surprise. “Dating is hard, especially when you’re like me, married.” The word married is Unexpected; it’s what makes the whole line funny. If you can see a joke coming a mile a way, it’s not funny. “Dating is hard, especially when you’re unattractive” doesn’t have the same zing to it.

Good stories, the authors write, are also Concrete. They often involve real, tangible examples. When Nordstrom wanted to tell their employees that Nordstrom was all about customer service, they didn’t just say, “Listen up, we’re all about customer service.” Customer service isn’t concrete. It might mean different things to different people. Instead, they told stories with concrete examples. They told their employees stories about employees like the one associate, who, during a particularly bad blizzard, warmed up a customer’s car while they finished shopping. That’s concrete. That’s customer service.

Comedy can benefit from being concrete too. There’s an old idea that says you should write jokes a caveman would understand. A caveman wouldn’t know what “egalitarianism” is—I don’t even know what it is—but chances are he’d know what a girlfriend is. Or a mom or dad. He wouldn’t know customer service, but he’d know about snow and cold.

The Credentialed part may not sound applicable to comedy, but I’d argue it is. It’s important for the audience to believe that whatever you’re saying could have conceivably happened to you. Or could conceivably happen. If the audience is too busy trying to figure out if what you’re saying is even real, they’re not going to be laughing. For example, it’s unlikely that I would be dating given that I’m married, but it technically is possible, so the audience isn’t wondering how it could realistically work. But if I started saying “Dating is hard, because I’m an alien,” that changes things. Now they’re thinking “what the hell is this guy talking about?” The joke doesn’t need to be credentialed, necessarily, just believable.

Emotion isn’t absolutely necessary for a good bit, but I think a lot of the good ones have them. I think the more emotional stakes a bit has, the funnier it is.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on applying Made to Stick' to comedy.