As I said, it’s not as simple as realizing suddenly how a doorbell rings. You will study specific models in teaching yourself to write comedy. Part of your research, which we’ll get into shortly, is to find out which mentors you will choose. Another part of your research will be to analyze your own tendencies. Which style of humor do you prefer? Which comes most easily to you? Which comics or shows do you most appreciate? In order to learn to create comedy, you must also learn a little bit about yourself.
Most of your learning process will be based on studying the mentors you select, whether they are stand-up comedians, sketch shows, or situation comedies. With guidance from this book, you’re going to select, observe, analyze, and replicate the work of your mentor or mentors.
Here and there I’m also going to suggest some comedy writing exercises you can do to train your writing muscles. These exercises will help you apply the principles you’ve learned to create your own original comedy ideas. There are even more writing exercises in the companion volume to this book, Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook: More than 100 Practical Writing Exercises to Develop Your Comedy Writing Skills.
You may have two questions, though. First, how can a book teach you to teach yourself? That reminds me of a George Carlin line. Carlin said, “I went to a clerk in the bookstore and said, ‘Can you show me where the self-help books are?’ She said, ‘Wouldn’t that be defeating the purpose?’”
This book will give you some hints on how to teach yourself, sort of like study guides. I will advise you how to select the right mentors for you and show you what to learn from them and how to study and analyze them. You will do all the teaching and all the learning. Just like I did in high school, you’re going to have to figure out for yourself how the door-bell rings.
Second, don’t you run the risk of studying your mentor too closely? Doesn’t that hamper creativity? Doesn’t it produce a weak impersonation of a more successful, accomplished original? Trust me—studying successful comedians will only strengthen your own comedy writing skills. Learning from your mentors is the best starting point for learning solid fundamentals that have served others who have gone before.
The mentor idea is one that’s been well used in show business. Johnny Carson would openly admit that he not only admired Jack Benny, but also emulated him. When I worked with Bob Hope, he said there was a well-known vaudevillian who really fascinated him. His name was Frank Fay. I had never heard of this performer and certainly had never seen him perform. Then when we did a tribute to Bob Hope on his ninetieth birthday, someone produced footage of Frank Fay performing in vaudeville, and it was amazing how readily any observer could see that his mannerisms and delivery influenced Bob Hope. Many people find it hard to believe, but Woody Allen says that his film persona was largely a replication of Bob Hope’s character in movies. In fact, Woody Allen once produced a short film shown at a Bob Hope tribute featuring cuts between his films and some of Hope’s movies to highlight the similarities. Yet no one really thinks of Johnny Carson as a second Jack Benny, or Bob Hope as a Frank Fay impersonator. Woody Allen’s films, even though structured somewhat on Hope’s character, still remain superb examples of Woody Allen’s unique talent and creativity.
What happens when you study others, and even attempt to replicate them, is that you learn the fundamentals that made them great. However, you can’t help but add a bit of yourself to the formula. The result is a new, original, creative comedy talent.
That’s what you’re about to begin with these self-taught lessons.
Have fun learning.
Let’s begin this book by discussing the “Elephant in the Room.” The Elephant in the Room, as you know, is that obvious, imposing item that no one can ignore, yet no one wants to acknowledge or discuss. Let’s discuss it. That elephant is this question: Can comedy be taught or is it a talent you’re born with?
This is an important question to resolve because a necessary attribute for any aspiring writer—for anyone aspiring to anything, in fact—is enthusiasm. An eager student learns more readily and more quickly. Passion can overcome many faults. Also, exuberance can keep a student striving, forging ahead despite difficulties. Only with that sort of perseverance can you gain the knowledge and the experience that you will need to become a seasoned professional.
A joke made the rounds of the schoolyards when I was a youngster. It went something like this: What has four legs, barks, and is filled with cement? That riddle puzzled everyone so the normal response was “I don’t know. What?” The jokester would say, “A dog.” Then, of course, someone would ask, “What does cement have to do with it?” The jokester would say, “Nothing. I just threw that in to make it hard.”
That’s sort of what happens when we question whether comedy can be taught or not. It makes the pursuit harder, if not impossible. It’s difficult to maintain enthusiasm for an unreachable goal. If one subscribes to the theory that comedy can’t be taught, then it becomes unteachable. Why bother to attempt to teach yourself something, if you believe that the attempt is predestined to fail?
Obviously, this book believes that comedy can be taught. We’ll discuss that further in this chapter; then the book will guide you in teaching yourself to write comedy in the chapters that follow.
Before we get to that, though, let’s discuss the second part of the elephant question: Is comedy a talent you’re born with? To be fair, this book will admit that there may be some truth to that. I suppose there is some truth to that regardless of which talents you’re speaking of. You probably must have a certain inborn athletic skill to become a great basketball player, baseball player, skier, skater, or whatever. But then the question becomes: How do you know what talents a person is born with? Can anyone look at a newborn and say with certainty that that child is a gifted pianist? Can anyone see a toddler and recognize in him or her Olympic gymnastic ability? Can you look at a child who can’t yet speak and declare that he or she will most certainly be a world-renowned sports broadcaster?
We don’t know what skills we’re born with until we attempt them. No one grows up to be a world-class figure skater without first lacing up a pair of skates and falling on his or her bottom a few times. No one becomes a piano virtuoso without signing up for that first music lesson. You have to play “Chopsticks” before you can be ready to tackle Chopin.
Some of the skills that we believe are God-given are really acquired through dedicated study and practice. Joshua Foer wrote a book in 2012 called Moonwalking with Einstein. In this book he tells how he covered the USA Memory Championship as a science journalist. The USA Memory Championship is a contest held each year in New York City for people who can perform incredible feats of memory. In the competition contestants must remember the names of people; memorize the order of playing cards and random digits; and perform all sorts of recall feats that seem impossible. Foer admits that he thought he would be dealing with memory savants, people with inborn memory talents that were entirely beyond normal people with ordinary recall. Yet when he spoke to the contestants, they all confessed that they weren’t gifted with superior memories at all. What seemed like incredible feats were just tricks. The contestants all used various gimmicks to aid them in memorizing.
Foer was skeptical, but the contestants all insisted that they worked hard, practiced, and learned how to use their memories more effectively. So Foer challenged them. If that was true, then couldn’t they teach him those same tricks? One expert accepted that challenge and worked with Foer as his mentor.
Josh Foer returned to the USA Memory Championship a year later—as a contestant—and won!
Intuitively we think of memory as a gift. We tend to think that you can’t learn memory; you must be born with it. Foer’s experience