Identify the emotional core of your joke, and write better jokes

It makes the ideas flow as well

The question I most often ask stand-up students is “What is this joke about?” just like how I always ask improv students “What is this scene about?”. Most beginners answer this incorrectly, because they get distracted by shiny things, aka dick jokes. What I’m asking students to identify is the emotional core of a joke, thinking about this will help you write better jokes, more than any joke-writing structure.

Applying the wrong emotional core in a joke can make the joke feel empty, or at worst offensive. You’ll certainly run out of ideas about it much sooner.

The key to knowing what a joke is about is to first identify what emotions it evokes, and then heighten the crap out of them! Heightening means increasing the emotional intensity of the joke as it goes along.

This article is an extension of an editing technique I wrote about a while ago:

This editing technique is guaranteed to instantly make you the best comedian in the world

Thanks to paid subscriber

Matthew Harrison

for sending me his material. I’m just taking a sample for brevity, the whole thing was much longer and delves into news networks. I’ve promised Matthew full notes, which I’ll provide in a separate article.

Do you guys like good news?  Not me.  Sure, you love good news when it’s about YOU.  But about someone else?  Good news is the most boring kind of news.

Like if you ask your friend 

• Oh how did that date go?

  • Great!

• Ah shit

Because you know the rest of the story already.  Oh he was cute, we had an amazing connection, it’s like we’re two halves of the same soul *increasingly bored* who reached out across the expansive and uncaring universe just to create beautiful love. *yawning, looking away, both bored*

Good news is like hearing about someone’s dream.  Unless it’s about me I’m only pretending to be interested.

But if you say “How did that date go” and she says “It was awful”, hey now we’ve got something.  The worse the news, the more I wanna hear it.  

• “It was the worst date of my life”

  • Oh let me clear my schedule

My life is going pretty well right now, and my stories have never been more boring.

See, I didn’t even tell you what the good news was and everyone already checks out.

Comedy is tragedy plus time, recent good news has neither 

I like what Matt has here so far, I especially like the “two halves of the same soul” block. Nice and specific (and bitchy!).

However, it kind of plateaus emotionally. I would say it’s because the emotional core is slightly off. Let’s investigate 🔎

What is this joke about?

Good news is the most boring kind of news

What is the emotional core of this joke?

Matt has gone for “boredom” here and this is a notoriously difficult emotion to make comedy from, because boredom means you don’t care. If you exaggerate “not caring” you eventually end up with *slumped in a chair groaning from intense ennui*. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, it’s just more difficult.

He’s not wrong though. When people talk about themselves it is boring. Personally I find good and bad date stories boring. I don’t care, I wasn’t there and I don’t relate. Most people aren’t gifted story tellers either. I feel like we’re all just waiting for our turn to talk about ourselves. I don’t have many friends.

If we take “boredom” as the emotional core of this joke, then what can the other person do to make me more engaged with their story? A quick search on ChatGPT says these are the key components in a good romantic comedy

So perhaps me “giving notes” on someones date story could be a good setup to a joke, and pretty easy to write. This could be a good “part 1” to a joke about boring date stories.

Let’s drill further into the emotional core of this joke.

Nah nothing funny yet, just all of this useless crude oil - Photo by Documerica on Unsplash

When someone tells me a “good date” story, I wouldn’t exactly say I feel bored, I feel jealous and triggered. I feel like shouting “WE GET IT, YOU FUCK”. There’s a real part of me that wants my friends to fail because their success somehow takes something away from me. This is of course just my opinion, and Matt hopefully sees the world in a different way and isn’t a crumbling husk, but it’s my article damnit!

I’m currently in a good and stable relationship (BOO!) yet I still feel like that undatable troll enduring another year of being single. Still wondering why love seems so easy to other people, and ruminating on what specific part of my soul is missing which means I can’t romantic connections with people.

Even if that isn’t true for you, you can’t help but connect with someone elses real emotions, and the struggle of being alive (I hope? Please like me).

To me, the emotional core of this joke is jealousy and self-loathing. You might think, yeesh - these are pretty dark emotions, how can you even make that funny? How can you avoid a pity party? Easy! By taking all of that dark emotion, inventing an imaginary person that caused all of it, and hilariously ripping them to shreds. That’s showbiz baby!

Let me have a go at re-writing Matts joke with my own emotional cores as focus. Please know that if I was giving Matt notes on his own material, I would tackle the job differently as I would try and write in his voice and not my own.

What’s up chuckle-fuckers!? [this is how I get into character]

We can all agree that our friends successes attack us personally?
Oh you had a great date Felicity? You are two halves of the same soul who reached out across the expansive and uncaring universe just to create beautiful love??
I SUPPOSE I’LL JUST DIE IN A SEXLESS GRAVE THEN FELICITY, THROW ME IN THE VETINARY INCINERATOR WITH ALL THE OTHER NEUTERED PETS.
[add more examples]

I suppose I’m not a good listener. But itsn’t the agreed social construct that I listen to your shitty date story, and then I can tell you about my new bike wheel for a bit, and so on and so forth until we die?
And while we’re at it, most people are shitty storytellers. We live in a post New York Times mini crossword world here people! Where are the compelling characters? The obstacles to love? This DJ character is very broadly written and not believable. Oh he ghosts you? Come on, that is so hack! This story is suffering from third-act problems.
And there’s no attempt at a soundtrack. I for one always have a Casio SK1 at hand in case I need to zhush up an anecdote. “And that’s how I avoided oral Gonherreah” (hum “wake me up before you go-go” in Casio)

I’m fed up of “Oh you make everything about you” being some kind of insult as if it’s not everyones exact lived experience? Like you have — all of this — (motion to a massive space) all of your thoughts and emptions and history, that time you peed yourself in class as a teacher, recently, this is true. And you want me to be more invested in this (make letterbox around your eyes) this shitty little I can’t relate and how can I feel what you feel and I wasn’t there.. like my mums sick and we found out the cat is a dog or whatever.
Are we all pretending we don’t have this (dance around in the “headspace”) and we should instead be really interested in (letterbox - puny voice)“my car got stolen” grow up. get real.
So I’m single! I’m not, I just noticed thats what the other comics say around now. Big laughs!

That’s all for now

Show Plugs Berlin

• I’ll be producing and performing in Stand-Up Vs Improv and improvising stand-up Friday 29.03.24 @ 9.30pm - Link

• I’m producing and performing in Smörgåsbord Friday 29.03.24 @ 11pm - Link

• I’ll be playing shit-faced Ripley @ Drunk Classics: Alien Saturday 30.03.24 @ 8pm - Link

Teaching Plugs Berlin

• I’ll be teaching an Intro to Improv intensive in May - Link

• My Spring In-person Stand-up classes are sold out but join a waiting list or take the class in German here - Link

World Wide Web Plugs

• Knife Crab satire. Please follow us on Instagram we could do with more followers! @knifecrab

• Berlin Stand-Up School - berlinstandupschool.com

• It me - carolineclifford.com