Exercise: The Power Of Lists

The secret to writing comedy even when you aren't feeling funny

There's a lot of explanation and the exercise follows at the end.

LOL = Lists On Lists

It’s easy to write if all you’re writing is a list. Lists can form the back-bone of your comedy set, and you can use them time and time again to flesh out ideas.

Lists are an invaluable comedy writing tool. You can never be blocked if you are writing a list. We’re going to use them now to form the basis of our set, but you’ll see later on in the book how they can be used time and time again.

The great thing about lists is you can’t fail at doing them, that’s why they are a procrastinators dream! Consider the difference between these assignments:

1. Do 10 chores

2. Name 10 chores

Which one would you rather do? (The answer should be “2” - nerd!)

And with comedy writing it’s win-win, because if you’re writing, you’re winning! 

1. Write 10 great dick jokes

2. Write 10 great things about penii

Please note this exercise is not to write dick jokes! The exercise is at the very end of this document! Yes I've had to write this here with good reason!

Butternut squash

Even if the dick jokes aren’t flowing yet, you’re setting the groundwork and just by writing down something, anything, you’re getting your brain juices flowing and making connections. Think of it as The Artist’s Way without the carpal tunnel.

Many comedians make the error of thinking that comedy writing is “writing funny things” and it’s insane to say that it’s not, for that is the end result - but it’s not the first step and that’s a bloody hard task to set yourself. I prefer to see comedy writing as: very true things, with surprising connections between them.

I have to be in the right mood to be funny. But I don’t have to be in the right mood to just “write very true things”, so with list writing you can always be in the right mood work on your comedy set, and the more you write, the more you’ll start to see the funny (surprising) connections, and the longer you are a comedian, the easier it will be to find these connections.

Don’t worry about what’s funny, just what’s true, and what you care about, and be detailed. You might come back to what you wrote and realise you weren’t being that truthful, and bam! You’ve uncovered an authentic truth about yourself (and undoubtedly many other people) and that’s amazing too.

I care about sharp tools with wooden handles

List writing tips:

• Be specific. Use names, places and quantities etc. Specificity is what will make your writing unique. Don’t say chocolate  when you can say Lidl’s 70% Ecuadorian chocolate with caramel chunks - a steal at only €1.90.  Don’t say neighbour when you can say Terry from across the hall who has weekend visitation rights with his 8 year old twin boys.

• Tell us how you feel. Always reflect back on how something makes you feel, and why it makes you feel like that EG what kind of a person are you? EG I like climbing because it makes me feel strong and graceful, plus it’s the only exercise I do and I’m super worried about dying early or getting cancer or something because I’m a hypochondriac. Not that it’s going to stop me from getting cancer, oh god I probably have cancer of the arms…

• Follow the feeling. Use emotions to guide your writing, always. Whether they are positive or negative, always write about stuff you care about and don't edit! If you care other people will care. If you don’t care, move on!

• Follow the fun. If your list item goes off on some tangent, follow it! There’s no right way to do this, it’s simply a way to generate ideas. So if you start by thanking your local cafe’s great internet, and go off on a weird tangent about how there’s so many women with large prams in there, like why do they have such enormous prams and are they all judging you for not being a mother and maybe you should have been a mother and you know it kills YOUR mother but you really never wanted kids but you do have those weird dreams where you left your baby on the U8 and it was super embarrassing at lost and found… Maybe that’s just me. But follow every avenue!

• Don’t go for the joke. That might seem like a strange thing to say in a comedy writing article, but don’t force funny things at this point - obviously if they naturally occur that’s great, but most people when they get to a punchline stop writing, they block the truthfulness from flowing. If you write something funny, great! But keep going.

The Exercise