Greg Dean - Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy - Revised Edition

Cover & book design: Kurt Reichenbach

ISBN: 978-0-9897351-9-3

2010, 2019 Greg Dean

Published by Be Funny Inc.

Dedication

For my mother, Dona Dean-Silvers.

I can still hear your laughter.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 12:

Chapter 13:

Foreword

H ow-to books about comedy are a dime a dozen. Ive written two of them myself. But some are better than othersthe present volume, for example, by Greg Dean.

A good many of the points on which Dean offers instructions are lessons I had to learn the hard way. I wish books of this sort had been available in those days.

Actually, most of us wouldnt dream of offering professional advice to a TV repairman, a brain surgeon, or a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears, but we apparently see ourselves as fit to offer advice to Eddie Murphy, Jackie Mason, or Dennis Miller.

Greg Dean is different. He knows the territory hes writing about and provides a wealth of nuts-and-bolts advice regarding the kinds of stories that audiences will interpret as funny.

Steve Allen

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to so many people for putting up with me and my obsession for modeling joke structure and the fundamentals of stand-up comedy. I know Ive driven many people crazy by calling them at all hours of the night with questions, ramblings, and incoherent theories.

My favorite aspect of uncovering these techniques has been the long walks and talks with my friends. In particular, I wish to deeply thank my dear friend and co-comedy theorist Frank Miles (who is responsible for some of the techniques and some of the rewriting of this book), Gayla Johnson (the love of my life), Andy Davis (whos been there from the beginning), Bill Fulco (the only one who out-walked me and out-talked me), and the members of the Friday Night Movie Group: Bennett I. Goldberg, Jeff Weakley, and Derek Loughran. Im grateful for the support of my assistant teacher, Fernando Rivera, also to Jay Douglas, Dan Goldman, Will Patrick, Allan Murray (the love of his life), Ricky Patton, Tyrum Dean, Dona Silvers (Mom), Michael Davis (It Got Done), Frank Olivier, and Mark Whalen.

I wish to offer sincere thanks to Judy DeLozier, Phil and Norma Barretta, and Buddha for their inspiration and encouragement. And much thanks to Ingrid Reese and Ashley Strosnider for their proofreading and editing.

I also want to thank Victor Raskin, whose Semantic Theory of Humor is the inspirational breakthrough on which much of my comedy model has been based.

A special thanks to John Grinder and Richard Bandler for co-founding Neuro-Linguistic Programming NLP. Without an already established mental map o which to base my own, my work would not have been possible.

I especially acknowledge the contribution of John Grinder, who gave me personal guidance while I was forming this comedy model and the ensuing exercises.

On the business end, this book has been much improved due to the valuable suggestions from my literary agent Scott Edelstein and to my graphic designer Kurt Reichenbach. And lastly, but not least, I want to thank all of my students for allowing me to learn from them while they were paying me.

Thank you all!

Chapter

Secrets of Joke Structure

W hat is a joke? Funny question, you could say. Most people would define a joke as something one says or does that makes others laugh. That statement, though true, doesnt really tell us what a joke is. It just describes the desired effect. What about jokes that get a roar of laughter in one situation and a hush of silence in another? If a joke doesnt get a laugh, does it suddenly stop being a joke?

Interestingly, people usually recognize a joke whether it makes them laugh or not. Why? Because there is a consistent, intrinsic structure that everyone identifies in a joke. Until now, no one has presented this structure in an understandable manner. Thats about to change. Explaining joke structure to you is exactly what this chapter is all about.

ONE-LINER JOKES

Setup and Punch

Lets begin with what most people already know about one-liner jokes. Traditionally, they comprise two parts:

1. Setup

2. Punch

Take this old joke for an example:

My wife just ran off with my best friend. I expected more loyalty from my dog.

To help explain joke structure, Ive designed a visual representation called the Joke Diagram . Lets depict the above joke with Diagram 1, so you can clearly identify the setup and punch:

The setup and punch are usually defined in this way:

The Setup is the first part of a joke, which sets up the laugh.

The Punch is the second part that makes you laugh.

Those statements are great except for one small problem: they dont really explain anything. Lets see if we can do better.

WHAT JOKES DO

Expectation and Surprise

The setup and the punch are directly related to expectation and surprise . Lets continue with the same joke. Notice how the setup causes you to expect something, and then how the punch reveals a surprise on Diagram 2:

In order to work, a joke has to surprise you. The trick is that you cannot be surprised unless youre first expecting something else. Thats what a joke does. It causes you to expect something, and then it reveals a surprise.

So, heres our new definition:

The Setup creates an expectation .

The Punch reveals a surprise .

It isnt enough to know what a joke does. You need to know how a joke does what it does. And Im going to explain that right now, just because I like you.

HOW JOKES WORK

1 st Story and 2 nd Story

You now know that the setup and punch create expectation and surprise, but how do they do that? The answer came to me when I read a magazine article titled Jokes (Psychology Today, October 1985). In it, Victor Raskin offered a script-based semantic theory of humor which proposes that a sentence joke has two scripts.

However, because it is a semantic theorydealing only with words and their implicationsits application to physical and nonverbal comedy was limited. So I altered Raskins term from script to story , which made it possible for me to apply the concept to all forms of humor, not just language-based jokes. Through Raskins insight I found the first piece of joke structure. The evolution of my Joke Mechanisms began with this discovery.

SECRET 1

A joke requires two stories.

The setup to a joke creates a 1st story in our minds that leads us to expect something, and then the punch surprises us with a 2nd story thats compatible with, yet is somehow different from, what were expecting.

The setup creates a 1st story: A man is unhappy because he misses his wife. We expect the story to continue along that theme, so were surprised when the punch reveals a 2nd story: A man is unhappy because he misses his dog.

Depicting this joke with Diagram 3 will give you a visual representation of the setup and punch creating and revealing these two stories.