The process of editing a joke is a series of guess-and-check experiments that you run on audiences. I try something on stage and if it doesn’t get a perfect reaction, I go home and tweak something, then retest it. To illustrate the process, I’ve gone back through the version history of one of my jokes and reproduced it here with notes. I hope it helps!
The process of editing a joke is a series of test marketing campaigns you run with audiences. You write a joke, you perform it, and then you go home and make tweaks to it. Each tweak is a theory.
Theory A: They’ll laugh more if I change this word.
Theory B: They’ll laugh more if I cut the last sentence.
Theory C: They’ll laugh more if I talk louder.
You’ve got a lot of variables and open mics don’t offer the clearest data, so you may need to try theories separately and run multiple tests, but over time the joke gets better and better like a stone being slowly polished in a rock tumbler.
To give you an example of the process, I’ve gone back through the version history of one of my jokes and reproduced it here with notes.
Phase 1
Jotted this down in my notebook one day.
People hug too much.
Phase 2
A couple days later, I sat down to write. My process involves taking ideas that I wrote down and expanding them out, looking for the most interesting parts and focusing on the emotional content. Here’s what I wrote.
People hug too much
– That makes me sound like a monster so I usually just go with it when people want to hug, but it makes me uncomfortable.
– I’m a little weird about people touching me in general. No idea why. When did that start? What causes it?
– It’s not the end of the world, just a little preference. I can still hug and not have it ruin my day, I just wish we didn’t have to do it.
– Lots of social pressure to hug.
– Seems to be happening more often recently
– Especially hate it when strangers do it.
– Some people love to hug.
– People say, “I’m a hugger, come in here.” when you try to shake their hands. Uh, no, I offered handshake. That was my idea. Why do you automatically win? How do we decide whose preference is more important?
– People are basically saying, “I get your body if I want it.”
Phase 3
Attempting to make punchlines. I think the “hugger” terminology is grossest part. That makes me feel the strongest, so that’s where to start. After that, I also think there’s something to that little scene I wrote where we both have preferences and I don’t understand why yours is automatically better. So I threw together a joke version.
I hate when people say “I’m a hugger.” Well I’m not a hugger, why don’t I get to vote on this? It takes two to tango but if one of those people is into tango, they can make you do it.You wouldn’t just allow people to do this to you. “Get in here, I’m a tangoer.”
I can already tell that sucks. It’s too silly, not enough bite. Nobody gives a shit about tangoing. But it’s what I’ve got, so I took it out to a mic. It didn’t go great. But people seemed interested when I said the opening line about “I’m a hugger.” That’s perfect for a first draft. If you’ve got buy-in from the audience, you can fix the jokes later.
Now what can I tweak to make it even more interesting and make the punchline match the emotion
Edit 1
– I hate when people say “I’m a hugger.” Like I don’t get to vote on whether or not you rub your gross body on my body.
– Shouldn’t I vote? And tie goes to me because it’s my body. “Well I’m a ____” isn’t fair, I could just say “I’m a puncher.”
A little better. People are bought in, but why am I talk about this? Why do I care? It’s not personal and it’s not important in the moment. Gotta work on the set up to make that part stronger.
Punchline-wise, “puncher” is okay but it’s not a big laugh. I could tell people wanted to laugh but it just wasn’t enough.
Edit 2
To make it more clear why I’m talking about it, I told them WHY I wrote this down in the first place. Because it happened. A guy told me he was a hugger and then hugged me and I felt icky. So I made that the opening.
– I hate when people hug me without permission. I had a business meeting the other day and I tried to shake the guy’s hand–we just met!–and he said, “get in here, man. I’m a hugger.” That’s creepy! It’s like you just said, “I’m going to touch you and you can’t stop me. Why? Because I like it.” Gross!
Stronger opening. People are engaged and the point is clear. It feels like it needs a punchline. How can I show how creeped out I am and how I’m the victim? I tried a bunch of different ideas here but I settled,
“Then you’re not going to like where this hug goes, because I’m a crier.”
That got em. It’s emotional and surprising and it’s an exaggeration that proves my point, that people shouldn’t say they’re huggers because it doesn’t take into consideration how I feel.
Now to punch up the second beat. I want to think of better ending than “puncher.” What is the funniest verb I can put -er on that will scare away a person who says they’re a hugger? I tried listing funny verbs that you can do to somebody. The goal is just to list stuff quickly and then I’ll go back and pick my favorite.
- Kick
- Slap
- Pound
- Grope
- Tickle
- Finger bang
- Lick
- Slime
Kick and slap are too violent, grope and lick are too gross, slime isn’t clear enough. “I’m a tickler” is funny, or even better I could say, “I’m a tickle monster!” That’s silly and surprising. But so is “I’m a finger banger.” And that one has a touch more menace without being too messed up, which is perfect for my emotion of trying to show you how it feels when you just hug people who don’t want it. And finger banger is just a very funny combination of words.
Put it together and we’ve got the beginnings of a real joke.
– I hate when people say they’re a “hugger.” I was at a business meeting and I tried to shake a guy’s hand and he pushed it out of the way. “Get out of here, bro, I’m a hugger.” Okay, well I told you I don’t want you to touch me and you’re doing it anyway, so you’re not going to like where this hug goes because I’m a crier.
– You can’t just add -er to a thing I don’t want to do, and suddenly I’ll do it. If that’s how it works, next time a man is like, “I’m a hugger” I’ll say, “Okay, well, I’m a finger banger. Who goes first?”
I’ve added a few more tags and I’m always tweaking and changing it, but here’s the outline that works. Here’s a recent version that’s a bit longer but has the same beats in it:
