by Dan Fearnley

Created on: August 01, 2006   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Most people in an audience want to laugh. They will even try to the extent of starting out with a smile on their face, but it's up to you to maintain it. If you want to draw material that will provide a lasting laugh from your own experiences, which is always a good idea (the first rule of writing being to write what you know), then you need to look at two fundamental points: identification and tragedy.

First, a good laugh is a shared laugh. People like to identify with a situation or joke, remembering how they've been in a similar situation or how everyone knows someone just like your description of your Uncle Harry. Some identification can be on a more general level. Let your audience touch the essential humanity and human condition in your jokes and lines. Ridicule and derogatory humour may get a laugh, but unless there is some part of the situation that the majority of people will identify with you are actually limiting your audience and possibly alienating some people. Sarcasm may also bridge the identification gap as long as you provide a universal emotion, like frustration or having a bad day. Take the following op-ed style piece that I'm going to make up off the top of my head:

"My New Year's resolution is to start improving my work environment by taking a rolled-up newspaper to the office. I think it's an achievable goal, because it will allow me to release tension. Put simply, I just need something to hit the stupid people with without going to prison. Everyone knows these people. I have a Monday morning meeting with a special candidate in mind, the guy that can't let the meeting end until he's discussed everything including what his cat had for breakfast. It's 9:45am, I have NOT had my second cup of coffee yet and this jerk wants to discuss next year's Christmas party. WHACK! Problem solved. Even if he's still conscious, he'll be speechless. What about the guy who wants you to redo everything you did last Friday, because he's got adult-onset attention deficit and he couldn't pay attention long enough to tell you the right figures. STUPID! WHACK! Get away from my desk! Deep breath, problem solved. Of course I do realise this is a deeply-flawed strategy, bordering on psychotic, but think how much better we would all feel if we could just release all that tension. World peace could be achieved with the output of one day's editions of the world's newspapers, something the UN couldn't do if it mulched half the Brazilian rainforest."

Not everyone

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