How to Crush Your Joke Writing with this Single-Word Technique

one of the biggest problems I find with most comedians when they sit down to write is they're just trying to sit down to be funny and you can see the Dilemma there oh my God I gotta be funny and it's just this big a morph as goo of oh my God I gotta be funny there's too much there's too much information hitting your brain so he paralyzes you so you stare at a blank page all all day so what you should do is pick something and decide to write on it it's like put down something

and then use technique to make it funny so how do you do that we're going to focus on that today we're going to try to do it just by picking a word now tomorrow according to the weather report showed up in my phone said it's G to rain so I went okay let's like like let's make that the subject matter rain so we'll start with the word rain one of the things to understand is when we sit down and write jokes when we sit down to write something a lot of us wait for this inspiration

to happen oh my God this inspiration uh I'm not getting I'm not inspired I haven't gotten any inspiration stop waiting for inspiration pick a word pick a subject pick a topic and write it down on the page and start writing on it now quick side note most people don't know this even most comedians don't know this there is a vast array of different ways to create inspiration to write anytime you want most people have three or four I've got 24 24 actually I've got 66 that I use but 24 on the major on the major

picture here as you could see these are different like if I'm sitting there I have nothing to write on I can choose any one of these uh multiple Inspirations my comedy material generator and use this to start making an approach and come up with jokes so any given day I sit down even when I don't feel funny I can choose one of these techniques apply the system and create jokes by the way I'll be teaching this on my weekend Workshop two-day workshop that I'm teaching in Vegas October 14th and 15th and that's the that's the

one coming up now uh I I do several of these a year check my website that's in the description to go to more these are intense six hours per day intense writing workshops where you get all the goods man and it's a lot of fun just that's aside note let's get back to writing with with the list on rain so I take this one word rain rain is relative to what's happening right now because I saw it in uh forecast so I said I'm going to write this down rain and I like first thing I

do is like rain what else could this be uh what's related to it rain there could be a stripper named rain but let's not even start with that yet that came later and this particular thing I was like associations dealing with rain I look for people places things words phrases cliches events celebrities and branding and I make a list making the list is where the inspiration comes from without the list a lot of times you're searching you can only keep track of two to three ideas at the same time in your mind so you just

got lose a lot of information when you put it on the page now you have control of it because you could always come back and reference it here's the beauty of the list see this list I did manually I put rain flash flooding 40 days 40 nights epic flood hurricane tropical storm you can you can read it faster than I could say it and there's all these ideas sometimes saying them out loud can give you more so downpour downpour downpour downpour so you have down you have poor Maybe that just saying it out loud could

be could give you some ideas as well so low pressure system isolated showers rainstorm dark clouds condensation precipitation but you can see all of these associations raining cats and dogs rain rain go away wet weather uh under the weather I think is something I also came up with down here under the weather um when you're feeling sick under the weather is right here so um it never rains in southern California a calm before the storm stormy um Katrina hurricane cat 3 Cat 4 uh PL plop file now I found this to be funny uh and

idea because plop file came to me it's a lover of rain um that was like looking it up I didn't know that before here's what's cool right so I did this list manually and it took me about 25 30 minutes but what if we were able to take it and have chbt do a list for us over here I had chbt do a list of of dealing with rain and all I did was put put a put a search into chat GPT now chat GPT is an excellent device watch how quickly what's let's do it

again let's take what they find me 50 associations uh and we just if you plugged it in let's see how quickly it comes up with this so we're going to drop that in there right now write me now the the the prompt you give chat GPT is important right write me 50 associations related at to the word rain use words phrases cliches people celebrities terms Etc um and so I ask for 50 because the more you have the more father you have the more research you have the more inspiration comes from that research remember inspiration

doesn't just happen it comes from taking action right there's no reason to get stuck there's no reason for writer block just sit down and take some action ideas start coming to you so let's try this again and see what Chad GPT does look at how quickly it comes up with this list you know and it's coming up with new stuff that wasn't in that first lift Rihanna's umbrella monsoon season Cloud burst acid rain a cloud burst and you're dealing with a stripper Cloud burst could be the name of you know it could be a metaphor

for an orgasm so you could see that there's all possibilities wet socks D water spout rainy day fund rain rain go away come again another day come again another day dealing with a stripper stripper of sex right come again another day U muddy puddles hydrate rain barrel meteorologist water Rog Crying in the Rain El ninu drip drip pitter patter of raindrops raindrop patterns a little rain never heard anyone Seattle known for rain rain check so there's a lot of there Purple Rain that's a new one even if we go the previous list it didn't have

purple rain on this list it just came up with new ones so each time you come in with some new ones it'll it could give you some more uh fodder more research more research creat more inspiration so now let's go over raincoat raincoat is a metaphor for rubber or condom so you could say if you know depending on how much your audience knows are they hip enough to pick up on that uh reference all right April showers bring May flowers those are her other those are the other two strippers at the club um so anyway

let's go back to let's go back to the list so you see this list is here you can utilize this list I do it and I put two windows together now I could basically use both ideas and scroll through both to come up with you know just to brainstorm with what's available on those lists so out of that list now we have some a lot of different possibilities we start with the ones that are just related to say la that's where I live so I tie it in so Target and angle uh two things that

are very important in a joke you have a Target that's your topic you have an angle that's the what you feel about it that's the the angle you're taking what am I trying to say with this joke that's the angle so um let's look at let's just scroll through you could see we came up with a couple of ideas just off the list we were reading off of right now and I didn't even write those down thank goodness this is uh recorded now I can get those those jokes later but in this case we have

22 jokes that are written from the list 22 this is why the listing is so important now out of these jokes these 22 jokes I might decide that six are good enough to make the show 10 10 might be good enough to make the show but every one of these is going to get some sort of chuckle right the level of the laughter depends on your audience but every one of these contains some sort of structur some sort of like coincidence some sort of surprise or twist that is going to get the audience to at

least go so let's take a look when you when they say it rains it pours in La they say when it rains it washes away the urine that's a comparing contrast joke structurally that'll get some sort of a chuckle uh in La there's a if there's a light rain it's easy for drivers to lose control when there's a heavy rain it's easy for sidewalks to lose their smell of urine and it's like I would may even change that to pee right so in La there's a light rain it's easy for drivers to lose control when

there's heavy rain it's easy for sidewalks to lose the smell of pee um that could pay off a little bit get a little laugh when there's rain in La there's kind of a renewal the hills get greener and the homeless get cleaner so because there is it's a win-win so because there is an alliteration or rhyme it amps up the coincidence and you probably know by now that coincidence is one of the nine major psychological laughter triggers from my book breaking comedy's DNA and if you want the book there's a link to it in the

description uh they say when it rains it pours unless you sell patio furniture then when it rains your poor uh our game was canceled because it was raining cats and dogs that's the bad news the good news is they were all rescues so that's a way to tell that joke I dated a stripper named rain now here's where the joke opens up to all these other possibilities because we're adding a second idea the original definition of a joke is two dissimilar ideas converging two dissimilar ideas converging so when you have that the stripper idea my

mother used to say it's going to rain don't forget to wear your rubbers uh I did a stripper named rain now I know what my mom meant by it looks like rain don't forget to wear your rubbers um I'm too broke to ever go to a strip club like I could never make it rain damn I could barely even make it sprinkle eh so so joke uh the strip club now that inspired this next one which was the strip club will strip you of your savings uh I used to be able to make it rain

now I can barely make rent so using that mirrored phrase under using the the term make right I used to be able to make it round rain now I could barely make rent when you hit that keyw again in that mirrored phrase the audience is expecting the brain just automatically expects it to end the same way and when it doesn't where the surprise comes in and that's what makes that joke work that is a Trope or a structure you can use time and time again and I want you to remember no structure no laughs no

matter where you put it in your story in your rant if there's no structure there's no joke uh so just make sure that you have structure that's where the payoffs come from I'm too Gro broke to ever go to the uh let's see uh I started a date a stripper named R I'm I'm a little confused I don't if we have sex do I have to use a condom or an umbrella I know that's kind of stupid right if we have sex one of the best things my mother taught me was save your money for

a raining day great advice hookers are expensive I dated a stripper named Rain she used to let me snort coke right off her ass every date was like a weather report tonight expect rain with a chance of snow now this particular joke I came up with tonight expect rain with a chance of snow or as the first part that's what I came up with first because it's a phrase used by meteorologists I said how can I tie this to stripper oh stripper lets you co snort coke off their ass that's where the snow comes from

and I that's how I built that joke the phrase tonight expect rain with a chance of snow came first so just so sometimes you write jokes backwards that way um unless she's really PST off then there's just frozen rain and that could be really dangerous um and that's the thing about dating a stripper named Rain you never have you you never have to guess whether or not you're going to have sex you just check the Doppler radar 70% chance we your rubbers so there's a there's a possible joke right there I used to date a

Japanese girl she was adorable in English she didn't use the plural form of words she'd be like oh there's a lot of drain drop on the window oh there's a lot of raindrop on the windshield that was one of I remember her saying that when we were driving I was that's so adorable and she'd be like oh when it rain it Pour right it's it was cute until she tried to sex me one time she wrote I want you to my brain out I was like no I can't she's thinking it's sexy I'm thinking the

Zer film you know so you see that where that particular uh joke can go and that was all inspired by this rain thing uh I'm not saying that Trump is a Nazi sympathizer let's just say that there's been plenty of rain at the campaign rallies recently uh I dated a stripper named Rain my friend was like how is the sex man I said biblical he's like what do you mean I said 40 days 40 nights I was getting weather alerts on my phone for flash flooding her name should have been called hurricane with the way

she blew me you see that's a little blue right adult content but it still ties in so you see the coincidence between the jux deposition with rain sex weather reports all that stuff ties in perfectly um have you ever heard of hot rain you have now um my I gated a girl named rain we rarely had sex or as i' like to call it intermittent showers so now that in inspired this next joke which has nothing to do with the stripper uh sex in my marriage is a lot like rain in Southern California I don't

get any so that real quick analogy ties into a nice solid joke I don't get any is true for each and both at the same time sex in my marriage I don't get any rain in Southern California I don't get any so that one phrase ties both of those ideas together that's the analogy joke that's the magic there true for each and both at the same time uh I dated a stripper named rain anytime we had sex she was and she was on top I just called that being under the weather so there you go

a quick run through 22 jokes from one word and you can see how we can get there using the listing you could also use chat GPT to help you generate lists I implore you pay close attention do not have chat chpt write your jokes for you it's a it's first of all it comes up with riddles uh they're usually hashtag dad jokes and on top of that it scrapes Chad GPT scrapes from the internet what's already existing on the internet if you ask it to write a joke for you odds can be that it will

come up with a joke that's already been written you don't want to risk that that's called plagiarism plagiarism can get you sued I had a comedian do a joke she put the little video up on uh Instagram and uh I listened to the joke and the joke was very funny and I dm'd her I said great joke and she writes back yeah Chad GPD helped me write that joke I go yeah that's Rita rudner's joke so I said take it down because that's not good you don't want to get the reputation of stealing jokes do

you Carlos Mania who career could end now keep that in mind when you're writing use chat GPT as a research device you know this when I when I came up when I was looking for that make it joke make it make it rain I can't even make rent I had chapp come up with um other ideas that from that right I use chat GPT to develop some make it so here like make it I could come up with phrases 20 sentences with the phrase make it and it came up with these ideas and it inspired

even though the one make rent wasn't there it inspired that particular line so does that make sense this gives me gave me great inspiration to come up with that particular joke uh so using Chad GPT to help you generate ideas is a is it's great for research not great for writing jokes so that's how you B basically take one word and create 22 jokes uh and that's what we did was like 22 jokes and that one word experience uh first of all you find out what else could it be you flesh out those two dissimilar

ideas and you start to do your listing technique and you look for the coincidences between the two dissimilar ideas and you keep brainstorming and you do the but you got to do that listing the brain can only keep track of three to four ideas at once in the brain so you get them down on the page you don't have to worry about keeping track of those ideas they're there on the page then you ask what else could it be and you flesh out from there and look for the coincidences also remember your structures paired phrase

mirrored phrase uh analogies uh two to similar ideas um compare and contrast befores and afters all of those things where there is a laugh there is a structure no structure no laughs remember that you know it may sound like it's free style ing when people are up there but they're really they're getting laughs because there is a specific structure in place that triggers that laugh mechanism in their in their human audience so I hope this brought a value to your day get writing we'll see you later bye