10 tips: How to be Funny

Try these tips and you probably still won’t get people to crack a smile

READER SUBIR DAS wrote me a long letter. Here’s an extract.

“Sir, this is Subir. Recently I was thinking about writing something which emits a jocular tone. But it made me frustrated because I have not so humorous ideas. I want to ask you a question frankly. Is a sense of humor an inbred quality? Or it can be attained by analysis or tremendous thinking? Please don't give me an ambiguous answer.”

Inbred? Probably.

Subir launched his writing career with a letter printed in the newspaper and now wants to move towards becoming a comic author.

It’s important to encourage people like him. There’s a widespread belief around the globe that “Asians aren’t funny”. There may be some foundation to this. Reader Brian Chin said, “Asians are taught by our education systems to think in sensible, logical ways. Westerners are raised on a diet of sitcoms to think in offbeat, ironic ways. We need to teach ourselves to be less sensible and more silly.”

So for all the Subirs in Asia, here are Ten Ways to Be Funny.
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1. Avoid telling jokes. Your audience is really not very interested in how many anythings it takes to change a light bulb.

So just say things that make your audience go, “Huh?”

Such as: “Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.”
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2. Instead of jokes, tell self-deprecating stories. “They say that Asians are great at maths but terrible at jokes. Not true! I can prove it conclusively… with this two-page algebraic formula.”
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3. Use short set-up lines and short punchlines. “My teacher told me to follow my dreams. Last night I dreamt I was naked on this stage.”
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4. Be cruel and abusive, but only to yourself. “After two years married to me, my wife was just like the coffee she served every morning: cold and bitter.”
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5. Challenge your audience with clever lines. For example, you could use a pause as a punchline.

“There are two rules for success:

“1.) Don't tell all you know.”

(Loooong pause.)
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6. Practice being deadpan, which is being funny without smiling. It’s hard but it makes your jokes funnier.

Say this with a straight face: “Treat every day as if it was your last. One day you’ll be right.”
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7. People expect exaggeration in humor.

But I think understatement is funnier.

“There are a number of people who believe that World War II was actually a bad thing.”
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8. You can tell lies as long as they are extreme enough not to mislead people:

“Mother Teresa was a wonderful woman. The best date I ever had.”
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9. Never knowingly use other people’s lines, but learn to create your own by adding punchlines to real news stories.

“Obama sent 30,000 troops to the war zone. Tiger Woods’ house.”
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10. Above all, be SILLY.

“I made a decision this morning that I would spend a few hours procrastinating. But I never got round to it.”
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EVEN if you do all that, you’ll still bomb. I bomb all the time. Audiences in Asia can be really hard.

A comedian’s days swing from delight to depression.

So if you see Subir or me around, do us a favor: laugh at us.
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ON ANOTHER TOPIC, thank you to Foxlore, Christy, Kamaal, Bernard and other readers who attended a talk I gave at Hong Kong University last night. And an especially big thank you for pretending to laugh at jokes I know you’d already heard.
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Technorati Tags: How to be funny,comedian,humor,jokes

Comments

[TS]

I once read an article written by a man suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, the inability to feel empathy with other people.
He described how he eventually had learned how to read other peoples feelings and moods and how to respond to them.
He can't love anyone, he doesn't have sympathy with people in pain and doesn't feel remorse if he is the one inflicting the pain.
But he have been taught to fake these things, for him the whole world is just a pretend game.

I'm just wondering if this is the same with humour, if you haven't picked it in childhood, can you indeed learn how appreciate it? or are you just faking it?

[Lurker]

I think speaker's appearance and personality also helps. If someone like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise said "Mother Teresa was a wonderful woman. Best date I ever had", it would be so tasteless I would arrange for his lift to crash.

But when Nury says it, it's funny.

[Paul]

For those who couldn't attend, last night's seminar by Uncle N, it was on 'Chinglish' and other forms of Asian-English hybrids. It was a great lecture with some really funny examples of usage, signage, and such.

Though there are many cases of funny English usage created by non-native speakers, I still have to admire people who are at least multi-lingual and are attempting to work in a second language. What I find truly remarkable are those monolingual folks who don’t even bother to look before they leap,
such as this story.

[Paul]

Sorry all, wrong code…woke up early and did not have my morning chocolate ha ha. Story is here. story is here.

[TS]

Great story Paul.
One wonder if teenagers in China will take on to Scandinavian letter tattoos.

ø = Island

å = water stream

[Nury]

For those who are too lazy to check out Paul's link, here is the story:

A TEENAGER who paid £90 to have his arm tattoed with Chinese characters got a shock when he learned the message read: 'At the end of the day, this is an ugly boy.'
Hairdresser Lee Becks thought he had Mandarin for 'Love, honour and obey' etched into his skin.
The 18-year-old found out that he had been tricked when he saw the effect it had on a woman serving at a Chinese take-away.
'At first, she said something about me making people laugh and talked about a crown,' he said.
'But then I realised she was really saying clown, not crown. The young woman blushed and was very reluctant to translate for me. Then she admitted what it really said.'
A 'totally mortified' Mr Becks went back to the tattoo parlour in Southend, the next day - only to find it had closed.

[Sara L.]

Heres a list with the same topic headline "how to be funny" from ehow.com

I think it is not so clever as the list above.

ehow.com

1
Don't take yourself or your work too seriously.

2
Keep your wits about you. Be quick with your responses, because much of humor is getting the timing right.

3
Know that life is covered by a veneer of phoniness, and see through that veneer. See things for what they are.

4
Accept the facts as they are, but exaggerate or distort those facts to draw attention to them.

5
Make up games to make the day-to-day aspects of your life more entertaining. For example, figure out why the people in the other cars look the way they do when you're stuck in a traffic jam.

6
Bring to life characters and stories that people can relate to and recognize in their own lives. Remember that your life is the subject matter you know best, so use it.

7
Read your audience and time your jokes correctly. Use pauses to allow the audience - your co-workers, your spouse or whomever - to absorb the humor.

8
Have confidence in your observations and stories.

9
Relax and enjoy life.

These bits of advice are okay, but are not as practical, and fail to give advice.

The one I really like in Mr Jams list is the understatement one, number 7.

[Chamin]

Now I see, the financial services sector is just being nice to those with Asperger's Syndrome, by hiring them!

[fardel]

Uncle
It is not true that westerners laugh more easily.
The comics use a very old technique:

they bring their " clappers" to the show and sit them all over the theater, to start the roar of applause
In Tv : radio show there is a "clap man" with a sign saying:
Laugh....... NOW!
Clap your hands.. NOW!
Scream....... NOW!
Stomp your feet...NOW!

[Jason]

Reader Brian Chin said, “Asians are taught by our education systems to think in sensible, logical ways.

Um, I know this is going to sound bad coming from a western imperialist dog, such as myself...but isn't HK routinely skewered for its pathetic educational system that only teaches rote learning and students develop no critical thinking skills? So how are they taught to think in sensible and logical ways? It appears those are two words lacking in every day life.

[Christy]

Nury, your jokes are still funny the second time around. :)

The tattoo story has an equivalent in China actually, there have been reports of people wearing tees with words like "b**ch" or the f-word without knowing what they meant.

[Penny]

I've always had the idea that a funny person is someone who is able to laugh at himself/herself. Because if you can still laugh your heads off after falling down the stairs, you definately got to have a darn good sense of humor!

[Sabrina]

People wearing tees with swearwords (and not knowing what they meant)?

I sometimes see them here too in Indonesia. Once when I was hanging out with friends... well, I saw a group of girls wearing those 'b***h' (written in large fonts!) tees confidently.

[kartini]

If you guys knew what that Lee Becks guy looked like, you would definitely understand why he ended up with that tattoo.
There was another case a father showed his friend who could read kanji to decipher what was written on his toddler's T-shirt. Turns out that she had been walking around town with a pink T-shirt which has a pic of a bunny and the words "Me, pervert" written on it! haha.
Visit www.hanzismatter.com for more laughs.
P/S I am not affiliated to the website in any way.

[ink]

It's funny!
I tkink 'Practice being deadpan' is an excellent idea!haha.however ,i don't think i can't do it ,i'll laugh .And the example is great,too.

[sej]

Being funny is seriously difficult. It only happens for me when the stars miraculously align in just the right way.

For some comedians though, simply being offensive seems to do the trick. Consider how many comedians swear, or border on insulting people in their acts.

Christy,

I'm not surprised you have things like B***h, F**k on T-shirts. I think one of the fashion chains in Hong Kong, W***o, clearly didn't think through their name choice as completely as they perhaps should have.

[Jamil]

Dear Vittachi,

I find your writings in The Curious Diary of Dr. Jam as fascinating and really tickle my funny bone. Actually I seriously consider to embark in writing career. Currently I work in an international call center company and increasingly feel my current job stiffles my prospect to explore uncharted territory as how your writings can freely take you to touch various aspects of human life in funny sense. So, since you an expert in this field I wonder if you could share your trade secret, where should I start and what do I need to do to became a column writer.

[Nury]

Dear Jamil, there is no standard “career path” to being a funny writer.

My best advice: You have to write funny material in your after hours free time and build up a writing career that way.

It's not easy. But you can use the 10 tips above to get started.

Once you have enough regular humor writing assignments, then you can leave your day job, if you want to, or keep you day job and write on the side (that's what I do).

Best of luck

[Chamin]

If Jamil is in a call center, he should have loads of material for writing :o)

[clicked]

Why does Jamil's comment give the same feel as Subir's earlier mail? It absolutely cannot be related, right?