Learn to be Humorous – The Secrets of Funny Punchlines

If you are giving a speech or presentation and you want to inject a little humour, it would be fair to say that you have to learn to how to be humorous on purpose. I am going to do a very dangerous thing and assume that you already have a method for creating humorous material. I am doing that as the discussion of creating material and speeches is beyond the scope of this article.
The best thing to do is to create your speech first, then think about the humour. What can happen is that if you try and be funny first, before getting your message clarified, you can creatively run aground. You’ll spend more time worrying about how to be humorous rather than focusing on your message.
Be specific about your message, what the point of your speech or presentation is and then write your speech “from the heart; meaning you should write as quickly as you can. At this stage don’t think too much about what you’re writing, otherwise you’ll end up second guessing yourself. The idea being you short-circuit your inner critic, that little doubting voice that we all have.
Once you have the raw material for your speech down, now is the time to “edit from the head”. At this point you can unleash your inner critic to help you. Make sure everything you say and every point that you make reflects the overall point of your speech.
Now we can look at some of the mechanics of humour. I’ve met people who are really funny who still don’t know what a punchline is, that’s something that baffles me as these are the tools of their trade and yet they’re using them blindly. So here’s a quick run down of terms (apologies if you know this already, but I want us to be on the same page):
The Secrets of Set-up Lines
A set-up line is the bit before you get a laugh. It’s usually normal and provides information required to make the punchline work. A set-up line is equally important as the punchline is. Without the set-up line the punchline fails.
Consider this joke:
During his annual physical, the elderly man says to his doctor “I may be having a problem with my memory. I keep forgetting to take my medicine. I can’t remember to take out the trash. Sometimes, I can’t even remember my own name.” The doctor says, “When did this start happening?” The man looks at the doctor and says, “When did what start happening?”
Everything up until the word “says” is the set-up. It provides the necessary mini story and helps to orientate us.
Ideally, the shorter this part the better. You want to get to the punchline as fast as you can, but without rushing your delivery. You should still be speaking in your own natural rhythm and pace.
If you consider that the average headline stand-up comedian gets 4-6 laughs per minute, an act containing jokes of this nature probably wouldn’t achieve that. In order to achieve that there would need to be a punchline every three sentences, or one laugh every 10 seconds.
As you can see I am very serious when it comes to learning how to be humorous.
Joke stories, such as the one of just outlined, tend to be a little long-winded and have only one punchline at the end. That’s a lot of time and a lot of faith to have in that one punchline working.
The good thing is we’re not about learning how to become a stand-up comedian. These types of jokes could work in a speech or presentation and you should make sure that you speak them out loud a few times to put them into your own words. This will mean that you find yourself editing the joke naturally.
Obviously, when you are delivering a presentation everything you say is not divided into either set-up lines or punchlines. You’re not a comedian. You’re someone giving a presentation that uses humour to help make your point, so a large proportion of what you say will be focused on your message.
That said, when you get to the humour, you want to get to the laugh as fast as possible, without rushing what you’re saying.
The Secrets of Funny Punchlines
Your punchlines should be short and to the point. This is where you get the punch of punchlines. Consider the punchline of the earlier joke and imagine what it would be like if it was like this:
“I’m a little confused about what it is you’re saying to me Doctor. When did what start happening?”
I personally fell asleep about half-way through that sentence. The set-up line creates the tension of expectation in the audience. This means that the punchline should be terse enough to release that tension. But if the punchline rambles on like in my above example, then that effect is lost.
Everything that needs to be conveyed for this mini story to work, is found in the final sentence.
Here’s another key part for a successful punchline, make sure that the key word is as close to the end of the sentence as possible. This will keep the audience tension right up until the last possible minute.
In the previous example the key word is “what”. It’s a direct swap of the previous word used in the same place which was “this”. It’s also important, in this example, that the line that the elderly man says is exactly the same as what the doctor said, with just one slight difference.
These tips can not only be applied to the editing of street jokes, but also to most other forms of spoken humour that appear in humorous speeches. If you can apply these tips you can learn how to be humorous and improve the funny you already have.
Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.