How To Find Your Next Move When Your Joke Is Stuck

Hello, Friend! It’s episode 156 of the Messed-Up To Set-Ups podcast and Garrett McDonald is back in the lab with me. In this one, we spend our time in a comedy-writing session workshopping jokes. We take a handful of rough ideas and see what they might become: A dad confronting his kids about Mario Kart while eating corn on the cob; the intricacies of being in a “fine” relationship; a playful idea about Jesus healing a man; and, a premise about why people can openly say they don’t like kids. Along the way, we talk about testing old jokes in front of an audience, writing fresh material for specific crowds, and the value of letting a joke grow instead of giving up too soon. This episode is a hilarious and honest look at the messy middle of creating. Tune in!

I love finished jokes, but I’m way more fascinated by everything that happens BEFORE they’re finished. That’s where I spend most of my time anyway: Finding angles, trying connections, cutting things, adding things, and occasionally wondering why I thought any of this was funny. That’s also what my self-paced, online course “The Joke Writer’s Lab” is built around. If you want practical methods for taking premises and turning them into actual material, you can join nearly 100 other students and jump into the course anytime.

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