Stand-up comedy tactics for speakers and presenters

from Gerry Thompson's work in progress, Business Speaking and Presentation with Comedy & Improvisation .

If you want to become a confident and successful humorous speaker, you can learn a lot from the methods that professional comedians use. All of these can become a very useful part of your repertoire for all kinds of presentation situations. These tricks, however, like the building blocks of comedy and humour, can be used to a great deal more purpose than comic effect. Let’s look, then, at this valuable toolkit of oomedian’s devices:

• Techniques for working the audience
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• Set-up and punch-line
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• Comic timing
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• Back reference
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• Exaggeration
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• Comparison
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• Word-play
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• Things in threes
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• Story and anecdote

Techniques for working the audience

Connecting strongly with the audience is more than just a desirable quality for a comedian - it's a compulsory element of all successful humour, and indeed of all speaking and presentation.

Comedy can't work without an audience. Someone can invent comedy on their own, but it's all theoretical until there's someone else there to try it out on – someone to hear it, be affected by it, and respond. The audience for comedy may be just three or four friends in the pub, or even just one person at the other end of a phone. But it's still a comedy audience.

Whatever form the audience takes, they will always be the ultimate judge of whether the humour is working. There's no point in a comedian saying 'I was great, but the audience was useless. If it didn't work for them, that was the comedy not working - full stop, period. Likewise a speaker.

Let’s see what a speaker can learn most directly from the stand-up comedian or comedy compere. The first lesson is in how they 'work the audience'. They use the audience as a source for comedy material. To do this best, they need to find out about your audience in advance, and use what they know about them. Then they observe how the audience reacts as they go through their material, and make something funny or meaningful out of all those elements.

Comedians establish something the audience all have in common, or something that is important to the audience, and use that as a starting point to make a connection. Maybe everyone present is into knitting, or writing HTML, or teaching bandicoots to swim – these will be their medium for inventive humour. They have to get the audience interested in what they have to say.

We shall look at the whole subject of engaging an audience in a lot more practical, step-by-step detail in chapter xx.

Set-up and Punch-line

A great deal of comedy incorporates some kind of punch-line – the bit that adds impact to a piece of humour, usually with an unexpected twist, after something else designed to build up to it and create a different expectation. It's also called set-up and pay-off. Here’s an example from Ireland…

Tommy Shaughnessy goes to church with his pal Sean Docherty.. Tommy goes up for confession and says to the priest:

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose woman."

The priest asks, "Is that you, little Tommy Shaughnessy?"

"Yes, Father, ‘tis I."

"And who was the woman you were with?"

"I can't be tellin' you that, Father. I don't want to ruin her reputation."

"Well, Tommy, I'm sure to find out sooner or later, so you may as well tell me now. Was it Brenda O'Malley?"

"I cannot say."

"Was it Patricia Kelly?"

"I'll never tell."

"Was it Brydie Shannon?"

"I'm sorry, but I'll not name her."

"Was it Mary Catherine Morgan?"

"My lips are sealed, Father."

“Was it Fiona McDonald, then?"

"Please, Father, I cannot tell you."

The priest sighs in frustration. "You're a steadfast lad, Tommy Shaughnessy, and I admire that. But you've sinned, and you must atone. You cannot attend church for three months. Now, be off with you."

Tommy walks back to his pew. His friend Sean slides over and whispers, "What'd you get?"

“Three months vacation,” says Tommy, “and five good leads."

 

As you can see in this example, the technique uses the comedy building blocks we learned about in the previous section. The set-up usually depends on creating a recognizable pattern that appears to lead to a predictable expectation, while the pay-off relies on departing from this with a twist or surprise. All traditional jokes have a punch-line like this. Certainly, the ones that work do.

Speakers, presenters and humorists can benefit greatly from the set-up and pay-off concept. It's a fundamental improvement on just saying something funny out of the blue. In fact it's probably the most used comedy device, across all genres. This is because humour can't sustain constant mega-laughs for two solid hours. Comedy requires modulation - a managed approach to the material and therefore to the flow of audience response. The set-up and pay-off can be used as a key element in structuring a presentation, which we will look at in detail in chapter xx.

Professional stand-up comedy material tends to follow a pattern something like this: a build-up and then a pay-off, then more build-up and another pay-off, and so on. Some of these cycles will have bigger pay-offs and bigger laughs; ideally there's what’s called modulation - building up the pitch towards a big ending. Sequences of gags following one another are called 'tags' in the business - because you're tagging something on to what went before, on a similar idea or theme - and this series is called a 'run'. Each run will culminate in its own pay-off or peak laugh before the energy drops, and another build-up starts. This is not something a regular speaker would normally do, yet something useful can be learned from the principle.You can develop an instinct for this kind of thing - a feeling for how to keep the audience coming along, judging which line is going to get the biggest laugh - and knowing when to stop. It's all about being in control - having your finger on the pulse of the audience in order to respond instinctively.

Set-up and pay-off should be used in an integrated way in a speech or presentation, rather than wheeling in less relevant material in order to get a laugh.

When using it, beware of going on too long before reaching the pay-off - classic stand-up comedy aims to produce a laugh every few lines. The rest is down to timing - like having the right gaps just before a pay-off so that the element of surprise is maximized, and giving people space to laugh rather than talking over it.

Comic timing

Comedians’ timing is a very useful way to approach the whole subject of timing for speaking and presentation.

There’s a cliché much loved by people who may think they’re funnier than they are. They like to ask their friend, “What’s the secret of comedy?” When their friend doesn’t know the answer (and unfortunately, even if they do) they leave a very long gap and then say, “Timing!” and fall about laughing. On their own.

Cliché it may be, but they have a point. Time and time again I’ve seen comedians with pretty good material fail to come across well because they’re not making the most of the material with their timing. Likewise, we’ve probably all seen performers whose material isn’t the greatest, but whose timing is superb. We may not be so aware of what’s going on, but it will make us laugh.

Timing, more than any other aspect of delivery, is about how to make the most out of material and content – whether funny or not. This can be understood by examining the basic nature of laughter and why we laugh. Laughter is essentially a release of pent-up tension; good timing selects the optimum moment in the build-up of that tension to deliver the line that people ‘get’ and laugh at. Too soon, and there isn’t enough of a build-up – things are a bit flat; Too late, and the tension and expectation can decline or fade, or the audience’s patience is overly tested, or the punch-line can be anticipated and doesn’t carry enough surprise, so that the final effect is weakened. This can go on all the way through a comedy act or a presentation. Timing will play a more crucial role in some parts of your presentation and material than at others.

A good sense of timing is one of the key things that people are judging when they say that someone is ‘a natural comedian’ – because instinct has a great deal to do with good comic timing. This is not to say, however, that some people can do it and others just can’t; everyone has an innate awareness of rhythm and time and beat – observe any baby, for instance. Everyone can learn good timing – even good comic timing.

What gets in the way of good comic timing? The two commonest factors are:

• not being in touch with the audience – not paying attention or having an accurate sense of what is going on with them, and how they are responding to what you’re saying - having that metaphorical finger on the audience’s pulse

• tension or anxiety, which also disconnects one from the audience and concentrates attention on one’s own predicament. This often leads to the mistake of hurrying through material - or leaving unplanned and uncomfortable gaps when you don’t know what you’re going to say next.

These negative observations can point us towards helpful factors in developing good comic timing:

• Cultivate the habit of paying attention to audiences, and being interested in what’s going on with them, with at least part of your awareness, all the time

• Work on eliminating factors that can make you feel anxious, and which aid your confidence and ability to overcome nerves. Many of the exercises in this book are helpful in this regard

• Practice your timing in everyday life, with jokes and banter – especially in low-pressure situations where you are at ease, such as down the pub with your mates, or playing with your children, or just chatting with people.

• Cultivate your ability to be in the present moment, making a habit of improvisation – we’ll look at this in chapter xx.

Good comic timing is about practicing and developing your own instinctive sensitivity. We’ll look at this in more detail in chapter xx, and at how to overcome nerves and increase confidence in chapter xx.

Back Reference

Back reference in comedy - sometimes called re-incorporation - means getting laughs by referring back to something that was mentioned earlier and putting a different spin on it. Back reference plays on the key building block of familiarity or recognition. The second time the item is brought in, the context will be different – something will have changed, something will be surprising, and that's why people laugh. You can sometimes do this a number of further times.

Back reference can also be used to good effect as a general speaking device, as well as for humour – provided some meaningful new aspect is introduced at each reintroduction.

Exaggeration

Exaggeration - taking an idea and carrying it further than usual or than expected - is another powerful comic and rhetorical device.

Dennis Healey, former British politician, achieved huge satirical impact when he said of his opposite number in a UK parliamentary session:

 “Being attacked by Sir Geoffrey Howe is like being savaged by a dead sheep”.

 Comic exaggeration means you're starting with facts or tendencies that are literally true, and carrying them further to a degree that is ridiculous or different enough to be funny. You just start with something normal and then exaggerate any aspect of it - any quality or any situation or any series of events, whatever. The technical term is extrapolation. As comedy author and script writer Jon Macks says, 'Moderation just isn't funny.' If you go even further, you're then a surreal comedian.

The reason devices such as comic exaggeration work is that the human mind is flexible and imaginative, and very good at visualising things it’s hearing about.

‘Things going wrong’ is generally a good opportunity for exaggeration – and a generally useful comedy ingredient. For some reason, things-going-smoothly-and-according-to-plan isn’t the ideal recipe for laughs for human beings. So a reliable approach to producing comedy in any situation is to say: “What could go wrong here?” – then you can take off in a creative flight of imaginative fancy. This is how most of the plotting works in sit-coms, for instance.

Things in threes

Here's a little trick-of-the-trade that you may be using already, and if you aren’t, you should, and if you are, you might be able to use more or better. Many comedians use it without ever thinking about it. Great orators, politicians, soapbox preachers and public speakers use it too - it's instinct, really. Basic instinct.

Legendary orator and British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is still quoted daily worldwide as having said:

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies – and statistics.”

If you're giving examples of things, or telling a series of events or making a list, three is the magic number. Lists of two or four just don’t work in the same way. It’s a classic formula because three is the minimum to supply the key ingredients of familiarity, twist and surprise. Here's why it works …

• the first item in the list introduces a concept
• the second item brings in something similar, establishing an expectation for the third
• the third item breaks the pattern, pushes the envelope further, or otherwise incorporates a twist

So the rule of three is essentially a compact version of the set-up-and-pay-off: That’s why it’s so powerful. All great speakers use it – listen, for instance, to any speech by Mr. Obama.

Story and anecdote

An element of narrative or unfolding of event is a very useful device in comedy and speaking. We simply want to know what happens next – it’s in our blood, after many thousands of years. So it’s also an excellent vehicle for playing with people’s expectations and bringing in the twist or surprise that creates humour. In fact, most jokes are in the form of a short story, because it’s good for a self-contained or standalone piece of humour which can therefore be brought into any context. The best comedy stories, however, are those which are individualized and which people have not heard before – your own stories.

Anecdotes should obviously be relevant to your material, and make a relevant point. You can base them on real events, but you can also take liberties with the content. Things going wrong, for instance is a great source of humour, which can be incorporated to make stories or anecdotes funny. You can exaggerate things that went slightly wrong for better effect. There isn’t usually much comedy in things going according to plan.

Wordplay

Wordplay - making a play on the words themselves - has been another mainstay of comedy and speaking down through the ages. A commonly used example is the pun or double-entendre – exploiting the fact that the same term can have two quite different meanings. The English language is particularly rich in words with more than one meaning .

But - PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING FOR HUMORISTS AND SPEAKERS - beware excessive or inappropriate use of wordplay. Many people don't like it, possibly because it brings up how educated they are (or aren't). Many see it as being 'too clever by half'. To others it seems too self-conscious or affected. There’s also a danger that double-entendre can easily cause offence. We’ll look into this further in chapter xx.

The main weakness of wordplay is exactly what it says - it's only about words; it's not creating a visual image or active scene in the mind, which is what the best comedy depends upon - the picture that the audience sees and finds funny. So this often leaves a feeling of 'So what?' for the audience - or makes you come across as a smart-ass. There's just too much of a groan factor risk involved - and that isn't a risk you want to take too often. Children’s jokes do it a lot. Here’s an example which illustrates the groan factor:

A: I went to hospital for an operation the other day.
B: Really? That must have been awful.
A: No, it was hilarious. I was in stitches.

Using words and language flexibly and imaginatively, though, is another matter. And phrase-play can work too - having catch-phrases, or using slogans that people know well and enlivening them or setting them in a new context - putting a new spin on something people are already familiar with. I was in a Belfast cinema years ago watching the bunny-boiler scene in the movie Basic Instinct, when a heckler shouted out the well-known catch-phrase from a commercial of the day for a well-known washing-up detergent running at the time, “Mummy won’t be pleased”. Shouting at movies is fairly normal in Belfast, a city where nearly everyone is a comedian, in a country, Ireland, where pretty much the same is true.

Word-play may go down better in some circles than others – for instance at an International Symposium on Relative Linguistics and Applied Semantics. But even then it might not work so well once the delegates started drinking heavily. Nobody drinks like linguistic semanticists.

Challenging authority

Everyone loves it when you use comedy to challenge authority. (Well, not quite everyone – some fascist dictators in totalitarian states aren’t fond of it.)

Down through the ages, comedy has often been the only means that could be used to challenge authority - possibly because those in authority didn't go to comedy shows. Traditionally, court jesters, fools and clowns were the only ones who could get away with it,.

Probably the first thing to consider is which authoritarian entity you're going to make fun of and what degree of parody is acceptable. A comedy audience of the general public will generally be happy to laugh at whoever's in power at the time - even if they elected them. But when you’re speaking in a business context, you obviously have to pick your targets more judiciously; most business audiences would quite like to hold onto their jobs if at all possible. Nonetheless, in some situations appropriate parody can be very effective and even appreciated by those parodied.

Remember, too, that it's not at all essential to be offensive in order to be funny - we'll look at this in detail in chapter xx. Self-deprecation - the opposite of challenging authority - is also an excellent comedy device, and it's dealt with there too.

In the end, whether you’re considering who to satirize or how to do it, the bottom line is always how good your comedy is. A really good gag may well be enjoyed even by people who support the authority you're challenging – or by that authority themselves.

Here's an authentic ancient joke mocking those then in authority. In fact it's alleged to be the oldest recorded joke in a European language - in this case Latin - written down by Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius in the early days of the Roman Empire. It’s obviously very dated, but embodies classic anti-authoritian humour. Here’s how it goes….

There came unto Rome a certain gentleman who looked somewhat similar to the emperor Augustus. One day the emperor noticed him and demanded of him if his mother had sometimes been to Rome, speaking thus in Latin:
“Dic mihi, adulescens, fuit aliquando mater tua Romae?”
Negavit ille nec contentus adjecit (“No,” said the gentleman): Sed pater meus saepe. (“But my father hath often been.”)

Comparison

Last of the comedian’s list of perennially useful ingredients is comparing something with something else - as used in the classic literary devices of simile and metaphor, and equally powerful here in its live oral form.

Drawing on contemporary movie references, Ronald Reagan supplied a memorable example early in his career as US president:

“A hippie is someone who walks like Tarzan, looks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah”

So this is about comparing A with B by pointing out something in common, so that some other qualities of B will also be applied to A, by implication. This is the basis of simile, metaphor, analogy and all those other good things which people use in vernacular speech as well as in books. These devices make language richer and more colourful, subtler and less direct. In comedy, it's done with an eye to getting a laugh because the comparison brings out the ridiculous or the unusual or the surprising, in keeping with the other 'basics of comedy' described above.

So comparison occupies the other side of the coin from those devices where differentness is pointed out. Taking them together, we can see that comedy is a mixture of these two components - seeing similarities and seeing differences. So comedy is about sameness and opposites - and using these to bring a twist or a new point of view.

Last words on comedians’ tricks of the trade

This hasn’t been a totally exhaustive list of comedy devices. Comedy being what it is, any time you come up with some kind of set of 'rules', somebody's going to break them and still be funny. That's just the way comedy is.

As I mentioned earlier, these ingredients and formulas overlap and interweave rather than being separate and distinct, you will be using them very much in combination.

Some speakers and comedians use these principles consciously and deliberately, but most do so instinctively, without thinking about it too much. Once you have tried them out, practised them, and got used to them consciously, the principles will become second nature. The process will become more natural and more instinctive.

Some of the tricks of the trade will suit a particular person’s individual style, and others won't. Those that don't suit you will make your material seem forced and unnatural, so forget these and concentrate on the ones that suit you better.

Some of the examples used in this book are standalone jokes or very well known bon mots, simply because these work better in print than ‘live’ examples from everyday life, which work less well out of context. In practice, you will be creating their own organic humour, which grows naturally out of the situation you’re in, from whatever's happening, from what other people are saying, and so on. Here’s another ‘joke’ coming up….