Comedy Writing Secret #3

I probably should have told you this sooner....

You need to write everything down.

EVERYTHING.

I don't just mean jokes. I mean all your ideas, memories, dreams, etc.

Because even if you don't have a complete setup and punch right away, you may wish you had more premise ideas later on. You might have a dry spell, writer's block. You might feel more in the mood to expand on older ideas than come up with a new one. You might decide to write a sitcom or a sketch and find some of those unused ideas come in handy.

And if you're like me, you have a very efficient "forgetter". No matter how sure I am I'll remember something, later on or next day I'll be in a different frame of mind and it's on the tip of my tongue but gone forever.

I don't know about you, but if there's any chance that my idea could be 30 seconds, or 2 minutes of comedy gold, I want to hold onto it. And judging by my record so far, there's about a 10% chance of any joke idea turning out to have gold potential.

To do a little nerdy math, my average bit is about 1 minute, and about 10% of my bits turn out good, so every idea is worth 6 seconds, and if you want to come up with 45 minutes of great comedy for your HBO or Comedy Central special, you need to write 450 bits. (And test them out onstage and refine them and expand on them and edit them ad nauseum) If you have 3 ideas a day, that's about 6 months of writing.

So don't lose any ideas.

Sometimes it's a real hassle to find something to write with and get it down, but it's worth it. Sometimes you're going to sleep when it happens and you have to turn the light back on or get out of bed entirely. As Mitch Hedburg's joke goes, he either has to get up and write it down, or convince himself it isn't that good an idea.

I'm too obsessive to convince myself it's not a good idea.

So buy 5 or 6 little spiral notepads and a bunch of pens, and stick them all over the place- in your car, at your job, by your bed, in the bathroom... then you're always covered. I don't even go to sleep at night until I've got a glass of water and my notepad and pen on the nightstand.

Sweet dreams, and good writing!
B

* I owe "forgetter" to Teddy Paproski (hope I spelled that right, it's been about 6 years since I've even seen him!)