Thirty Years of Comedy/humor Writing
– Some lessons Learned

By John Cantu

As we begin to settle into the new millennium I thought I might share with you some lessons learned as I was just beginning to write comedy/humor some thirty years ago.

Today my reputation is primarily as a comedy/humor writer and humor coach for speakers and comedians. But I actually started my comedy/humor career as a "gagwriter."  "Gagwriter" is a common term referring to someone who creates ideas for magazine freelance and/or syndicated cartoonists.

While I had been informally making people laugh all my life, my professional career started (and virtually stopped) in the summer of 1968.  I had run across a copy of "Writer's Markets" a directory published by "Writer's Digest". I was surprised to discover that magazine cartoonists bought ideas.  I had always loved cartoons and I knew I had the ability to make people laugh.  I immediately had visions that within six months I would be lying on a beach in Bermuda for the rest of my life leisurely writing cartoon ideas.

I put an 8 ½ X 11 blank sheet of paper in my portable, manual typewriter and - in just three hours - voila - I had - - - a blank sheet of paper. I made a painful discovery that day.  Being funny off the cuff, spontaneous, just winging it was not the same as being funny on purpose.  While I continued to sporadically try to write cartoon ideas for the next few weeks after three months I had produced maybe 30 ideas.  An average, roughly, of one idea every three days.  I sunk into despair and depression.

This was the most humbling experience of my career. I put my typewriter away, my humor writing dreams away, and went about my life.  But I still made friends laugh and I still read cartoons.  Then, in 1970, something  wonderful happened.  I was reading a cartoon in a daily syndicated panel "Grin and Bear" by George Lichty.   A robber holding up bank has gun in hand and nylon pulled over face.  The teller is saying, "Excuse, do you know you have a run in your stocking?"

I had a ‘Eureka' moment!  I thought to myself I know what Lichty did.  He took an every day line, "You've got a run in your stocking" and put in a different/unusual setting. I have since discovered it is a technique known as the cliché line technique. But at the time I simply thought, "I CAN do that."

I made a list of as many cliché lines as I could think of and tried to find a new place or situation where it could be used. Within thirty days I had written 90 cartoon ideas - triple my previous output and in one-third the time.  I realized, that while I had not suddenly gotten any funnier, in mere seconds I had discovered a process, a formula, a method, recipe, a system - whatever label you want to put on it – to create humor ON PURPOSE!

I don't think I have ever been so excited in my life (I don't even think my discovery of sex was that exciting - - - although I think what did come close to in excitement was discovering the fact that sex is more enjoyable with a partner - - - or so I've been told.)

Not all my ideas were good - few were - but still, with my newly discovered method, a greater percentage were good than those I had attempted to create by the sheer will power trying to "BE FUNNY!"  Once again, I immediately had visions of lying on a beach in Bermuda for the rest of my life leisurely writing cartoon ideas.

Nine months later, I sold my first cartoon idea to Jeff Keate for his syndicated sports panel "Time Out": College professor in front of blackboard covered with complex equations to another professor: "However if the track is muddy, it's an entirely different equation."  I got $5 for it.  I realized the warm sunny beach might be further away than I would have wished for.

Anyway, long before that sale I had begin to look at cartoons in a new light.  I had begun to look for other patterns that I could duplicate.  I found them. And I mimicked them:  The wordplay.  The understatement. The substitution...

And after the Keate sale I continue to sell: "Wall Street Journal," Barron's," "Reader's Digest," "Cosmopolitan," "Playboy," "Playgirl," "New Woman," "American Medical Association Journal," "Saturday Evening Post," etc. Today, I have had cartoons in every major publication except the "New Yorker." (New Yorker contract artist, Charles Adams (The Adams Family) loved my writing.  Drew stuff from every batch I sent him, but the editor never okayed a single cartoon based on my ideas.)  I have also sold ideas for use in many syndicated cartoons: "Ziggy", "Marmaduke", "Frank & Ernest", "The Lockhorns", "Trudy", etc.

But two more important ideas were soon to burst forth. Two ideas as important as discovering that there were specific recognizable principles to creating humor and that these principles could be duplicated at will.

Sometimes I would get a partial idea - a caption. And I would mull it over and try to find the appropriate picture, which might come sometimes a month, two months, twelve months later.  So the second principle I discovered was: Hang on to a good idea IF YOU BELIEVE IN IT.  You never know when something will jell.

And then a more important discovery: At the time I only thought of myself as a cartoon writer.  I didn't think of myself as a comedy writer, someone who wrote jokes - even though I was spontaneously funny with friends.

So, there I am, simply thinking of myself as a gagwriter (cartoon writer), and I have these ideas that I can't seem to make-work.  Can't get a picture to go with the idea.  And after two years - it dawns on me.  I can't the get picture because it doesn't need a picture.  It's not a cartoon.  It's A
ONE-LINER.  DUH!

That was a major break through concept.  The techniques I was discovering thru observation, copy catting, and trial and error, the techniques that I thought of only for gagwriting COULD BE USED IN OTHER MEDIUMS.  At the time I had been branching out a little and had attempted to write greeting card ideas, since many cartoonist did that as well.  But I also had been writing jokes and didn't even know it.

I realized there are PRINCIPLES OF HUMOR that can applied to a variety of mediums. I realized comedy was like music.  Whether you play classical piano like Vladimir Horowitz or Van Cliburn or rock and roll piano like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard you are using the same tools - notes and chords.  You are just focusing on different chords and notes, in different combinations, and playing at different speeds – but you are using the same basic stuff.

The same is true with humor.  If you understand the PRINCIPLES of creating humor, you can work in virtually any medium you choose if you master the other components of that medium.  I.e., you must be able to write a screen play before you can write a funny screen play, but once you set out to write a comedy script you use the same humor techniques - exaggeration, understatement, combo, substitution, etc., used in any other medium.

Each medium does have a few techniques germane to it only (a future article will cover this) but overall, regardless of whether you are writing cartoon, greeting cards, nightclub monologues, humorous material for speakers, humor column, corporate function sketch material, humorous ad copy (print and/or radio), toasts,  (all of which I have done), etc., you are a comedy/humor writer.  Not a joke writer, or a greeting card writer, or a humor columnist, but rather a comedy/humor writer who works in one or more of those mediums.

Once I realized I could write JOKES, I began trying to sell jokes.  First sales were to Bob Orben for "Orben's Current Comedy", a twice-monthly joke service subscribed to by comedians, speakers, radio personalities and other professional communicators.

I cut my comedy writing teeth with Orben. I sold hundreds of jokes to him.  My first sale: "The republicans just had this five day convention to decide who to run for president.  Which was a little like Eve sneaking up behind Adam, covering his eyes and saying, "Guess who?"  And then jokes sales to Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Rip Taylor, etc.

But what I learned from Orben was in his guidelines for writers - - - this is GREAT ADVICE.  PROFOUND ADVICE.  Orben wrote: "Before submitting a line, ask yourself, "Will this get a laugh if presented on stage in front of an audience?"

Too many speakers/performers ask themselves a much weaker question.  They ask, "Is this funny?"  Note: EVERYTHING that gets laughs is FUNNY, but not everything that is funny GETS A LAUGH.  You want to improve the quality of your presentation this year? - - - Go thru your material and evaluate every piece of humor with this new standard - if it measures up keep in.  If it doesn't, punch it up, replace it with something that will get a laugh, or take it out.

If you are writing material to be read use the same criteria. Dave Barry, right now, is probably the best selling humor columnist in the US.  And his stuff is not just humorous or funny.  It makes you laugh out loud.

Used with permission of Copyright holder. (sadly John left us laughing… we will miss you!)

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