How to Write Punch Lines
- 1). Your punch line should refer to something already within your presentation. Don't throw a random one-liner into your bit and expect it to get the same response as something that has been carefully crafted with a well-planned story beforehand. Give your audience a frame of reference for your punch lines and the overall joke will be much more effective.
- 2). Don't make punch lines so incredibly obscure that only a small portion of your crowd will understand them (unless your goal is to present an elitist comedy show that hardly anyone enjoys). Your punch lines should reference things that the general public understands and finds funny. If you can come up with punch lines that any random person of the street would understand and find funny, you're doing a winning job.
- 3). Make your punch lines brief and biting. In other words, don't draw out the punch lines into tedious monologues. The story leading up to the punch line can be long, but the actual punch line should be quick and memorable. The audience will like you better if they can remember the gist of your stories and jokes, but a complicated punch line makes this difficult.
- 4). A punch line needs to be funny! It's not enough to make a witty observation if you're actually trying to entertain an audience. Write punch lines that you can present in a comedic way. Whether you decide to add sound effects, facial expressions or voice inflections to your punch lines, they need to be funny.
- 5). Know your audience. For example, don't write raunchy punch lines for a conservative group and don't bring political humor into a place where the audience will be uncomfortable listening to such material. You might have some truly funny punch lines, but if the overall humor isn't appropriate to the audience, then you're going to bomb.
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