Development Magic

Development of a Joke

When we last left our story, there was a joke sitting in the archives of my computer, for a decade or more:  I hate setting an alarm clock, I think it’s unnatural. The first emotion you experience during your day should not be alarm.

Quietly biding it’s time. Until the day when I started thinking about doing more corporate events. Corporate standup is an odd subset of the standup world that is both lucrative and often not that fun, creatively.  The reason it’s not fun is that it’s highly restrictive.  All comedy has restrictions of some sort, but other than Christian comedy done for Christians at Christian sites, corporate is the most highly restrictive venue for standup comedy. No obscenity, no profanity, no sex, no deviance, and, really, not even any controversial topics or strong viewpoints.

The challenge in corporate comedy is to develop a show that doesn’t offend anyone -- literally, anyone -- and yet is still comedy club level funny.

A lot of people find that much restriction to be too much. Many comedians don't even try for corporate, even though it can pay ten times or more what they get in other venues (ah, corporations and their ability to suck in the cash). I looked at it as a writing challenge. What could I create that I would be proud to deliver on stage -- anywhere, even outside of corporate settings -- and still work within the tiny parameters of being completely clean and inoffensive?

And the first question, where to start? What do you talk about that's fully clean and doesn't yank on anyone's undies? (That yank joke probably wouldn't fly in corporate, by the way)

I usually start by going back through my dumpster files. I write a lot, and keep a huge file of ideas, jokes, joke fragments, sketches, etc., open all the time. I start a new one every year.  So I can always go into this general dumpster of stuff and see if there are gems I’ve forgotten.  Or rocks I probably should have forgotten.

When I went searching for “clean” gems, I found...the alarm clock joke! That’ll work, I thought.  It’s about work, so that’s good for corporate. And no one is going to be offended by setting an alarm clock.

Now the real challenge:  I needed an hour of material.  A 20-second one-off joke wouldn’t do much.  It needed development.

*  *  *

Development is the ability to progress an idea so that it becomes a bigger product.  All creative people have ideas. For comedians, especially, ideas are endless.  They flood in, ruin your conversations, wake you up at night. You are a slave to your brain’s ideas.

But what most comedians don’t do is fully develop those ideas. And it kinda drives me crazy.

I’ve had so many friends over the years who are truly funny, but they produce so little actual product that it astounds me.  They’ll mention something, and I’ll say, “That would make a great animated sketch.” Or, “You should do that as a bit.”  Or sometimes even, “That’s a good idea for a movie.”

And they always light up and agree.  And they never actually sit down and develop their small piece of comedy into a big piece of comedy.

Development is, from what I can tell, literally the difference between being a success and a lingering non-success in entertainment.  If you do development well -- if you turn your ideas constantly into bigger products, and monitor that process each step of the way so that the product is actually good (there’s a big difference between getting something done and getting some done well) -- then you will find so many more opportunities it will make you head spin.  If you simply have ideas, and wait for someone to recognize your genius and develop those ideas for you (or even with you), you’re going to be sitting alone in a creative hallway. A lot.

You have to take charge of developing your own projects. You don’t have to do the development alone -- in fact, you shouldn’t, you should always find others to work with -- but you do have to be the person to drive your own projects forward.  To take them from idea to beat sheet. From beat sheet to outline.  From outline to working draft. From working draft to table read.  From redraft to redraft.  From redraft with great notes from outside critics to actual good draft. From good draft to rehearsal.  From rehearsal to final draft.  From final draft to final draft with a polish.  From final draft with a polish to final draft until the director gets his/her hands on it. And then some more development that will happen on set, while something is actually being shot or performed. And then, really, you can even continue to develop in post-production.

Development is the entire range of adding creativity to ideas in order to create a strong product.  It’s time-consuming, energy consuming, frustrating, hard to predict, requires a ton of creativity.  It requires resources (money) and structure and someone driving the ship, constantly.

But, mostly, it requires a commitment to doing it. Skipping from idea to production without super solid development in-between those stages, almost universally guarantees a weak, almost unshootable, and thoroughly doomed project.  

So, in the end, my little 20-second alarm joke became a 13-minute swath of clean standup about “sleep.”  I’ve used it now for probably ten years. And it kills, everywhere I do it.  I don’t say it kills just to say it kills, it kills.  I can close headlining sets at comedy clubs with it. Pieces of it have been clipped out and played on the radio. People routinely repeat parts of it back to me, and say they think about that routine all the time when they hit their alarm in the morning.

I’m also continuing to do development on it outside of standup, setting it up now to be a full one-person show, and a book. The more development I’ve done -- researching sleep, thinking about all the little odd parts of sleep, asking people about their sleep lives, staying with it over long periods of time -- the more I find to work with.

I don’t know exactly where it will all conclude for that joke. But I do know that doing development on something that began as a tiny little idea of me noticing that an alarm clock is actually an emotion-creating machine, has become a very useful product for me.

All because of development.

From Ha! to Academy Award

A long time ago, something from out in the world made its way into my head, and my head took it apart, and found something new in that something, something that I hadn’t noticed before, and when I noticed it, it amused me.

And that was good.

The something I noticed was someone talking about setting their alarm clock in the morning.  And inside my head, my brain went, That’s weird. An “alarm.”  First emotion of the day, while we’re still asleep, and it’s alarm.

That was funny to me.  It gave me that little splash of brain chemicals I get when something gets into my head and erupts up as humorous.  Thank you, world. Thank you, brain.

Not a super-unusual moment, if you have a sense of humor. And especially not if you have a heightened sensitivity to humor, and you spend a lot of your time on earth seeking out that little brain chemical reaction. You hang out where humor gathers, gather friends who like humor, listen always for the humor possibles.

You a humor-experiencer. Wanter of. Addict.

Which is cool. It’s a human thing. One of the good ones. Doesn’t even cost anything, really.

And, should you desire, you can also take that whole humor-discovery process a few steps further down the line. You can save your humor moments, record them in your head, so that you can tell them to someone else.

At which point that little piece of humor you experienced will need to be evaluated, developed, scripted, produced, and performed. If you’re going to share it, it’s going to have to be taken out of your experience, and transformed into communication that will allow others to experience it, too.

All of which happened with that noticing of “alarm.”  It seriously grew.

Let me explain its awesome little life span.  Let’s begin with the first stage after Discovery:  Evaluation.

*  *  *

I was doing a lot of standup at the time of the alarm discovery, so I usually tried to turn my humor experiences into jokes, or even full bits (collections of jokes on the same general topic), that I could do on stage (or sell, because I was also writing for a lot of comics). Some humorings are easily turned into standup, others not so much.

To figure out whether something is worth working on for bigger standup purposes, you first have to evaluate it.  I use a range of criteria to evaluate something for its standup potential.

Standup Evaluation Criteria

()  Once finished, where would this joke work?  What audience would like it, what setting would it fit in?  Would it work in a comedy club? Especially in an A-room?  Would it work on TV?  At a corporate event?  Or, at the other end, in a bar, or a coffee shop?

()  Will this fit with what else I do in my show?  Does it groove with my mode of comedy, or would it be disjunctive?

()  How strongly funny did this feel to me when I first experienced it? Did it really make me laugh, did it feel super strong? If I found it funny when it first popped into my head, I believe it’s funny forever. Even after I can no longer feel the humor because I’ve looked at it over and over, I trust my instincts that said it was funny when I found it. This kind of self-trust is essential if you really want to create comedy. A lot of standups will abandon things when they go back to them because they lose confidence in something being funny. I never, ever lose confidence in my initial reactions.  That would mean giving away your compass, and then what, you rely on other people to tell you if its funny? You completely trust the audience?  I’ll kill off a joke if it consistently doesn’t work with an audience, but I assume it’s not working because I couldn’t figure out how to communicate it well.  I never doubt my radar.

()  How unique is this idea?  Is it something lots of people have thought of, or could think of?

()  How strong is the idea within the joke? Is it clever, snappy, thought-provoking?

() How original is the joke? Are other people doing similar things? And by similar, I mean very similar. I don’t care if people do the same topics, it’s silly to say things like, “Carlin talked about weathermen, no one else should do that because you’re copying him.” You’re only copying if the angle you take is the same, or the wordings are the same, etc.  No one owns a topic, you just have to find your unique take on it, and then it’s all yours.

()  Can this idea be expanded into something bigger, something long enough to fill a significant amount of time?  Does it have lots of sub-areas, things I can veer off into, is it explorable?  If it’s just a short one-off joke I’m not as interested in it, because I like longer things that I can fill out with texture and depth.

() Does this seem like it will be fun to work with? Does it have enough juice in it that I will enjoy working on it, maybe for months, as it grows?  When it’s done, will it be fun to perform this bit, maybe for years?

() Does this have any important downsides right up front?  Is it a dark joke that will require people to be open to dark humor? Is it sexual, or deviant (drugs, etc.), and how often do I want to do bluer material (will that change all the other jokes I’m going to do?). Will the joke be controversial, will it cost me with sensitive people, or people who disagree with the angle I take?  Is the joke good enough to overcome the downsides?

() Does this joke have huge upsides? Can it be turned into a monster piece of standup, something maybe 10 or more minutes long, filled with awesome punches, something that always works, always kills, nearly everywhere?  Can it be taken even higher than basic live standup, can this become a marquis bit that people will remember, tell to others, will the bit advertise me and get media notice?  Finally, can the bit be developed into something outside of standup? Could it be a short, a web-series, a sitcom, or a film?

() Finally, can I sell the joke to someone else? Does it fit someone I know who buys material?  Because I may evaluate it in a certain way, and reject it for me, but a different kind of comic may find this joke to be something that fits perfectly with what they’re after.

Okay. There’s my evaluation array.

When I applied it to the alarm joke, it came out:  eh.

The joke felt like a little trifle. Kind of amusing, but that’s about it.

I would sometimes use it in my show. But, really, it was pretty much dormant inside my computer.

For at least 10 years.

Until one day, my criteria changed a bit. I found a reason to pluck that out of the thousands and thousands of jokes I’ve written, and put it into Development.

And, wow, did it grow.

Which I'll talk about next week.

Creative Gnus, Entertainment Rhinos

I like to think about the big entertainment landscape as a massive, sun-seared, teeming African savanna. It’s packed with wildebeest herds (endless sitcoms and reality shows), roaring bull elephants (blockbuster movies), lithe cheetahs who get winded easily (web-series), crazy monkeys throwing poop from the trees (commercials), and lots of wild-eyed jackals who just love to chatter, regardless (standup).  There are red-butted baboons (clowns at kids' parties), there are mindless packs of zebras (network programming), there are odd, five-armed creatures no one can really classify (indie films).  

And all they all really want to do is eat each other.  Growl.  Snap. Swallow. Yum.

I think of entertainment this way because it’s a fact of creative existence that -- just like the real Serengeti -- everything creative must compete.  For space. For attention. For resources. For the love of the tribal people (us), who decide whether each creativity creature will thrive, mill about aimlessly, stagger, or go extinct.

It’s a tough world, out there, on the primal floodplains of creative work. If you show your throat, there’s no end to creatures that will gladly rip your jugular and claim your precious space.

Ah, metaphor land.  Roam, lion, roam.

*  *  *

Okay, as I extract myself from my brain-Kenya, here’s my point: if you’re going to put something creative out into the world, you should be damned sure it’s strong and ready to survive. There’s no forgiveness in entertainment world. Either you have your chops, or you’re fanged and dirt-covered in a shallow grave.

Which is a lesson you learn in professional entertainment, and it’s a good lesson. Because it tells you that just wanting to do something in entertainment/art, and even actually managing to do something and bring it to fruition, none of that is enough to get you what you really want -- which is for strangers to love what you’ve done.  Love it. Because only a real love reaction for a product will get people to pay for it.  And the only way you’re going to be able to do project, project, project, project (aka, "career"), is if you get paid. Well.  Over and over. For a long time.

I learned the “it better be good” lesson in some very visceral ways.  I never really knew how to do standup until I wandered out of the protected clubs and into Florida biker bars, where the only thing that made them listen was if you were clearly and super-poweredly worth listening to.  I learned how to write jokes -- real, power jokes, jokes that explode and impress and linger in people’s minds -- once I veered away from standup and onto TV talk show staffs where I was on 13-week contracts that wouldn’t renew if I didn’t write stuff that the head writer liked well enough to put on the air ahead of everyone else’s stuff on the staff, including his own jokes.  Just think about that as a set-up:  you lose your WGA job -- your health insurance, your pension, your $3,500 a week -- if your jokes aren’t better than the jokes of the guy who hired you.  And… go!

Making your creative stuff super strong makes sense if you want it to survive -- not on the protected, virtual landscape of just doing things to be doing them -- but on the real, competitive landscape of what strangers who don’t know you actually want to watch, and buy.  If you create weak things, you’re just going to sit by and watch as they get viciously snuffed. Or as they starve, slowly, because they can't get in there and claim any nourishment of their own. All the big boys are crowding the carcass. Sorry, little web-series.

And who wants to see that happen to their precious babies?

Not me.

So that’s the set-up.  Make your stuff so good that it can lumber around on the open savannah, and leisurely tear hell out of anything that wants to get in its face.

Super powered, high-quality products, baby.  That’s what will take you where you want to go.

[Next week:  uh, okay, how do you do that?]

[Hint:  it’s the magic secret journey called “Great Development Process”]

Workwithability

Ever wonder why you didn’t get a job after you interviewed for it?  Was it that someone else better qualified came along and bumped you out?  Or was it that there was something about the way you came across that made the interviewer question whether you were someone they actually wanted to work with?

Was it your workwithability that cost you a job?

In Hollywood/Entertainment, a huge % of people are working because they’re great to work with.  Yes, people in entertainment need to be competent at their jobs, even hyper-competent, that’s the first criteria for hiring them. But, really, most of the people I’ve worked with are pretty much competent (if you’re not, you’re fired, because there are lots of people ready to take that job).  

What most often separates people in hiring is how workwithable they are. High workwithability = people want to find a way to hire you, because they enjoy having you around, and they value what you bring to the job beyond just the job skills. Low workwithability = people will never hire you again if they have any other option. Because you're just not that much fun to work with.

Workwithability is a hard quality to define exactly (maybe its easier to tell when someone is non-workwithable) but the desire to only work with likable people is powerful and ever-present, especially in entertainment.  People in entertainment are usually super-social, hyper-friendly, because they know they have to make others very comfortable with hiring them, keeping them around, and hiring them again on other projects down the road. It’s not “fake,” it’s turning the volume way up on the messaging that says “I’m cool to have around, I’m fine, I’m not a problem in any way, I’m going to make your job soooo much easier, you can trust me.” It’s almost as if in entertainment you are interviewing for a job even when you have a job, so you keep your best self forefront at all times.  And I mean at all times.  Losing your mind, your temper, or your friendliness means taking a hit on your professionalism. And even though “stars” can kind of get away with that, almost no one else in entertainment can. As soon as you show yourself as a problem, you may be a problem again in the future, and you are now suspect.

So one of the things I look for in mentees is “Is this someone who people will strongly want to work with, is this person going to attract or repel other creatives and/or producers who are doing the hiring? How do I help this person adjust certain aspects of their personality/self-presentation to make them more workwithable?  How do I help guide someone to where they are highly, clearly, unmistakably workwithable?”

So here’s a partial list of what I look for to get a sense of whether someone will strongly encourage or even slightly discourage people from working with them. 

Essentially, I'm looking for people who are:

()  Eager.  Energetic.  They have a clear, unwavering desire to do this work, and they’re ready, right now, to jump in and get to it.  I mean work work, they are going to dedicate real time and resources to this. They’re charged and ready, they won’t lose momentum or disappear halfway through the work.

()  Open.  Collaborative. Enjoy the process of developing ideas and processes with others. I love working with people who are open to working together, who want to be a part of things, who want to contribute to make something a go.

()  Positive. Upbeat.  Supportive.  Again, I don’t mean people who are falsely positive.  I mean people who genuinely enjoy what they do.  Negativity about people, about a project, about a company, about life in general -- not fun to be around. Even when it’s accurate, not fun.

()  Analysts and Fixers.  People who can take a project apart, accurately find its flaws, and fix what’s wrong.  Analysis without solutions can be useful, but it’s so much stronger if someone can also fix the flaws they see.  

()  Quality-seekers.  Because entertainment work is so hard to actually pull off, there’s a danger of becoming fatigued with a project and just wanting to get it done, regardless of whether it's good yet or not. I don’t want that in my co-workers.  I want people who want to make something great, and who will do whatever it takes to make that happen. They’re absolutely dedicated to making things good, and not stopping until every micro-element of a project is awesome.

()  Aware of their skill levels.  It’s great when someone is actually self-aware about what they’re good at and where they’re still learning.  If you tell me you’re good at everything, I’ll tell you you’re not.  No one is.  We all have weak areas, we all need to learn constantly, no matter what level we’re at, it never ends.  

()  Self-starting.  I love people who take over their area of a project and get proactive about bringing it to fruition.  They are still open to collaboration, but they become incredibly competent at their jobs.  I sincerely love competence, people who get it, get what the job is, dive in and get it done without my having to watch over them or constantly fix what they’ve done.

()  Helpful.  No matter what someone’s job is in entertainment, there are going to be constant opportunities to help other people when they need it. Having helpful people around means you can be confident that when things get nuts or out of whack, people will jump up and help you fix them.  It's makes a great environment to work in, when everyone is helpful, and wants to offer some extra brain or hands when needed.

()  Unbruisables.  People who are easily hurt, offended, or dissuaded don’t do well in entertainment.  This doesn’t mean you should let someone be cruel or even rude to you.  But it does mean that you understand people are under pressure, they need to do things fast, they don’t always have time during production to do social niceties, and you put your natural feelings aside so you can focus on work, work, work.  Allowing things to be messy, offensive, even attack-ish is important to the process of creating comedy.  It isn’t meant to harm, it’s meant as play with whatever might get things farther down the road creatively. Not being easily bruised is different than putting up with crap constantly.  Bruisable people are the death of comedy, because it makes everyone nervous about what they’re going to say.

()  Fun.  Enjoyable.  Joy-ous. I want to work with people who value fun. People who can make work fun are awesome to have around, they infuse everything with an awesome extra spirit that makes people want to come to work. They’re playful, funny, interesting, surprising, and positive. Fun people are awesome, and I’ll work with them again and again, whenever I can.

()  Perceptives.  I want people who can see things clearly and quickly, and who are especially perceptive about people around them. They know who to trust, they know who is helping get a project done, and they know who not to trust, who is a constant hindrance to a project.  For example, people should trust me. I do what I say, I try to work toward everyone's benefit, not just my own. People who don’t trust me aren’t perceptive about people. When people make me work to gain their trust, instead of being able to see I’m sincere and open and out for their best interest, it makes me question whether I want to work with them because they aren’t perceiving me correctly, so how likely are they to perceive others correctly, either? 

()  Finally, gratitude is an awesome quality in another person. It's great to hear someone express appreciation and thankfulness for what they have, what opportunities they've been given. I run into lots of people who are ambitious, want to get somewhere, and that’s great, it’s good to be motivated. But without gratitude you come across as entitled and under-appreciative of what you’ve got, what help you’ve been given.  Being openly grateful is an awesome human trait.

Ok.  Whew.  That’s enough for this post.  The Big Lesson:  Be clearly cool to work with, make people want to work with you.  It’ll pay never-ending dividends in entertainment.

The Five Must-Haves

Okay, I’m kicking off a new blog-series this week, the first installment of what I’m calling “The Five Must-Haves for Entertainment/Comedy Success.”

As I continue to develop the comedy mentoring service I offer, I’m finding that although every client has different needs and different goals, there are categories that help me see what those needs are, and which then help me clearly explain to clients what problematic elements are holding them back, and what elements might help them surge forward if we can turn up the power of those positives.  

This idea jives well my general orientation as a mentor, which is to find weaknesses, explain them, and fix them, find strengths, explain them, and strengthen them.  The more problems eliminated, the better, the more power in your power-centers, the better.

So here is the matrix I’m currently applying to clients, the five broad categories I look at to see what needs fixing, what needs powering.

()  Projects/Products

()  Skills/Talent

()  Career pathing

()  Workwithability

()  Psyche-ness

I’ll expand on each of these in the coming weeks, but just as a reference guide, here’s a quickie definition of what each of these mean to me.  

()  Projects/Products:   What have you created that can be used as samples of your work, or as buyable inventory? How ready are they to be seen/sold?

()  Skills/Talent:  What do you do well, at a professionally competitive level? What do you still need to develop?

()  Career pathing:  What makes sense as the most viable career path for you, based on your goals, skills, and life limitations?

()  Workwithability:  What makes people want to work with you, or not want to work with you?

()  Psyche-ness:  What do you need from yourself, and others, in order to stay emotionally strong and engaged in this type of work?

The Feedback Rules

I was a professor for a long time, and over the years I generally noted a sea change in the students who wandered my way. There was something different about new generations that entered my classroom. It wasn’t always clear what it was, but I felt them change.

Generally, I would describe new students as becoming “un-educatable.”  By which I mean they didn’t learn well via existing teaching structures that currently dominate all educating institutions. They tended to miss a lot of classes, got bored in lectures, didn’t take notes, didn’t read the books, didn’t study hard for the tests, didn’t put a lot of effort into the papers. They just didn’t react positively to the lecture/notes/study/test format that was established, I don’t know, back in Dickens’ times?

As someone interested in actually getting stuff into the heads of the people who were paying to be in my class, I adjusted.  I can do enough diaologic, interactive, and entertainment-powered lecturing that I can keep students’ minds in the moment -- even if they aren’t lecture-friendly -- so that wasn’t usually an issue.  I can boil info down pretty well, make it easily eatable, so that took care of them having to really focus and think. I emailed them detailed notes of every lecture, so they didn’t have to write stuff down.  I cut the reading way down, even sometimes taught without any reading at all (because they just didn’t do it, so what was the point?).

And it kind of paid off. They were happier, at least.  Well, until I had to give them feedback on their work.

That’s pretty much where the professor/mentor’s sidewalk ends.  You can’t write or produce product for the person who is on the learning side.  All you can do is read it, tell them where it fails, suggest some fixes, and hand it back for them to take another try.

Which sounds sweet and fluffy and progress-centered and all.  But, in reality, giving feedback is where all the real blood is shed in educating people about anything.  Working directly with creatives over the years has taught me a lot about giving feedback.  But even more, it’s taught me about getting feedback well.  So, here are a few suggestions/iron-born rules for how you should receive feedback.

() Separate your “core self-esteem” from this particular moment of feedback. By core self-esteem I mean the belief in your abilities that you have built up over time, over years, over many projects, the part of you that knows you’re generally funny, creative, likable, pretty good at what you do.  You need to build that, nurture it, feed it, and keep it pure and strong inside of you. You don’t have to open that big pot of self-esteem to anyone who isn’t positive. HOWEVER, you do have to be fully open to getting expert feedback on your projects, no matter how negative or positive that feedback will be. It’s not about YOU.  It’s about this product, and making it great. If you put your core self-esteem on the line every time, feedback will become a horrible emotional experience, and it will also be horrible to try to give feedback to you. No one wants to hurt your self-esteem. And no one wants to lie about the quality of your project because you have such vulnerable self-esteem.  It’s a project. It’s not you.  Separate.

()  Once you pick your feedbacker, assume they're right, and you're wrong. Quit denigrating the expert when you get negative feedback. The easiest thing in the world is to think “this person is great” when they love your stuff, and “this person is an asshole” when they don’t.  But guess what? The negative feedbacker is probably right. Much more probably than you being right, or someone who wants you to be happy is probably right. A good feedbacker is looking at your stuff with an outside eye, through years of experience and theory. And generally they want to improve it, because all real creatives want to improve everything they come into contact with.  So let them.  Stop ducking the negative. Ask for it. For real.

()  Demand -- or at least beg for -- specifics in feedback.  What’s weak?  What’s strong?  What are some general ideas for fixing the weaknesses?  Not, “Rewrite this for me,” but what are some good directions to go?  And if you’re demanding specifics, be ready to give them a reason to do that work for you, because, trust me, giving precise feedback is work.

()  Be fun to give feedback to. It’s literally the worst part of what I do as a teacher/mentor, to try to help someone who resists the information I’m giving them. The moment I see someone tense up, defend themselves, and counter-argue, I want to stop talking and stop helping.  Why would I want to slog through a conversation where I’m going to have to work to persuade someone who doesn’t know a 100th of what I know about this stuff?  I don’t.  I like helping, love collaborating, but can’t stand fighting with people who are under-informed, or over-invested in being told they’re amazing.  On the other hand, if someone wants feedback from me, and they’re eager, want to learn, want to make their stuff great, are super-open to hearing all sorts of input from great sources, and are itching to get going and do the work to make their stuff great, then I will gladly help them forever.  

() Don’t sell to your feedbacker.  I don’t care if your friends thought this was hilarious.  I don’t care if it “killed” with some audience I never saw.  I only care whether I, the comedy expert you are paying, thinks it’s funny, original, interesting, marketable. If you can make me laugh, it has a chance at being something. If I read it or watch it and am bored, it doesn’t. That’s not because I’m a perfect judge, it’s because I am a very good judge. That’s why I feel okay about charging people for mentoring. I know what works, I have a good natural ear for comedy, and I’ve worked in this stuff for a long time.  I’m a great place to get sharp, clean, on-point feedback. Telling me how much other people love this product means nothing.

()  You want my harshest, cleanest, more incisive, most grown-up feedback. You really, really do.  Because that means I’ve paid close attention to your project, thought about it, and have given my true reaction, analysis, and creative direction. That’s what you want.  You don’t want me to be the one who builds your core self-esteem (fine, I’ll do some ego-building, but only about you as a person, or about your best work -- never on your evolving or still-mediocre stuff).

()  Note to the universe:  I HATE LEAVING THINGS MEDIOCRE.  If you want to know the core of who I am as a creative, it’s this sentence. I’d rather take some hits as “the asshole” then let something go out to the world that could have been so much better if EVERYONE had been ego-open, looked hard at the theory of why this kind of project works, and done the work to make it fit that theory. SO STOP THINKING SOMETHING IS DONE AND GREAT WHEN IT'S NOT. Even if means doing a ton of extra work to get it right, don’t ever let your stuff stay mediocre.

Comedy Self-Awareness

I have a comedy writer friend who I call the Unabomber of Comedy, or The Unawriter -- because when he writes jokes he pulls a hoodie over his head, puts on music via earphones, and won’t interact with anyone until he’s done with his writing assignment. It’s his “process,” and, if he isn’t allowed to work in that way, he’s not nearly as productive.

I’ll write in the future about finding your own process, but for now I want to use my friend as an example of something else that’s incredibly important to becoming productive (ie, turning out pro level, useable, money-able comedy day after day after day).  And that’s Comedy/Artistic Self-Awareness.

Self-awareness -- the ability to accurately see who you are, what are your strengths, your weaknesses -- is a tough thing to achieve in all areas of life, but it’s absolutely essential if you want to consistently set yourself up for success as a comedy creator.  

Look at it this way:  every creative project can be broken into hundreds of sub-projects, all which need to be done well because they are essential parts of the final product.  So, if you’re writing dialogue in a script, every single character needs their own voice, and each of those voices need to be interesting, emotional, evocative, and distinct from the others.  Any of those characters can be done well, neutrally, or badly.  Each of them needs to be given distinct attention so that they’re constructed with real creativity, they’re evaluated for quality, and they’re fixed if they underperform.

A self-aware writer would realize what kinds of character dialogue they write well, and what kind they don’t.  It’s easy to think you’re writing dialogue well, but you’re often just writing a stereotypical voice of that character instead of writing something unique or interesting.  

For example, I can mimic dramatic writing. I’ve written a full screenplay that’s a drama, and I have even managed to get people to have emotional responses when they read it.  But I’m not good at it.  It’s not natural, it feels like I’m just guessing.  With comedy I know when something is funny.  I know other people will find it funny.  I know it as soon as I read it, think it, hear it.  I’m self-aware about my comedy instincts, I know when to trust them.  And I’m self-aware about my lack of drama instincts -- at least as a writer -- and I know not to trust them.

As I’ve moved up into professional writer/creator ranks, I've found that most pro writers have a strong, developed self-awareness.  I think that comes from working with others and being able to measure what you do against what they do. If there’s an amazing joke writer on staff, they make you laugh with their stuff, they find angles and ideas you don’t.  Their jokes get huge audience response.  You see right there in front of you the difference in what you are doing and what they are doing. The good news is that self-awareness lets you see that you need to improve. So you can figure out what that writer is doing, understand the underlying techniques they are using, practice those techniques, absorb them, and, sometimes, begin to do them even better than the original writer can do them. Which is that wonderful moment when you turn a weakness into a strength. It's that super-power of being able to constantly add more weapons to your comedy arsenal. It's the awesome gift of being self-aware -- you know you need to improve, and so you put energy into making that evolution happen.

And it only happens if you are self-aware enough to see that you need to improve on one of the hundreds of sub-areas of creating/writing.  Or, even at the base base of that statement, that you can see all of the sub-areas, and start your process of growth on each of them, so that you are truly developing, instead of jumping to the end and saying things like “I’m a comedian,” or “I’m a comedy writer,” even though you are missing prime pieces of the foundation that will make you great -- and thus, employable.