About the Author

Hello fellow seeker of knowledge and traveler in the comedic arts!

Let me introduce myself, tell you why I wrote this book and who this labour of love was made for in this snappy introduction.

My name is Jan Rutishauser and I am an award winning Stand-Up Comedian with a Bachelors degree in “Physical Theatre” from the “Scuola Teatro Dimitri” in Switzerland.

In a sleepy town called Étampes in France I studied “Le Jeu” and “Clown” under Clown Master Philippe Gaulier and after that London called where I frequented the “International School of Corporeal Mime” founded by Steven Wasson and Corinne Soum, the last assistants of the Father of Modern Mime Etienne Decroux.

A wonderful school where I learned during six months that I didn’t want to be a mime.

Still, they gave me a certificate which comes in pretty handy if you want to ask art foundations for money.

Since then I have been performing as a comedian, self-taught magician, improv actor, slam poet and comedy musician. They laughed when I played the guitar, so that counts!

But never as a mime.

Turns out I like hearing myself talk way too much.

That’s why I have written and toured four solo comedy shows and another one with three exceptional and talented people. I was on TV, wrote punchlines for radio shows as well as for other comedy acts and have been meeting deadlines for my own monthly comedy column for quite some time.

In my writing I specialize in squeezing out humor from the driest topics like salad cutlery, harbour seals and my own life.

I wrote this book for several reasons that, in a way, are all the same one:

I love comedy.

Everything about it. Admiring a great gag and hating it at the same time because it wasn’t me who wrote it. Getting an idea for a new joke and trying to figure out how exactly to word it. Failing miserably with new material. Succeeding in making other people laugh with something I came up with. And finally having this deep need to get to the bottom of how and why comedy works.

Finding answers to these questions has led me to seek out all kinds of sources from watching oh so many Stand-Up shows, reading countless how to write comedy - books, humor studies, transcribing famous comedians routines and naturally writing my own jokes.

Everything I have learned about writing and writing comedy I have put in this book. And what sets this book apart from all the other books about writing comedy is that I won’t try to cover everything. It won’t teach you how to write a sketch, tell you how to perform Stand-Up Comedy and overpromise on making you the author of the next hit sitcom.

No, this book is laser-focused on writing comedy and the building block of all comedy writing: The joke.

I hope it helps you as much as it helped me learning more about the best profession in the world:

Writing comedy.