2. Gather the Information

You have a topic. Now what?

Write everything down you know about the topic. Seriously. And when you have exhausted that, go and learn more about it.

Again: Seriously.

Because while researching a topic we are going for quantity, not quality. Well, also quality but mainly quantity. Even if it is a topic you are an expert in, write it down.

We need to get it out in the open so we can look at it from the outside, see it with fresh eyes.

We need to be able to put elements near each other that normally aren’t near each other. And that is easier if we are forced to look at it in a different way. Which normally means outside our own heads.

If we were to write jokes about Tom & Jerry we always put Tom & Jerry together. But having these two names near Duffy Duck and Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse makes it easier for our brains to make a link between Tom and Mickey Mouse. A mouse equal to his sizes. Maybe Mickey Mouse comes to Tom in a nightmare. What would that look like?

Is this the beginning of a joke? Probably not. But I wouldn’t have come up with it by just thinking about Tom & Jerry as a unit.

Writing all of it down also helps us realizing we forgot a part of something and that we should look it up. For example I tried writing a story about getting my drivers license. While learning for my upcoming test I used a certain software, but do I remember the name of the software that EVERYONE used? No. And I realized that when I was writing about it.

Will the name to the software lead to a joke? I don’t know. But that’s the thing: We will never know what will lead to the best joke of the writing session. So we have to go and be explorers of our own minds.

In a way, writing it down is also like telling a story: We need to make sure that the other person understands it. That forces us to mention things we thought were obvious and widely known but most often than not, aren’t.

An example: No story of Donald Trump becoming president in spite of getting fewer votes than Hillary Clinton makes sense without knowing about the Electoral College.

Most people already know about the Electoral College and so we don’t need to explain it all the time. But it IS crucial to know!

And when telling a personal story we often don’t know what could be the Electoral College of our story that needs mentioning in order for us to assure that the other person can make sense of it all.

So write it down.

Writing down also slows down our thinking. We normally can’t type or write as fast as we are thinking and staying with a thought that little bit longer helps us to really think about it and find even more ways of looking at an idea.

Don’t stop too early

Don’t stop after having filled one page with associations regarding your chosen topic. Do another one. And if you think you have exhausted all possibilities: Do another one.

Because most often than not it is the unexpected words and associations at the end of your rope that spark an idea, an interesting combination. Because: It wasn’t obvious.

If it were, you would have thought of it right from the start. But one big junk of writing comedy is surprise and that comes from either hiding the obvious or finding a genuine surprising connection.

Also: The more ways you have of saying the same thing with different words, the more ways your creative brain has possibilities of attack to turn it into something funny. Another advantage of writing stuff down is, that you now can use a paraphrasing tool like Quillbot. Seeing your thoughts expressed with different words may spark an idea for a joke.

Think about your research like preparing a garden: The more seeds you plant, the bigger the garden, the more chance you have of being able to reap something come fall.

Having to come up with a 100 associations forces you to write down even the “stupid” stuff, the things you write down just to finally fill your quota, the things you thought were too obvious and that’s a gooood thing.

Because what is obvious for you, isn’t obvious to the next guy. Might even be really interesting and entertaining but you can’t perceive it as interesting or challenging anymore. This is called the Curse of Knowledge bias.

“The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. This bias is also called by some authors the curse of expertise.

For example, in a classroom setting, teachers have difficulty because they cannot put themselves in the position of the student. A knowledgeable professor might no longer remember the difficulties that a young student encounters when learning a new subject.

This curse of knowledge also explains the danger behind thinking about student learning based on what appears best to faculty members, as opposed to what has been verified with students.” Wikipedia

Having said all that, naturally I don’t mean you can just not put effort into your writing. There is a balance. You have to want it to be good but still be okay with it sometimes being just okay. Or even stupid.

If we go back to our mindsets, ideally writing comedy should be challenging but not overwhelming.

Strangely though it is easier to challenge yourself to come up with ten jokes about something than to come up with just one. Because then any one joke doesn’t have to be PERFECT. And chances are that one of your ten is funny.

And so you don’t have to worry WHILE creating. It takes the pressure off and that’s the same with coming up with research. It’s quality through quantity.