How to Come Up With Punchlines

Happy Monday comedy fam!

Last week a comedian emailed me about “how to find punchlines?” and I found this so compelling I posted it in the Facebook group for even more ideas on this topic.

I’ll share my response at the end of this email but wanted to shout out a few of the several responses the Hot Breathiverse posted in our Facebook group:

This community truly is amazing! The fact so many comics are willing to help each other makes my heart smile. This is why Hot Breath! exists!

So how I find punchlines has evolved over the years but let’s start at the beginning…

When I started comedy I was all about one liners. Which I still believe is the best place for comics to start and is also what we practice in our Facebook group with the daily Write 10 Club.

A brief overview of a one liner is:

Set-up + Punchline = Joke

Basically you have a set-up literally “setting up” the audience to think in one direction…

And the punchline creates a surprising second direction, or misdirection.

Here is an example of a Write 10 Club joke I won…

This is just a very basic two step outline of how to write a one liner.

There are actually five steps I have designed into a workshop that will teach you everything from how to generate the right ideas all the way to finding the strongest punchlines. If you’d like to learn more click the button below.

Have a great day comedy fam and I hope to see you on tomorrow’s live Q&A!

Sincerely your comedy friend,

Joel Byars