comments:
A joke contains a setup (which establishes an expectation) and a punchline (which subverts that expectation). The shortest joke is "Take my wife, please." The setup is "Take my wife," establishing the expectation that the speaker will use his wife as an example. The punchline is "please," revealing that he wants you to take his wife away from him. This carries with it also a negative opinion about his wife; some writers believe that negative opinions are a necessary part of comedy, but I don't think there's value in calling that out specifically even if it is true. You can "mine" for jokes by ranting and complaining about things that happened today or in your childhood, or just by narrating a thing that happened today. Write down the events. Were any of them funny? If they were not funny, can you lie about them and make them funny? How did your last breakup go? What was a fight you had with your parents? This process is described in more detail in Greg Dean's book, "Step by Step to Standup Comedy," which I like more than the Judy Carter book everybody recommends. It is more important, though, to get on stage and record yourself telling the jokes so that you can honestly evaluate them. Did the audience laugh? That's probably a good joke. Did the audience not laugh? That's probably not a good joke. Get a cell phone tripod. Be sure to review your sets. If you want to be structured about it, evaluate your jokes against one another to build the strongest possible set. A lot of people here will give you advice to "just have fun," mostly because they are not conscious about their own process and therefore cannot make coherent or actionable recommendations. That can be okay if it gets you out of your own way. It's better to write and iterate and review and stumble forward than to panic over getting it right with some process.