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And if you enjoy reading a webpage more than a pdf (weird, but there’s all types of people out there!), here’s a brief version of what’s inside the guide.

(But download the full thing, it has way more stuff in it.)

Are you funny? (Don’t worry! You can be!)

“There’s no age limit to comedy. There’s no special body type or neurotype.
This isn’t Olympic gymnastics.”

Everyone starts with the same fear: “Am I funny?” It doesn’t matter. Comedy is a skill you learn through writing, revising, and getting on stage.

Professional comics have a vested interest in maintaining the myth that comedy can’t be taught. They don’t want the competition. They want you to believe that you’re born funny or not, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Am I funny? In my day-to-day life, not so much. On stage? WAY funnier than I was 15 years ago. Are you funny? Here’s my answer: I don’t care whether you are or are not funny right now. I care whether you take the time to learn to be funnier on stage. You can. Everyone can.

Growth mindset: You’re not funny yet — but you absolutely can be.

“Practice makes progress. It’s the time you spend on stage, plus your willingness to revise, to rewrite, to get better.”

Build a Writing Habit (and Silence Your Inner Critics)

Your brain is full of imaginary critics: Your mum, your dad, your English teacher, every comedian you admire, every YouTube commenter who doesn’t exist yet because you haven’t posted the thing. They are all telling you that what you’re about to write is stupid, offensive, not funny, not original. They’re trying to protect you, but they’re keeping you from truly expressing yourself.

So, we’re going to learn to line them up against the wall and execute them.

The solution: freewriting.

Julia Cameron calls it the morning pages. Other people call it “expressive writing” (yuck). It’s all the same thing. Sit down with a pen and paper, set a timer, and write whatever comes to mind. Don’t stop. Don’t edit. Don’t check your grammar. Just keep your hand moving.

Most of what you write will be awful. Petty. Silly. Boring. Stupid. Weird. Repetitive. Self-indulgent. That’s the point. I call it getting the bad ideas out of my head to leave space for the good ones. The bad ideas clog the drain. The more I write down, the more likely I am to get to something quality. Quantity over quality is our biggest rule.

How to freewrite (The full How-To is in the PDF)

• Pen + paper

• 5–10 minutes

• No stopping

• No editing

• No judging

• Write junk

• Keep going

Most of it will be terrible. That’s the point. You’re clearing the drain so the good ideas can get through. Quantity Over Quality!

Creativity always happens after you start writing, not before. If you think you must have the idea first and then write, you will never write anything..

Your Material Comes From Your Problems

My comedy instructor in New York City, Stephen Rosenfeld (he wrote a great book by the way), defined a comedian as “a person with a problem.” Your material will come from your problems. Your frustrations. The things that annoy you, confuse you, scare you, delight you, embarrass you. So start writing them down.

Try this

Write down 5–10 problems from the last couple of days. From the systemic stuff (ableism, sexism, homophobia) all the way down to petty things like you couldn’t find a parking place or your roommate left the milk out again.

Then Write More

Want to be original, unique, and write un-stealable material? Start with YOU and the way you see the world. Answer as many of these questions as you can, ten answers minimum for each one. Seriously. Use a pen. Go!

• What do you look like?

• What annoys you?

• What scares you?

• What do you love?

• What makes you unique?

• What do people assume about you?

• What’s the dumbest thing people say about your job?

This is your comedy gold mine. You now have at least 100 comedy ideas.

The One Rule: Get Specific (F**k Relatable)

One piece of advice that will make everything you write and say funnier: be specific. Specificity is both original and funny, and oddly more relatable. It’s the difference between a forgettable sentence and one that makes someone laugh.

Don’t say “car” (meh). Say blue Mazda Demio with a dent in its side. Don’t say “my dog.” Say narcoleptic chihuahua named Myrtle.. Don’t say “flower”—say snapdragon. Don’t say “my boss is a jerk.” What’s his name? How is he an arsehole? “Passive aggressive” is too vague. What did he say to you yesterday, in his actual words?

Quick fix

Look at your list. Circle anything vague. Replace it with something concrete, visual, or weirdly specific.

How to Look Confident (Even If You’re Not)

Here’s a fun experiment. Stand up right now and look as nervous as possible. Really sell it. Go.

Where did your hands go? Either protecting everything up front or clutching behind your back. Evolutionarily, when the saber-tooth tiger came at us, we started protecting all our soft parts. Shoulders rolled forward, arms crossed, everything guarded. Eyes went down. Feet started shifting. You started rocking or fidgeting. That’s your nervous body. Congratulations, you look exactly like everyone who has ever walked onto a stage for the first time.

Now let’s build a confident-looking stance from the ground up.

Find “Zero”

• Feet planted, weight even

• Knees unlocked

• Shoulders back

• Head up

• Hand at your sides (other hand pointing the mic at your face)

You won’t stay here the whole time. You’ll move, gesture, pace, get wrapped up in what you’re saying. That’s fine. But you learn to notice: “Oh, my hand is doing something weird. I don’t know why it’s doing that.” And you come back to zero. Like mindfulness meditation - you notice the wandering, and you come back.

Other basics

• Speak slowly. Slower than feels comfortable.

• Make eye contact

• Smile. At least at first. If you’re having fun, they’re having fun.

• Pause after punchlines. After anything important. Give the audience room to react. This is the hardest thing to do and the most powerful. The silence is where the laugh lives.
  

  Stand still and point the mic at your mouth!

Your First Joke: Setup + Punch

A joke has two parts: setup and punch.

The setup gives information. It’s factual, believable, specific, clear. It sets up tension or expectation. It is not funny. It should not be funny. If you’re being funny in the setup, you’re doing it wrong.

The punch is the surprise. It violates the expectation you just created. It’s logically connected to the setup, but it goes somewhere you didn’t see coming. The funny word is the very last word, or as close to the last word as possible.

The Magic Trick

Here’s Joan Rivers:

“My daughter and I are very close. We speak every single day. I call her every day, and I say the same thing...”

“Pick up, I know you’re there!”

Look at what she’s doing. She’s a magician. She plants the words “I love you” in your head. “My daughter and I are very close. We talk every day. Every day I say the same thing...” And millions of people all thought “I love you.” She put the coin in one hand, but it’s been in the other the whole time. And when she flips to “Pick up, I know you’re there!”—you get the surprise, but you also get the relief. Oh, me too. My kids don’t answer either.

That’s a joke. Misdirection. Plant one thing, deliver another.

A joke is a magic trick. Your setup is misdirection. Your punch is the reveal.

One Simple Formula: Rule of Three

If you want to write a joke today the easiest structure in the world is the rule of threes. Two normal things, one surprise thing.

Lily Tomlin: “If peanut oil comes from peanuts, and olive oil comes from olives—where does baby oil come from?”

Two normal things, one bonkers thing. You can do this with any list. Things you need for a lockdown: toilet paper, eggs, another butt plug.

That’s it. Make a list. Cross off the third item. Write something weird. That’s your first joke.

Show Up and Suck

This is how everyone becomes a comedian:

1. Write something.

2. Do a gig and suck.

3. Watch the recording.

4. Fix one thing.

5. Repeat.

That’s it, that’s the whole thing. You will never feel ready. Go anyway. The audience wants you to succeed.

“You’re braver than anyone in that audience. They’re all sitting in the dark — you’re the one on stage.”

What’s Next?

You now have:

• A growth mindset

• A pile of raw material

• A daily writing habit

• A basic joke structure

• A confident stance

• Permission to be terrible at first

But here’s what a guide can’t give you: stage time. Feedback. Someone watching you perform and telling you that the funny word is buried in the middle of your sentence and needs to be moved to the end. Someone showing you that you keep dropping your eyes after every punchline. Someone helping you build an actual five-minute set, joke by joke, and then standing in front of a real audience and delivering it.

That’s what the class is for.

If you want structured support, feedback, and a real stage to perform on, check out the NZ Comedy School courses for the full experience!