People love to laugh. Laughing is fun, it brings people together, some even say it’s medicinal. People love laughing so much that I’m often paid to stand up in a dark room telling jokes to strangers.
After a night attempting to make people laugh (and sometimes hideously failing) one of my favourite things to do is play video games. And I’ve started to think recently: ? Wouldn’t a bit of humour liven things up, maybe even make things more believable and relatable?
It’s not that easy, of course. If all it took was someone saying ‘just be funnier’, then I’d be filling stadiums. But maybe some of the same rules that a lot of us use in stand up are transferable.
Rule number one for the stand up comedian is to be relatable. Even the best surreal comics need their audience to relate and connect, so a touch of authenticity is vital. I get it: it’s tricky to find authentic truth when writing about battle hardened space marines fighting aliens on ring-worlds that double as planet destroying super-weapons. But make those space marines have indigestion before they get dropped into a warzone? That’s relatable. It’s going to make people care more about those marines.