I thought I would continue my adventures of my first attempts trying to learn comedy in “the words we use” forum since it seems to be a more theoretical based discussion over here which is where my interests are at the moment in learning this stuff. If you want to be up to speed on what I said over there you can find the post here:

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......forum=24

In my experiments in trying to create comedy for my magic for the first time I have taken Ian Keable’s acronym S.C.R.A.P from his book “ Stand up A Professional Guide to Comedy Magic” as my starting point in search of material.

S.C.R.A.P for those not in the know stands for “Situation based”, “Character based”, “Remembered”, “Adlibs” and “Progress the Plot”.
Starting with situational based lines I thought I would see what I could create for a mundane action such as shuffling a simple deck of cards. In searching for creative approaches I came to a philosophy of Quality and quantity, the idea being that in the comedy writing business, even top professional writers aim for quantity. The funniest lines seldom spring from the pen or keyboard while writing the first line. Inspiration so it’s said comes from deep within the creative process…with the 20th line, the 50th line, the 100th line. When you go to the gym, your success comes not from the first pushup or curl, but from many repetitions.

Using the above as my motivation I set out to write as many situational lines as I could about shuffling a deck of cards whether lame or anything in-between. In the course of the next few days I will catalogue my progress here and share my results hopefully with some constructive criticism from the more knowledgeable amongst you.

Consider this my first attempt in my journey in finding the funny.

Magically

Aus

Great approach! Gives me some inspiration to do the same with some of my routines.

Yes it's the way to go. The more you write comedy the better you become at coming up with good jokes. When you write a 100 jokes, there's sure to be a few good ones in there. When I have written comedy for a performer, it helps to know what their stage persona is before writing the material. For instance, if one of your character traits is a Miser, it is easier to create great comedy. Also making a list always helps, especially with a list things you do, props, cliches, events with the opposite of those things written down. Combine the two and you have a joke. I hope this helps.

Aus' OP was on Jan 3 and it's now Nov 27 and he's made no more posts in this thread.

Seems like progress is slow. Shows how tough comedy writing can be.