One-Liners

I've always had a soft spot for comedians who go up and just fire off one-liners. Demetri Martin is growing more popular by the minute. Anthony Jeselnik still seems to be relatively unknown, but that can't last much longer. Rodney Dangerfield would have gotten no respect at all if it weren't for one-liners.

I believe it was Shakespeare that once said "Brevity is the soul of wit." Having read his work, I don't think he practiced what he preached, but he was on to something. A one-liner may be the ultimate form of stand-up comedy, if not the purest. To get a laugh out of a single, stand alone sentence can't be topped, in my opinion. They might not have quite the same payoff as a longer story with a huge punchline, but one-liners are often the jokes that you remember afterward. They'll get repeated amongst friends and quoted.

While trying to figure out my own personal style of comedy, I keep coming back to the thought of going this route. The only problem is that it seems like the hardest to do properly. When you're telling a story or riffing on a topic, if something doesn't go over, you can kinda keep chugging along. But with the abrupt and usually rapid fire nature of telling one-liners, if a joke misses, there's no covering it up. It's like "Okay... Uh, let's try the next one." In my mind, there is no other style that is so dependent on writing. A great delivery helps, but what it comes down to is how well crafted the joke is.

Since I've started writing the past couple months, I've been trying to come up with a few of my own and it's effing hard. All together I've written about 12-15 that are ready to go, with a few that probably need some major tweaking. And today, I wrote one that I think is my best so far. Because of my obsession with this, I'm finding it hard to concentrate on the work I've already developed for our show. All I'm thinking about is adding new ones to the list. Once I've got 5 minutes worth, I'll give them a shot and see if they get the reactions I feel they should. Might as well try everything to see what feels right.

I'll leave you with a true master... the late, great Mitch Hedberg.