All Things to All People

Photo credit: garysan97

I am a huge comedy fan. I have been since I was a kid. My brother shares this love of comedy, but he was able to put that love to good use, and has been regularly performing standup for the last decade or so. 

Once, at a party, someone asked him to perform some of his jokes, and I stepped in to try and do his routine. (I may or may not have been a few beers in at that point.) Guess what happened? No one laughed. It wasn’t because the jokes weren’t funny. My brother had been performing them with quite a bit of success. 

No, once I reviewed the tape (yes, someone filmed it), I realized something: I wasn’t telling the jokes, I was explaining them. 

Telling a joke and explaining a joke is the difference between saying: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Boo.” “Boo who?” “Stop crying!” 

And:

“So, first, I pretend I’m knocking on your door. Then, you pretend to answer and ask who is at the door. Then, I’ll say ‘Boo.’ But you don’t understand, so you say ‘boo who’ like you are asking who is ‘boo’, but it’s also a pun, like ‘boo, who?’ like you are crying. Get it?” 

There’s a famous quote about comedy (that was either said by Mark Twain or EB White, but actually was probably said by neither of them): “Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.” Instead of telling my brother’s jokes, I was killing them. 

Comedy has always been a very intellectual exercise for me. I love joke construction and hearing comedians talk about their process. Most people aren’t like that. They just want to laugh. 

I’ve tried my hand at comedy writing, as well. Earlier this year, I spent a non-insignificant amount of time trying to write for humor publications. Nothing serious, but I dabbled a bit with some ideas I thought were pretty funny. 

Here’s what I learned: I can’t do it. All of my concepts are too heady, and are more about explaining a funny idea rather than just being funny. I think I can be funny in my writing, from time to time, and if a ghostwriting client has a vision for a business or leadership book with the occasional joke or two, or an overall humorous tone, I can execute on that pretty easily. 

But I’ll never be a comedy writer. That realization hit me a bit harder than I thought it would. Not because I expected, or even wanted, to become some kind of professional comedian, but because I thought that I could write in pretty much any style. After spending a lot of time thinking about and consuming comedy, I thought I could slip into comedy just as easily as I could slip into the voice of an author. 

But, I can’t, and that’s ok. I learned that I can’t be all things to all people. Just because I’m a ghostwriter, doesn’t mean I can write in all ways or all formats. I have my strengths and I should lean into them. 

This comedy writing exercise helped me understand the boundaries of what I can offer people. I am a good writer, but I can’t write comedy. I am a good editor, as well, because the best writing is rewriting, to use another dubious EB White quote. 

But more than that, I am good at making connections. I can work with a client to identify their big ideas, or many small ideas, and string those together to make something coherent, accessible, and great. 

Knowing what we’re good at is an important step before undertaking any kind of thought leadership or book project. You can’t write a book if you want it to be all things to all people. I coach clients to try and be as specific as possible when trying to identify a target audience. Understanding strengths - rather than trying to stretch beyond them - can help you do what you do better, and put together a better product.

Maybe one day I’ll try comedy again, but probably not. It was fun to try, but I’ll stick to enjoying it. There are people out there doing it way better than I can.