Here is a fairly simple method that can help you learn to be fun; or more specifically, hone the fun you already have.

Legend has it that American comedian Steve Allen learned to write jokes by copying jokes from joke books. Now, while I don’t advocate learning to write jokes as a basis for using humor in speeches or presentations, it is something we can certainly learn a lot from.

The goal of the technique that I am about to outline for you is not to steal someone else’s material. That is something completely regrettable. The idea is to learn about quality.

This is an easy method to improve your humorous writing skills:

1. Select a favorite comedian. Grab a DVD or use YouTube and select about 5 minutes of your act.

2. So what you do is transcribe your material word for word.

3. Rewatch the clip and note in your transcript where they laugh. You can do this using an asterisk

or whatever annotation works for you.

4. Count the number of words used in the passage before the laugh (the preparatory line).

5. Then count the number of words used in the sentence that generates the laughter (the punchline).

It would also be worth taking note of the laughter that is generated by things other than words. For example, a gesture, a sound or a look, etc.

Remember that you are not looking for fun reading material on the page. In fact, he probably won’t be honest with you. Your humor doesn’t have to look funny on the page, leave it to the humorous prose writers. We are dealing with the humor of the spoken word.

What this exercise allows you to do is get an idea of ​​the quality of the material as it appears on the page. You will gain an understanding of the brevity and conciseness of what is being said. If you do this with a couple of different comedians, then you need to count the number of words each comedian uses on their assembly line and their punchline and take an average.

This is the number of words you need to use to convey your humor in the most compact way.

I’m not sure if Steve Allen wrote the same jokes over and over again to learn how to be funny, or if he wrote new jokes each time. But what I would do is go back to the comedian you used for the first time and write that material several times. Do not shorten this step by using cut and paste, write the material by hand for it to learn through osmosis.

By regularly working on this exercise, you will begin to get an idea of ​​how you can edit your own speeches once you have written them.