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Just realized my dad jokes land way better after I cut them from 3 sentences to 1, and I have 22 tries at Thanksgiving dinner to prove it
I sat at my sister's place in Boise on Thanksgiving and counted every joke my dad told. The ones that got real laughs were short, 6 to 9 words, and the ones that got groans ran 2 or 3 sentences with a setup nobody asked for. My "why did the elevator stop" bit used to run 4 lines and always sank, so that night I tried a one liner about a broken scale and my uncle actually laughed out loud. I trimmed 9 of my jokes down to a single line and 7 of them got a laugh or a groan instead of silence. The short ones feel less like a story and more like a punch, which seems to be the point in this court. Has anyone else timed their jokes like this or am I just overthinking a family dinner?
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foster.tessa1mo ago
The "setup nobody asked for" part is so real. My go to joke about the scarecrow used to be this whole story and now its just "hes outstanding in his field" and people actually laugh. Long setup just gives them time to see it coming.
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