The Secrets of Comedy Writing with Matthew Dicks

Matthew Dicks drops secrets on how to create humor and laughter. We hear about how he builds content to take the stage. How does Matthew face rejection and still have bravery to step on stage. He shares about how to build suspense and surprise. As an author, humorist columnist plus stand-up comedy performer, this episode is jam packed with helpful insights into storytelling, writing comedy and using humor in communication.

Learn more from Matthew Dicks at MatthewDicks.com and StoryWorthymd.com
Follow @MatthewDicks on Instagram and @StoryWorthyMD on Instagram

Follow Tim DeTellis on Instagram.

Guitar music by: Angelo Janotti
Watch Angelo Janotti's TEDx talk: The Art of Shred Guitar

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to the Attempting Stand Up Comedy Podcast. My name is Tim. Thanks for tuning in today. On this episode, I have a conversation with Matthew Dix. He's the author of Story Worthy. He comes to us today from Connecticut. He's going to drop some great truths on how to create humor and laughter, but also how to take the stage because this guy has been on a stage a lot. So let's enjoy this conversation with author Matthew Dix. Matthew, thanks for being with me to talk about attempting stand-up comedy, but also writing of all sorts. And I'm going to dive in and let you just kind of give an introduction to kind of who you are and probably some comedians and comics or comedy writers may be new to you. So share with us whatever you want us to know at hello.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Sure. Well, let's see. You know, when I'm asked what I do for a living, it's always a tricky question. I play golf a lot. And there's usually like uh three of my buddies, and then they throw a fourth person, some random person, into our group, and by the second hole, they say, What do you do for a living? And I'm sort of stuck. So I always say elementary school teacher first, because that is actually a job I have to go to on particular days and go teach 10-year-old children. That's something I still do, and I can't seem to escape because I like the kids too much. But when I'm not teaching, I'm also a writer. So I've published uh six novels and now three books of nonfiction. So I do quite a bit of writing. I'm a columnist for uh, I'm actually the humor columnist for a magazine, and I've been writing a blog now for the last 20 years without missing a day. And when I'm not doing those things, I'm standing on stages. Uh, I perform for organizations like the Moth and my own. And I sort of travel the country and do a lot of storytelling, public speaking, stand-up comedy, um, inspirational addresses. I work with a lot of companies now. I I actually work with companies more than I might do anything else, sort of helping them uh market and brand and sales and communication, all this weird stuff that I never expected to do. I work with the FBI now. I work with their hostage negotiation unit, helping them learn to tell better stories so that they can convince bad guys to make better decisions when they're in terrible situations. So yeah, I do a lot of things. Uh as my wife says, you're very busy. You're just a very busy man. So all of that. I I like to say ultimately I work with sentences, is what I tell people. Whether I'm speaking to people or writing on the page or performing from a stage, I'm essentially taking sentences and trying to bring them to the greatest meaning and the entertainment value and um connectiveness as I can possibly do. How is that? Tremendous. No, thanks for it doesn't play well on a golf course. On the golf course, the guy's like, I'm just gonna hit the ball. Leave me alone.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, and that's the challenge is people understanding what you do in 30 seconds when it's been taking a lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Right. Yes. And it's not been purposeful. You know, I always point out to people I I wanted to be a teacher who wrote books. That was my dream. And then that dream sort of came true. And then one day I found myself on a stage, and you know, now I'm consulting with Microsoft. So these are not things that I expected to ever have happened.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

So let's start with the stage. Obviously, preparation is a big deal, but there's also that inner courage. You know, you face rejection, and in the comedy world, you know, bombing people that take the stage and have courage too, and things don't go well. I I've heard by more comedians that the greatest lesson is bombing, not f not actually killing. Um what's it like for you to conjure up whatever that is inside of you uh to take the stage? Where does your courage come from?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Well, I I like to let people know because I think it's important to understand. I'm sort of a monster in a lot of ways. I genuinely don't care about much when it comes to this. You know, I had a woman once in one of my workshops tell me that I was the bravest person she'd ever met, because I say anything. You know, I'm willing to say anything about myself that I want to say. And I told her it's not courage. I said, I genuinely believe that most people, you know, really great people, people who do the job brilliantly, they still require courage to take the stage and do the things they do and take the risks and say the things they want to say. I said, but don't credit me, because honestly, I'm just a monster who doesn't care. And that is almost entirely true, which is sort of, as my wife says, both a superpower and a disaster, depending on the situation. So the fact that I can sort of move through life and just say, Yeah, I'll go do that. I'll take the stage and do that thing, or I'll, you know, put myself out there. You know, it's great until, you know, I find myself at a dinner with my in-laws and I still genuinely don't care what people think. And then suddenly, you know, I find myself in some trouble. I do think for most people though, what I compare it to is going off a high dive. You know, when I was, I don't know, when I was like 14, there was like a 12-foot high dive, probably too dangerous, like we would not exist in today's world, but in the 1985 world that I was living in, right, was a really high dive. And when you when you hit the water, you came so close to the bottom, you had to hold your hands out, or you would have crashed into the bottom. So certainly not something in today's world that we would find. But I remember standing there and watching a hundred kids go off the diving board and sort of survive. You know, they came back to the surface, they'd laugh, they'd get out of the water and do it again. And you can watch everyone do it, and you can be convinced that nothing bad will happen ultimately. And yet, when you get to the edge of the board the first time, even though you know you'll be fine because everyone else has been fine, that jump is really challenging. And for me, that jump was hard. So that's what I try to imagine people going through when they have to, you know, get up there and attempt to, you know, speak a joke for the first time and wonder if it's going to get a laugh or not. Uh, for a lot of people, I think that's really challenging. I think for most people, it's really challenging, which is great. I always tell people who perform, whether it's comedy or storytelling or public speaking, whatever it is, it's great that it's really hard because that keeps people off our stage. You know, that prevents people from cluttering our stage with their nonsense. And so when it's really hard, the people who can actually do it end up being people who are special. So I say take that belief in you know your specialness up onto the stage and accept the fact that not everything you're gonna say is great.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

I really have enjoyed you've done a tremendous amount of creating your content for education purposes online. We'll get to that near the end. I want you to share all that you're offering these days, but you also do some really great Facebook Lives, and one of them, I remember you brought up something uh relating to the stage, and and it had to do with how your mind thinks under pressure. Um can you share about that a little bit? Because it yeah, I it it really was a light switch for me.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

I think I think what you're talking about is the way that I sort of believe that our our brains work more efficiently on stage, we're more creative on stage. At least it's been the case for me, and I I other people have sort of reported this to me as well. I can take ideas up onto a stage, you know, I can have a plan for what I'm gonna say. And then suddenly when I'm standing in front of 2,000 people, the other night I was at the Wilbur, 2,000 people in the audience. I had I had somewhere between six to eight minutes to tell a story that actually was really funny, and it was specifically incredibly funny, or at least I was hoping for it to be incredibly funny, because the end was not funny. The last minute was like I'm gonna stab you in the heart. And when I do that, when I know the end is gonna make everyone feel really sad and cry, I have to make sure that I get them laughing before I stab them. So, you know, I had a plan and I actually told my buddy in the car the story. You know, we worked it out a little bit. I wasn't as ready as I should have been. But by the time I got to Boston and I got to the Wilbur, I was ready to go. And then I took the stage and I started speaking. And what I had said in the car was very different than what I said on stage. The structure of the story was the same. I didn't change any events. But, you know, I got off the stage and my buddy, his name's Chris. He goes, You really like nailed that joke. Like you didn't do it that way in the car. I said, I know I didn't do it that way in the car. It's just you get up there and you know there's 2,000 people, and your brain, I just think, shifts into a higher gear. And suddenly you find the words that you couldn't find when you were behind the wheel of a car on the mass pike, you know, trying to get into Boston, or when you were sitting at your desk, or when you're you know, wandering around your house talking out loud, which is what I often do, trying to find the best way to say that joke or the best way to you know relate that anecdote to get the biggest laugh. Yeah, I really believe that things happen on stage if you allow them to happen. I know that I work with a lot of people who sort of they memorize what they're gonna say, they're locked in, they get up there. You know, I often call them word callers. Good job. You called out those words in the order you planned on calling them out and didn't allow yourself any opportunity to, you know, find creative freedom on stage. I I think that's my favorite part is when suddenly I see a new way to do something in a way I never expected. And so often it happens when there's people looking at me.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And the brain, it's a survival instinct, right? I mean, it's it's working under pressure, as you have mentioned, which I love that phrase. Thank you. I was speaking to a group of a little over a hundred guys in Palm Beach this week. I took the Bright Line train down there, which reminded me of the T in Boston, because I missed the T. We have no like public transportation in Orlando to speak of, unless you take the bus or Uber. But nonetheless, there was a moment in the group because there was, you know, I'm Italian, and so I have this working joke I'm working on about having an Italian bod. And then I'll I'll stand sideways. Do you want me to have a profile, you know, view? And it's like the meatball belly. And I used this line where don't ever go into a dressing room and try on a slim fit. It's of the devil. You know, we need we need like a wide and and then on the spot, I just came up with this whole phrase, wider, and how wide can you get? And the guy in the back started hugging his friend. And I'm like, Are you okay back there? And he's like, Oh, your friend, he's pretty wide. Like his size is an entirely new category, right? And it wasn't saying you're fat, uh-huh. And so in the moment, that phrase, you know, wider and then new category just came up, and it was pressure, it was the moment. Right. Which yeah, so for you for you as a, you know, I look at you as a not only just a creative, but you you do have a I guess it's called stage experience that you're not um in your head all the time. You you talk about how you create by audibly talking out live out loud, but but I think where a lot of people really miss the mark is taking the reps on stage. Um, so I've been doing some open mics and I've been attempting stand-up comedy and trying to you know write jokes. We'll get to some humor writing in a moment, but you know, for you, you're you're I I wish, I don't even think you probably know how many times you've taken the stage. Those reps, it's like going to the gym for somebody, you know, for 10 years and just like, dude, how do you stay in shape? It's like, yeah, I go to the gym every day.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

I mean, you're on the stage a lot. Do you have any idea? I mean, I don't know how many times. I mean, I know that I've been on a moth stage because I keep track of that data, you know. So I've been on a moth stage, you know, probably closing in on, I don't know, 200 times over the last decade, but certainly twice as many of those stages, you know, all around the country doing other types of things. And actually, although it's been discounted by some stupid people, the fact that I go to school every day and stand in front of 10-year-olds for seven hours. And the only reason I'm a teacher of any worth is because while my colleagues have great pedagogy and understanding of curriculum and real skill, all I do is entertain. I just entertain them so that they're engaged, so that they run through walls for me. And so while the jokes that I tell in a in a classroom to 10-year-olds are not the same jokes always, but sometimes that I'll tell on a stage, you know, to adults. I'm basically performing all day. My wife will, who is also a teacher, she tells people, she says, Matt's just putting on a show all day long for those kids, and that's why they pay attention. And I think that those reps count too. That really has helped me a lot, you know. But I agree that being on the stage is important. One of my favorite things to do is my friend Jenny, who's a storyteller and I, we do a show called Matt and Jenny are unprepared. And all we do is we sit on a stage with my wife and we uh we collect prompts. So, like one of the ways we do it is the audience, when they walk into the show, they drop random nouns into a bowl. Okay. And Jenny and I will each draw out three nouns out of the bowl. So I'll get toaster and I don't know, tree and uh car wheel, you know? And I have to tell a true story about my life in front of the audience, right there, that I've never told before based upon one of those prompts. Nice. And those shows are super attended and people love them. And I love it because I love being on a stage and not knowing what the hell I'm gonna say next. I think that's the greatest thing. I don't have the guts to do it yet, but my best version of stand up, and only because I'm a monster could this happen. I would like to get on a stage at a stand-up show and say, all right, give me a topic and let's see if I can be funny about it. And if I'm not funny about it, I genuinely won't care. I'll be like, all right, that one didn't work. We all got to watch me fail. Give me another one. And I would just do that until people would leave. I would do it for hours and hours until people got sick of me. Because I genuinely think that those reps that you're talking about, that ability to be on the stage and figure out how to talk to people, especially when you're not quite sure what to say and you don't have the next thing scripted out. I think that's where you can start to find magic and confidence and fluency, and you can start to learn to read an audience so that when someone laughs at something in a story that I'm telling, a pre-planned story that I'm telling, if I hear a laugh from an audience, I go in my mind, I think, oh, they really like that. Can I bring that back for a callback later on in the story? And I'm doing that in the midst of telling a story. That only comes from being able to get the experience of a stage and starting to reduce the amount of bandwidth that it takes for us to actually say something. The less effort it takes for you to remember what you want to say, the more bandwidth you have to sort of expand on what you're planning to say.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

You had mentioned uh pootagi, right? And that's the learning of education. Uh friend of mine just did a TEDx talk, uh, Dr. Timothy Stafford. I actually coached him and he did a talk on hoodagogy, which is self-directed learning. So I'll make sure I send that to you later because that's really what this adventure is about, right? It's a self-directed learning. When you find that curiosity and you're self-directed in your learning, it's almost like you have a deeper appetite. Um, and so you mentioned about going on stage with a with a trigger or a word that somebody threw in a bucket. In the comedy class I'm taking at the Funny Bone Comedy Club in Orlando, we do a weekly rant round. So the instructor's just gonna throw a word at you, right? And you rant about it. But I find that there's some natural humor that breaks out. Um, and and the and the phrase commonly said is you know, don't try to, you know, say it funny. Just you know, you you can get into this kind of stuck in your head. Like, I gotta be funny right now, but you just tell the story in truth, and it's actually funnier.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Right. Yeah, it's so true. Authenticity often is funny. When I go to an open mic, I often think the funniest moments are the moments when the comedian, when the comedian admits that he doesn't know what to say next. You know, when he looks at his when he looks at his journal that he brings on stage and he goes, damn it, I'm out of jokes. I have no idea what to do. That gets a big laugh oftentimes, a bigger laugh than anything he has said so far. And really it is just like he's letting down the curtain and showing himself for who he truly is, as opposed to the artifice that he's attempting to be when he's saying jokes that, you know, oftentimes are not true, which, you know, right, and I understand that is a that is a reality of comedy, but it is not a reality for me. You know, I am not in the business of making up stuff that will therefore be funny. So I love the idea of always speaking the truth about me and trying to find the humor in the truth, as opposed to sort of creating scenarios that didn't actually happen. I want people to know when I'm on a stage that if I say, you know, the other day I was talking to my daughter, it wasn't nine years ago. It really was the other day, right? So I don't play around in those ways that I know some comedians do, most do. And I I'm not sort of pushing back on that too much. Uh, but I do like the challenge of being trapped in the truth and make bringing the funny from the truth.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

So I'll I want to get to a why question, then we'll get to some technicals, you know, or maybe instructionals. So for you, why the humor or why even the stand-up, or I know for you as a writer, um, you're very well known on the story side, but what attracted you to comedy in the humor side?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Well, the books I write, the novels I write, they're often sort of described as quirky, which means they're gonna make you laugh and they're gonna make you cry. And when I started telling stories, when I became that moth storyteller, I knew right away that the best version of a story is one that's gonna make you laugh and then make you cry. My wife always says the her favorite stories that I tell are the laugh, laugh, laugh, cry. And part of that is because when you get people to laugh, it lets their guard down. It opens up their hearts and minds. And it's when that guard is down and their heart is open that you can stab them with some really hard truth. And you can say something that really means something to people. Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

And you can and you have a structure you really believe in about um if you're gonna tell something extremely tragic, you want them to laugh before it versus, and then there is a release you can have laughter after, but but that's been an interesting structure for you. Laugh first and then cry.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yeah, right. At the wheelbird the other night, I knew I was gonna say a really hard thing at the end that was gonna make the entire audience silent. And I love those moments when everyone is perfectly silent. What you know you can hear a pin drop. But I know if I'm gonna have the last minute of my story be one of those, ooh, this is a tough thing to hear. I am gonna give them five minutes of funny before I give them one minute of pain. Now, the five minutes of funny, though, are still storytelling that is gonna contextualize the last minute, but it is that acknowledgement. You know, the toughest thing I've ever been through in my life has been a gun to my head and the trigger pulled in the back of a McDonald's restaurant in Brockton, Massachusetts. And so when I tell that story, I open with the magic show that my kids were doing when they were like, you know, six and four. It's a ridiculous, hilarious, you know, nonsensical magic show that makes everyone laugh. And it's strategic because I know I'm about to take them to the darkest places I've ever been. I want them to know I've got a kid, I've got another kid, I've got a wife, we have a great life. Now let me take you to darkness. Because while they're in darkness, they can at least know he's okay. Because he just told us about his beautiful children and his fantastic wife and the great life he has. It allows them to hear hard things without having to like worry about the person. You know, there's a phrase in performing we say we take care of our audience. One of the ways you take care of your audience if you're gonna say something hard, is you make sure they feel okay about it by making them laugh beforehand. That'll that'll give them the opportunity to hear you without worrying about you. And I'm really interested in that idea. Sounds like you're helping them put a seatbelt on. Yeah, yeah, in a way, yeah. I've never heard it described that way, but that is a really good way. It's also entertaining. There's just no joy in only taking people to darkness. Right. You know, I want to take people to truth, which is often hard to hear, but I have to entertain more than anything. I tell every human being, whether it's a vice president of a company or a 10-year-old who's getting up to present their report on South Carolina, I tell them you have to entertain first or no one will listen to you. It doesn't matter if you're the CEO of a company at the Javit Center and you have 10,000 people ready to hear about your new product. If you don't actually entertain, people will tune you out immediately. They don't care about you. So I feel that same way when I'm performing, whether it's a story, stand up, an inspirational speech, or whatever. I have to entertain first and then bring truth after that. Do you have a nice definition for entertainment for you? Well, I tell people it's it's different depending. So making people laugh is a great way to entertain, but also presenting them with immediately actionable information that can help change their life. You know, something they go, wow, I've never thought of that before. That's entertaining. That can really um, you know, make people happy. I think sometimes just telling a great story that they've never heard before that does relate to something in the world, that can be deeply entertaining. I think vulnerability is entertaining. If you just start saying things that most people are unwilling to say, but sort of recognize it to be true, that can be entertaining. I think there's physical ways you can be entertaining. I think you'd be entertaining with the vocalization and the pacing and the pausing. There's a million ways to do it. People often say, Well, I'm not funny, Matt. And I say, Well, you could be funny, first of all. But second of all, you don't need to be funny to be entertaining. I I can listen to a podcast that is utterly humorless. I listened to one this morning that was deeply entertaining. I didn't laugh once, but it gave me insight into the world that I did not have before. And I immediately thought to myself, I can't wait for my wife to wake up so I can tell her, tell her all about this. That makes it entertaining. So as long as the audience is engaged. Engaged and they feel like they're getting something of value. Whether that value is a laugh, an interesting story, some fascinating bit of historical knowledge, or maybe a great takeaway that's going to change their life, all of that qualifies as entertaining.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

So in the entertainment vein, uh, you have a question that is unquenchable, I guess. Is that a word? Or unquenchable? Unquenchable. Unquenchable is the question of how do you build suspense? But then in the comedy space, you know, it's the question, how do you build surprise? Um, for you, when you think about humor, when you think about, you know, doing stand-up comedy, how do you define how you're going to create a laugh? And what does that structure begin to look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Well, it's a great question. I mean, I I have strategies that I teach people to help them be funny. You know, I'm not deploying the strategies that I teach in a very, I don't know, in a very academic way. I'm not thinking, oh, I'm gonna use strategy four here, I'm gonna use strategy six here. You know, essentially what I'm trying to do when I'm doing stand-up is I'm trying to find a story or an anecdote to begin with. Although that's not always true. You know, sometimes it's an idea that I'm gonna choose to expound upon, but there's always a kernel that I'm gonna begin with. The other day it occurred to me, for example, I wondered is the brown crayon the least popular crayon because poop is brown. Has the color of poop altered our version of or our vision of what we think of brown, right? Is that is that correlation or causation in existence? I I thought, is that a story? Is that gonna be a talk? And I thought, it's probably just a little bit I can do in stand-up. And if I want to do that bit in stand-up someday, right? Do we not like brown because poop is brown? I'm now gonna begin looking for anecdotes and stories in my life where color was relevant to something. I'm gonna start paying attention to sort of the world in general. You know, if I discover that, I don't know, the Russian flag is red for some very strange reason. Now I'm gonna bring a Russian flag into crayon and poop color. So I'm gonna start building on that. So it's gonna start with a germ or a seed. It's often a story. It's 90% of the time. Something happened. And now I have to find a way to say that in the funniest way possible. And that is doing what you just described, which is a lot of suspense, which is essentially set up and a lot of surprise, which every laugh you ever get in your entire life is nothing more than surprise. It is you have assembled words in a particular way or spoken them in a particular way that caused their brain to see something in a new and fascinating way and produce a spontaneous, uncontrollable response, which is a laugh. So ultimately, we're trying to surprise people with the words that we say and the way we say them. So that's what I'm thinking about all the time when I'm trying to come up with a joke.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

And you, as a writer, you have mentioned this in a lot of your material, which again, I I appreciate how much you give away your content in written form. I mean, obviously you have courses that I've taken, but you talk about really the building of suspense or creating of surprises is as important as what you leave out. Can you speak to a moment about how you choose what not to put in kind of the recipe? It is almost like it's it's it's this really, really cool. I don't know, because as an Italian, you know, loving food, you know, mom's meatball recipe is a secret, right? So what's matching, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yeah, it is it is suspense. Right. What you've just done is created suspense. I tell people the the best example of suspense is the crossword puzzle, which is here's five boxes and here's a clue. See if you can figure it out. But it's even better than that because the way suspense works is that the closer you get to solving something or figuring something out, the greater suspense grows. That's why at the end of a mystery novel, that's the greatest period of suspense, right before we discover who the murderer is, we're in the most amount of suspense because we've gathered the most clues, but we're not quite there yet. So even in a crossword puzzle, right, five across is a version of blue, right? Another word for blue, five letters, five across. If you can't figure it out, but then you discover that one down is A, and you're like, oh, the first letter in this is A, suspense grows, right? Now you're like, it's a word for blue that starts with A, right? And that causes you to get more excited. So suspense is merely the it's Azure, by the way. That's the blue color. Um, suspense is the strategic inclusion of information alongside the strategic exclusion of information simultaneous. So when you're telling a story or you want to build some laugh, or just pay attention, comedians do it all the time. They say some of the thing, but not all of the thing. And what you want to do is choose the qualities or the aspects of the thing, we'll say, that will produce the most wonder in someone's mind. Right. So in a story I tell, a little boy, this is the best example I always have. A little boy, uh, his hand comes out of a leaf pile and he says, Look what I'm holding, Mr. Dix. And I say, a metal object is in his hand, right? So that is suspense. And I say metal and I say object because those two words trigger wonder in people's minds. Some people think knife right away. Darker people think gun. And some people think, what the hell is that? Right now, ultimately in that story, it's a spoon, which they never think, right? But the fact that they're thinking knife, gun, or what the hell it is, that's suspense. And all I did was chose I chose the right words. I chose metal and object. I could have chosen anything, right? I could have said a thing, I could have said a kitchen utensil, I could have said a silvery object, all of those things would have applied too. I chose the words that produce the most amount of suspense. So that's what we want to do. I tell people that when we're speaking in any way, essentially what we are is the cinematographers for the mind's eye, right? It's a lens that we are creating. And what we don't show, what is what is off the camera, is so important. What people can't see, it's almost more important than what people can see. We're choosing what not to say, and that is what creates suspense. And then the reveal of the thing we're not showing, that's the surprise. So we don't show something for a period of time, a metal object. And then when I reveal it's a spoon, that's surprise. So those two things have to work in conjunction with each other. And a laugh is the same way. It's set up and punchline essentially. Setup is the suspense, or what I'm going to show you, but not all of the thing. And surprise is the joke paying off, the the actual landing of the joke.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

Can you uh maybe show or share a little bit of the difference for you in in the storytelling compared to the comedy writing and and how your brain kind of has to shift a little bit on the comedy structure compared to this the story? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

Well, when I'm telling a story, I guess the difference is when I'm telling a story, I've identified a thing I want to say, a truth about me or the world or my kids or whatever, right? And so when I'm telling a story, everything serves the end. So I'm driving to the end and I'm gonna be funny along the way, but I'm not going to pause and ruminate on things that I know I could be funny on, which is what I did earlier on in my storytelling career. I'd be telling a story, and then you know, my wife would listen to it and she'd say, That was great, but why did you spend like 45 seconds on toasters? Right. Because there was a toaster in the story. And I said, Well, I thought I'd take a moment to just sort of like lay down some really good toaster jokes. And she, you know, and she said, they're really funny, but they're kind of distracting because you're trying to tell a story and actually say something. And for 45 seconds, you're hanging around toasters. And I'm thinking, why? You know, like why is this important? If we're not in stand-up, an audience will get confused. They'll start to think that this toaster is more important than it really is. So if I'm doing stand-up, I'll tell the same story that I would tell as if I was doing it at the moth. But at the moth, I'm driving home. I, you know, I'm trying to get to the end. So I can only be funny within the confines of the story. I don't get to sort of come out of the story and spin around for a while and then come back in. When I'm doing stand-up, same story, but now I get to throw all the jokes in. Now I get to pause. You know, the act, the person I admire the most and I pay attention to exactly how he does it, is Mike Brabiglia. Because Brabiglia will be telling a story. But I watch, like I watch his specials again and again to watch how he comes out and how he ruminates and how he plays, and then how he comes back into the arc of the story. That's a challenging thing to do. And those transitions are so delicate to keep the audience sort of along the arc of the story while also laughing along the way. But that's going to be the difference between the two. Essentially, when I'm telling a story, I leave a million jokes on the floor. And it's painful. I drive by them and I go, oh, they would have laughed at that. They would have laughed at that. And I like to make people laugh because it makes me feel better about myself as a human being. So anytime someone laughs at me, I just know I'm, you know, slightly better than I was a moment ago. So leaving the jokes on the floor is bad, but that's not the purpose of telling a story. You know, there's a big difference between the two.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

So I want to kind of make an Oreo cookie out of your craft, if I can. Because you just you just did it in a kind of explaining what happens for you. Because you're you're leaving a lot of the elements of the jokes out of the story, but if you go into the comedy space, then you can technically highlight all the funny. So for you, if you were to build your ideal Oreo cookie of of comedy plus story, what would that look like for you on stage as a from the comedic side? Would you take story as kind of, hey, this is where I want to lead you? Technically, this is this is the end, you know, of my set. I'm gonna totally take you off a cliff, but all along the way, I'm gonna build you up to that. How would you kind of make a sandwich out of what I would call your amazing story structure plus your ability to take the comedy and put it on the front of the stage or the edge of the stage?

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Right. Well, part of it is time. That's one of the most important things. Like I do to tomorrow night, I'm performing my solo show, okay, which is uh somewhere between, depending on how how tight I choose to be or how loose I choose to be. It's going to be somewhere between an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and 30 minutes. Amazing. Right. And and in that, uh, that is sort of the Oreo cookie that you're describing, because I have the stage to myself, and I actually have props. I have like a whiteboard and a desk. I have a couple things that I play with up there. And that is, I'm telling a story. From the very beginning to the very end, I am telling you a story, and it lands in a very particular place in my heart and mind. And the end of the story will make people cry. The end of my solo show makes people cry. The last 30 seconds, we are all in tears. Sometimes me too. But we are laughing the whole way through until we get there. And in a solo show where I've got 90 minutes and I've got a whole stage to play with, I will step right out of that story for a little bit and play with the idea that I have just presented. You know, there's there's lots of things I do where I get to just come to jokes. And one of the easiest ways to be able to do it in a solo show is when I create a show, I have fixed objects on the stage. And so there's a desk, for example. It's a story about teaching to a certain degree. And there's a student desk. And when I return to the student desk, the audience understands, oh, we're back in the story now. Right. But if I move away from that desk and I come to the other side of the stage and I start talking, they visually understand he's not in the story anymore. Now he's talking to us and he's making us laugh because he's telling us jokes or telling us anecdotes that somewhat relate to the story, but don't exactly relate to the story. Right. So the ability to put something like that together, where I can use physicality and I can use physical objects and I can use an entire stage to sort of signal to an audience when we're in the story and when we've stepped out of the story a little bit for me to make you laugh a little bit more than you normally would in a story. That's the Oreo cookie best version of it. Otherwise, if I really want to make people laugh and I want to be telling a story at the same time, the best version of that is to just find something that is already situationally funny and play with that. So, you know, the story about the time in my life when I was a stripper for a bachelorette party in the break room of a McDonald's restaurant, that is situationally funny. Now, that is actually a story because it lands in a really authentic moment at the end. It actually, I say something that makes the audience either hum, like that hum you get, like, mmm, like they agree, or they're like, oh, like I feel the same way. But that is the kind of story where if I want to make people laugh the whole way through, a situationally funny story that I will pump up with additional jokes, but will land in a place at the end of meaning, that's sort of the other version of the Oreo cookie. You can't do that with every story because not every story is situationally funny. So to make it funny, it almost people see through it. They're like, I can see him banging out the jokes in places where the the jokes don't really exist. You know, that's a trickier version of a story to tell to make people laugh.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

So I need to make a confession to you, though. There are there are two voices in my head when it comes to comedy. Uh, the first is Jerry Seinfeld, and he talks about you know writing every day. And the second the second voice is Matthew Dix. But you gotta know why. It's because of your homework for life. Oh, yes. I I believe, and and I don't know if you ever referenced it this way, it applies to comedy writing immensely. Because the same exercise, because you talk about uh in storytelling that there's like this five-second aha moment. Um, take a moment, and I I'm I'm throwing this at you totally blind, but but take a moment and think of how that story moment is technically either the punchline or even it could be the setup or the premise. But how, in essence, if if if people that are writing comedy are thinking I should be doing the Matthew Dix Homework for Life exercise every day, because that's how I'm gonna curate jokes or e ideas for jokes. Because of that five-second piece. Because of that five-second piece. Can can you can you open up that window for a little bit in from the comedy perspective? Because I'm telling you, journaling and and I have a Google Voice number that I only text for comedy ideas and in joke writing. So, you know, I'll be driving, you know, I'm from New England, so I still drive a Subaru. And so, you know, with the manual transmission, it's like, you know, I'm voice texting on my watch, you know, they're Matthew Dicks homework for life while I'm doing 70. So go ahead and open up that window for us on the on that five second or that moment, and maybe how that could relate to comedy.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Yeah, well, you have to, I guess what I would say is if you're doing comedy or anything, but let's talk comedy, you have to be saying something that actually has meaning. You know, you can just get up there and tell one-liners all night long, right? You're not gonna be remembered. You know, no one remembers the one-line joke. They remember when you say something and it also is funny. So, homework for life is the idea that you gotta say something that means something, and then you can build the funny from there. Right. So I had a student the other day, uh, kid said to me in a quiet voice, he said, Mr. Dix, are you afraid of death? And I said, No, I'm not, because I'm never gonna die. And he said, What do you mean? And I said, Well, if I acknowledge that I was gonna die someday, I wouldn't be able to get through the day. So I have decided I'm not going to die, and that's the only way I hold myself together. And he nodded. He was like, Yes, that is the way I can do it. And then he got really close to me and he said, Mr. Dix, sometimes in bed at night I cry because I know I'm gonna die someday. Right? So that's a five-second moment, right? That is a homework for life moment. A kid says this to me. I hear it and I go, That's gonna be hilarious, right? I know already that I can build 20 minutes of comedy from that moment. But the important thing is I'm gonna get somewhere that means something, right? If you don't have a place to go where you actually get to say something important, for me, it's maybe I can't get through the day if I acknowledge my own, you know, future death. So I pretend I'm not going to die. Or it's even better, there's a kid crying in bed at night because he knows he's gonna die someday, and I have done the same damn thing. And it took me 53 years to find someone to like acknowledge that truth. And it was a 10-year-old kid. So all of that, I know it means something, but now I get to play with the idea of existential crises, death, children thinking about death, the ways we avoid death, like all of that I can feel is fertile ground for comedy. But I never get to that fertile ground unless I can like see what's going to grow in the end, the thing that I'm going to say that has import and meaning. So I think a lot of people sit down and they say, I'm gonna write a funny joke. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look at something and try to make it funny. But unless you have a place to go with it, unless you have like meaning, unless there's gonna land somewhere where people go, that was hilarious and true, right? Hilarious and true. I think that's the comedy we remember. And that's the best way to find jokes is to start with true and then build humor to the true. Does that make sense? It does.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

No, thank you. So, kind of in a in wrap-up, I'd love to hear from you maybe any recommended resources, reading, and then anything that you're doing that can be helpful for anyone creating content, writing, you know, comedy, both and story, because I believe the story structure for a comic or anybody taking the stage doing comedy only helps build the set. And I think that's where a lot of people lose, as you say, that memorable moment because their set really didn't take you anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Right. And and if you're worried about time, because I know a lot of comedians are like, well, all I have is 10 minutes. If you have a story that has meaning, like that story that I just told you about that kid, that's 20 minutes. That's easy 20 minutes. You know, now it's not easy in terms of I gotta go make that work now. But when people are like, I don't know how you find that much stuff to say, you have to, if you if you have a place to land, you're gonna have a lot of stuff to say. You know, in terms of what I recommend people do, I think that people tend to be funny naturally. And I don't actually don't think it's natural. I think what happens is people absorb strategies for being funny uh over time. And I think it happens in one or two ways. I think people some people are excellent listeners, and I don't think there's many of them in the world, honestly. But I think people who are excellent listeners, they pay attention almost unconsciously to what makes people laugh, and then they reproduce those strategies to cause people to laugh. I think the other reason people are funny is because they grew up not getting the attention they wanted or deserved. And one of the ways they discovered to find that attention was to make people laugh, probably first by making fun of themselves and then making fun of other people and then discovering truths about the world. You know, fortunately, I think I probably have both qualities. I I grew up in a place in a time when I did not get any of the attention I wanted. And for the last 30 years of my life, I have occupied spaces primarily populated by women. As an elementary school teacher, I went to an all-women's college. So I learned to become a good listener because I learned to shut the hell up. So the combination of those two things have really worked out for me. I think that you can't sort of, you know, go back in time and live a difficult childhood. But what you can do is to become a better listener. So one of the things I do is if I'm watching SNL and a sketch genuinely makes me funny, or if I just laugh once, if I just laugh out loud or even one of those interior, like, wow, that's really funny. I stop and ask myself, what made me laugh? Like, what combination of words and events caused that laugh to happen? I do that in movies and I do that in an SNL sketch. I'll do it in real life. If my son says something to me that makes me laugh, I'll say, All right, what did he do there? Now, over the course of time, because I've been doing that, I think I've managed to find a way to be funny. When I had to start teaching comedy to people, I realized because I'm an elementary school teacher, I have to break everything down into parts. And so right now I have 27 strategies for delivering humor, 27 comedy strategies. They're all essentially a different lens on surprise. There are 27 different ways to show you how you can surprise people. Some people like when I teach it, some people will say to me, like, well, strategy number four and eight are basically the same. I'm like, Yeah, they are. They're all the same. They're all surprised. They're just different lenses on surprise. I used to only have 15. Now I'm up to 27. The only reason I'm up to 27 is because I watch SNL and I laugh and I go, how the hell did they do that one? And then I track it back and go, oh, wow, look at that. Well, that's a strategy. Now I'll start teaching that one, right? And I internalize it. Again, I don't think like this is going to be strategy. 18 plus 16. But I I understand what it is, and I can teach it to people so that maybe they're not going to become funny in real life. They're not going to like go to their job and suddenly be hilarious, but the strategies will help them. Teach will help them craft humor into the content they're producing. And my son can use some of the strategies. I teach him strategies and he uses them. Uh, he'll use them on his friends. He'll be like, Dad, I did I did one of these things and not like the other today, and it was hilarious. I'm like, good job, way to go, buddy. Um, so I think that if people want to become better at being funny, what they really have to do is listen to what makes them laugh and don't copy that, but identify the strategy or the collection of events or setups or how how did that get put together, the math of comedy? If you can go back and like the laugh is beyond the equal sign, it's the thing that comes after the equal sign, right? But it's gonna be one plus one equals the laugh. What was the one plus one? And if it's something that you have not recognized before as a means of making people laugh, you found a new strategy. It might not be useful all the time, it might be useful half a percent of the time, but that's a new way that you can make people laugh. And the more ways you have, the funnier I think you're gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

That's great. And so, where can we find your resources? Where do you recommend people follow you?

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Uh, they can go to if you go to MatthewDicks.com, it's actually being redesigned right now. Um, but you can go to MatthewDicks.com. You can also go to storyworthymd.com. That's where you can get a lot of storytelling resources. I have humor resources there. I teach comedy workshops from time to time. Uh I have uh I have videos that people can purchase on comedy and things like that. So uh there's lots of free resources there too. I'm like you said, I give away a lot of stuff because I genuinely think the world is filled with terrible storytelling and unfunny people. And when my business people tell me that I give away too much and I'm gonna run out of customers, I said, no, I'm not. Have you ever been out in the world? Have you heard how terrible people sound? Like if I fix 50% of the people in the world, there's still plenty of customers coming my way who need help. So um, so I'm happy to help people in any way I can.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

That's great. Well, continue on in your solo show. Uh, tell me what other performances you're doing. I know that you and your wife host a storytelling event.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

We do. Uh well, here in Connecticut, we produce shows called Speak Up. And those are true stories told live, curated um on stages around the state. Uh, you can usually find me at uh Moth Story Slams in New York and Boston. And um just gonna start touring probably um this summer with my solo show. I'm working on a new one as well. So the new one will happen in Connecticut at some time in November, and then I'll start touring with that one as much as I can. That teaching career gets in the way a lot. Um prevents me from going to all the places that I am invited to go, but eventually the teaching career will go away, and then I'll just uh I'll just wander the country like a like a fool, you know, looking for people to listen to me.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

That's great. Well, I hope you come this way. If not, I'll come up that way for certain. And uh thanks again, Matthew, for just deposing all of your wisdom. And any final thoughts before we go?

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Uh just go listen to comedy if you want to be funny. And you know, please don't be the person who won't laugh because laughing, you know, will help the person on stage. I cannot stand going to an open mic and watching comedians aggressively not laugh so that they have a chance of being the funniest person in the room that night. That is a lousy thing to do. So be an easy laugh. There's nothing wrong with being an easy laugh for people who are trying to make their way into the comedy world. You know, don't be a cheap fake laugh, but be an easy laugh. If it was a little funny, give them a chuckle. That's a nice thing to do.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

That is a gift. Yeah, and it's contagious, it's healthy. Thanks. Yeah, well, we'll we'll keep this conversation going and look forward to seeing you soon. All right, thanks, man. Thank you, Matthew. Thanks for listening to this episode of the attempting stand-up comedy podcast. Definitely check out Matthew Dix at MatthewDicks.com. And also subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and also the YouTube channel uh Tim Cambridge Comedy. And uh thanks for taking the stage and attempting stand-up or enjoying comedy wherever you laugh and don't miss out on some great storytelling as well. I'm Tim Cambridge, and wherever you go, laugh.