This blog on misdirection is one of the most popular ones and I originally wrote it in February 2018. So I've just given it a refresh in May 2024. And I have also refreshed my detailed blog on writing one-liners, misdirection included, so you could jump there.
Let’s zoom in and look more closely at a technique I mentioned in the last lesson: misdirection. In stand-up, misdirection is when the comic says something that sets up an expectation… and then the comic walks out of the club never to be seen again. Misdirection is the classic set-up/ payoff device. The set-up creates expectations that the payoff subverts.
I just googled ‘best misdirection jokes’ and firstly most of them were not actually using misdirection but when I found one that was, it was this. I’ve slightly modified the language as I don’t want to be overly crude! You can probably pick out the bit that I worded more delicately.
"I caught my brother with his pants round his ankles manually pleasuring himself. He saw me and yelled "dude close the door!" And I went, "dude, get back in the house!"
This is a situational misdirection joke in that we assume the brother is in his bedroom (or at least behind a door in the house) then we discover that he’s outside. So our whole understanding of the situation changes. This is the classic misdirection technique.
Here’s an example of a misdirection gag from Jack Dee:
“I hate people who think it's clever to take drugs...like customs officers.”
The set-up to the joke makes us assume that he is talking about drug users. When we hear the payoff we have to revise our assumption. The key thing with this kind of misdirection is that the set-up contains both possible interpretations, but the audience only hears one meaning until the other is unexpectedly revealed in the payoff. Here is one from Jo Brand (she's talking about her marriage):
“It's hard sometimes because the house is a mess, the kids are screaming. In the end my husband couldn't take it anymore and he stormed off to the pub. I said to him: 'What are you doing here? You're meant to be at home looking after the kids!”
Here an ambiguous phrase brings to mind the natural, obvious conclusion… then the payoff reveals a second meaning the audience didn't expect. We assume (thanks to gender stereotypes) that the woman has been left alone with the kids. We then discover that she is in the pub already. Notice how carefully worded it is. It makes us assume that she has been left with the kids without actually saying so.
Looking at a finished misdirection jokes we can easily understand the mechanism. But how might you set about writing one? Well, one way is to keep yourself alert for any ambiguous phrases from any source and then, in your own time, attempt to work them up into gags. One can imagine Brand (or someone she heard speaking) straight forwardly saying “In the end my husband couldn't take it any more and he stormed off to the pub” and that was the starting point of the joke.
So, I would suggest that many misdirection jokes could be based on 'found set-ups'. The statements may well have been uttered or written innocently in the first instance and the comic saw a second meaning in the statement. We can imagine that Jack Dee heard someone say, “I hate people who think it's clever to take drugs...” The original speaker would have been talking about drug users, but Jack Dee —we are imagining—heard a second meaning in the statement, that of ‘confiscation’. In this situation there is no need to instantly come up out with the gag; noticing the ambiguity is enough. You put the statement in your note-book and then turn it over in your mind.
Incidentally, regarding editing and being concise, the Jack Dee joke could be shorter: “I hate people who take drugs...like customs officers.” I would argue, though, that in shortening it something important is lost. The phrase “who think it's clever” helps the set-up the misdirection that he is being moralising, and then he helps us see the customs officers as annoyingly smug when we get to the payoff. So, don’t cut your jokes back too far! I have known people diminish the effect of a joke in attempting to get it down to the fewest number of words. And now, here’s an Ellen DeGeneres misdirection gag:
“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is”.
We can imagine she was watching TV and heard someone (let’s call them Voice A) saying, “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now...” at which point Ellen (Voice B) saw a different way the sentence could end. The speaker on the TV would have gone on to say something like “...and in perfect health”—the difference is that she interrupted the statement and ended it differently. (Or she may have actually said it herself in the first instance and spotted the ambiguity in her own words.)
The rhythm here is again set-up/ payoff. Voice A is saying something that has a certain momentum and direction and we sense where it's going next. This is the set-up, but Voice B then interrupts the flow, flips it and overturns our expectations. As discussed previously, the thing that triggers the laugh needs to be the last thing we hear. Compare the Ellen DeGeneres’ joke if we put in the payoff too soon: “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. We don't know where the hell she is now she's ninety-seven.”
Here's a gag from Steven Wright that, like the Ellen Degeneres joke is also based on a phrase from the world (Voice A) that is interrupted (Voice B) and sent in another direction:
"Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them."
The first two phrases “Join the Army, meet interesting people....” (in the context of an army recruitment advert) would lead you to expect something like “see the world”. Here though Steven Wright has interrupted Voice A (the recruitment ad) and jumped in with Voice B which abruptly shifts us to the reality of soldiering. This subversion is a surprise which is central to comedy. It's also a rule-of-three gag, as the set-up is across two beats which is subverted on the third. To write a gag like this, find a familiar phrase, start saying it to the audience... but then end it differently. Or you can take the complete phrase and add your own afterthought. Here's another example from Steven Wright:
“Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route.”
The set-up is a well known phrase, indeed you can get button badges that read “Drugs lead nowhere”, so it’s certain that Wright came across that phrase, the found set-up, and added the brilliant payoff.
Now, a more subtle kind of misdirection is what I term attitude misdirection. As you read the start of the following sentence you’ll have a strong sense of where it’s going:
“When you're in love it's the most glorious…”
And how about this?
“The great thing about Glasgow is…”
But now read on. This is from the late Richard Lewis:
“When you're in love it's the most glorious two and a half days of your life.”
I really love the specificity of that ‘half day’! Comedy is so often about being unnecessarily specific in the details. And the second is from Billy Connolly:
“The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll look exactly the same afterwards.”
He’s allowed to say that as he is from Glasgow. Now, here's a version of Lewis’ joke that gives the game away from the start: “When you're in that fleeting sensation of love it's the most glorious two and a half days of your life.”
This line is telegraphing – the opposite of misdirection. This is where you are giving away where you’re going. The reason the comedy has been drained out is that it’s no longer in a set-up/payoff rhythm with misdirection and so the moment of surprise is gone.
Even changing one word in the Billy Connolly one spoils the joke because again it telegraphs where it’s going: “The awful thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll look exactly the same afterwards.”
In this case I think this is still feel funny because how he makes the point is so over-the-top. But we can see that it’s less effective with that one word change (‘great’ to ‘awful’) as it loses the surprise when we discover he is saying something negative about Glasgow. Notice too how these lines are also in three beats, which is a classic comedy rhythm:
“(1) When you're in love (2) it's the most glorious (3) two and a half days of your life.”
“(1) The great thing about Glasgow (2) is that if there's a nuclear attack (3) it'll look exactly the same afterwards.”
Returning to the topic of editing, so much of rewriting in comedy is about editing out words. It’s often said that in joke writing, having the fewest possible words is crucial. And of course there is some wisdom in this. Too many words can slow a gag down and blunt its affect, or even obscure what you’re trying to say. However, obsessing over literally the minimum number of words can be dangerous. Returning to the Richard Lewis gag - “When you're in love it's the most glorious two and a half days of your life” - I have already touched on the pleasing specificity of the ‘two and a half’ days. It definitely loses something if it were simply: “When you're in love it's the most glorious two days of your life.”
I’ve just done a Zoom session with a comic on a stand-up course in the States where she is being instructed to take her jokes down to the absolute minimum of words. In fact, the teacher is taking the words out for her! She’s concerned it’s all becoming too staccato and depersonalised. And I agree. Together we sneaked words back in!
The aim shouldn’t be to make it literally the fewest words for it to function as comprehensible English. The aim to find the fewest number of words, without losing something in terms of attitude, speaking style, or telling detail. And sometimes far too many words is all part of the humour. Here’s a classic from Les Dawson.
“In awe, I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought, I must put a roof on this toilet.”
This is only fully comprehensible if you know that outside toilets would once have been commonplace in Britain. We have one at the back of our Victorian house. Don’t worry we have one indoors too.
Finally in a quote that didn't make the final draft of my Director's Guide book, Geoff Whiting described to me how misdirection can even be visual, with reference to the development of Sarah Millican’s look on stage:
'Sarah Millican did her second ever gig at one of my clubs in Guildford. She had very little make-up on. Pullover and jeans. She looked very mousy, a very dowdy person, and that was deliberate. Her act, for at least the first year or two, until she got picked up by an agent, was based on being very dowdy and talking about sex. That was the whole contradiction. It would mean she'd walk out and people would think she was not going to be into sex, and she was. Her whole appearance was really a misdirection gag in itself.'
Homework:
An ongoing project: be alive to ambiguity in phrases from any source, including your own words. Capture any promising ones in your notebook. They are your potential set-ups. Now try and write pay-offs. If you want a more immediate task, try looking for ambiguity in today’s news headlines. For example, I’ve just gone to the BBC News website where this caught my eye: “Law student admits Justin Bieber ticket scam”. Personalising it and adding an afterthought, it could become: ‘My nine- year-old niece fell for a Justin Bieber ticket scam. She was told he was good.’ (This was actually the second one I thought of from the handful of headlines on the page but only this one made it into the blog. In this case I threw out 50% of what I wrote!).
For many more starting points for gags, including misdirection jokes, see my blog on writing one-liners.