A Quote by Nick Thune

People are writing shorter jokes. The style I've started with was almost trying to keep jokes under 140 characters before Twitter. — © Nick Thune
People are writing shorter jokes. The style I've started with was almost trying to keep jokes under 140 characters before Twitter.
Tweeting is a great way to practice writing jokes, but there is so much more to comedy writing than just jokes. Jokes are a necessity, but you also have to learn how to write characters, to break a story, to keep coherence between episodes. I've learned more by being a TV writer than I ever could've on my own.
I like trying jokes and seeing the response, and if I end up doing it in my act, it won't be 140 characters. Twitter is helpful that way to me. It's like a message in a bottle. But a lot of times I think I tweet the stuff I would like to say to teenage me.
With Twitter, it's a little harder to tell jokes that somebody hasn't heard already. You have all these people out there sharing their opinions and telling jokes in real time, and by the time you get on, somebody's already done some version of what you're trying to do.
Since my act is a goofy reflection of what's going on in my life, I started doing pot jokes, and I noticed that audiences invariably love pot jokes. Even people who don't smoke pot think it's a funny subject. So when I started getting laughs, I started doing more material about it. When people come to see my shows, there are a lot of stoners in the audience, but there are also a lot of people who just like me. So I try to give a healthy mix, where people aren't going "There are too many jokes about pot!" or "There's not enough jokes about pot!"
I realized, in removing or rewriting these jokes, that often the jokes weren't done or that I was using, for me, the curse words as kind of a crutch. So then I just started writing.
The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You're coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn't have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn't write a song.
People would say, "Oh, you say you just do jokes." I don't just do jokes. I do jokes. Jokes are important. They saved my life when I was younger. Hopefully we're making things nicer at the end of the day for people. That's the entire goal, and that's the touchstone and the North Star for the tone.
I do Twitter, but I'm still not great on it - I'm not good at writing short little jokes, so my Twitter's not really a jokey thing.
I like sort of esoteric and weird Twitter jokes. But I actually unfollow people if they make jokes about a celebrity's death within the first two minutes of that celebrity dying.
A lot of people get into stand-up as a back door into acting or something. But I really like writing jokes and telling jokes.
I like Twitter more than Facebook. Twitter is a great way to deliver and get news. In news writing less is more and 140 characters is great. If you can't grab that headline in 140 characters than it's not a story. Viewers tweet all the time and they tell what stories they like and don't like. It's great to interact with them and get that instant feedback. It's great for the viewer and the journalist.
To develop your own voice, you have to keep writing a ton, and this is something where I think Twitter is helpful. I use it to write a ton of jokes. You have to write a ton of bad stuff before you know what you're good at. And that's what some people I think have trouble with, the thought of getting past the bad stuff.
I think people make mistakes when they're on Twitter when they're trying to crack jokes, none of it's funny, and it tends to happen to people who are trying to be funny.
I use mother-in-law jokes, kid jokes, tax jokes - anything that works.
It's almost better that Twitter limits me to 140 characters. There's only so much trouble I can get in.
I started doing pot jokes, and I noticed that audiences invariably love pot jokes. Even people who don't smoke pot think it's a funny subject.
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