In my first year as a comedian I heard a comedian tell another comic on a podcast that in their 4th or 5th year they discovered that they no longer enjoyed conversations with “civilians” (people who aren’t comedians), that they found these discussions tedious and difficult.

Even though they explained what they meant I still thought this was a pretty snotty and condescending thing to say. I held that opinion for a long time, but in my own 4th or 5th year I’ve become a lot more sympathetic to it. I’ve eventually come to a similar conclusion myself. Aware that I now also sound pretty snotty and condescending I should explain what this means, at least to me, and how I arrived at this position.

First, I need to clarify that I do not mean making jokes in everyday conversation. I don’t mean applying the cadence of comic delivery to mundane discussions. I hate that shit. When someone hangs out with comedians at a show and feels obligated to pepper every statement with puns, I roll my eyes and brace myself because I know I’m sharing a space with a wannabe try-hard.

When comedians hang out, we don’t talk like that. We really don’t. Most of us would metaphorically die if we thought we were funnier offstage than when we’re performing. You may imagine us constantly setting each other off into spontaneous and uncontrollable laughter, and that all of our dialogues are non-stop chuckle-fests. If you believe that we spend all of our time roasting each other, and that you have to “bust our balls” to hang out with us, you should probably cut down on your podcast consumption and actually pay attention to what’s actually happening in the room.

What I do mean is dialogue that’s elevated with the narrative tools that you learn from being a comedian. I’m talking about structure, word choice, word economy and punchline. But first, some background – because this isn’t just a comedy thing.

There’s a difference between the kind of conversations in books and movies, and how people speak in real life. A fucking big difference, in fact, although when it’s done well it’s not obvious. Watch some movies and TV shows – for dialogue I recommend anything written by Aaron Sorkin (anything… A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The Social Network, The Newsroom or Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip… anything. Sorkin writes thrilling and engaging dialogue) but you can go to pretty much any media that isn’t panned for shitty writing. Every line in every conversation communicates plot and character, driving the story forward. The dialogue is exhilarating and nothing like the way people talk in real life.

If you were to overhear a day-to-day conversation on the bus, at the café or work, and then transcribe it to a page, you’d quickly see that it looks nothing like the dialogues you read in your favourite novels. If a director tried to insert an actual real-life conversation into a movie, there’d be immense pressure from the studio to delete the whole scene.

See, real conversations aren’t anything like the conversation in fiction. Real conversations have awkward pauses, umms and ahhhs, irrelevant filler and pointless narrative detours. Real conversations are, if you’re not participating in them, frankly painful and tedious. And if I’m being honest, a lot of them feel like that even if you’re one of the people involved.

Writers are given the challenge to create dialogue that feels like natural dialogue without actually being natural dialogue. If you ever saw real organic conversation in the TV show you’re watching, you’d turn it off and complain to your friends about how bad the writing’s gotten. Fictional dialogue is elevated. It doesn’t all have to sparkle like Aaron Sorkin’s, in which everyone feels smarter and wittier than anyone you’ve ever actually met, but it’s definitely more focused than mundane chatter is.

And that’s where we come to stand-up comedy. Comedians take it to an even higher level than screenplay writers do.

There are verbal tools that comics use to write jokes. These are structure, word choice, word economy and punchline. These make all the difference, not just in how effective the joke becomes but whether it works at all.

This might be the biggest differences between a newbie at an open mic and a seasoned comedy professional. The newbie will tell a joke the way they’re used to talking with their mates; the kind of real conversation that’s tedious and painful to listen to. Even the most amusing idea delivered in this fashion doesn’t have much of a chance.

Experienced comedians wouldn’t dare deliver a joke in real conversation style. Like a screenwriter, they have to elevate the conversation far above street level, while simultaneously creating the illusion that it’s organic and casual chat.

Structure is imperative to joke-telling. The exposition, or set-up, comes first. The Punchline comes last. We have to organize our ideas in the correct order. If we don’t, we communicate the same information but it doesn’t work.

Word Economy is an idea that comedians are obsessed with. It’s finding the shortest distance between two points in communicating an idea. Simply put, don’t use 15 words if the right three will do the trick. Experienced comedians know that all those extra words absorb the impact of the “punch” we’re trying to deliver.

Word Choice is a process of making sure that all the building blocks or our idea, the words, are the strongest they can be. If we can change the words to introduce alliteration, or substitute soft-sounding words for ones with plosives and other phonetic effects, the sentence becomes stronger. We’ll try to insert specificity when we can: Coke is stronger than soda (because it’s specific, but also because it has plosives). “I’m not a monster, Helen!” is infinitely stronger than “I’m not a monster!” which might evoke no response at all. If we can switch to a word that has a second meaning that reinforces the theme, we’ll definitely use that one.

The Punchline is the whole point. It’s the climax, the destination. Everything we’ve said is all in service of introducing you to the Punchline. a joke without a punchline is a waste of everyone’s fucking time.

Comedians obsess on these four ideas. We have them in mind for everything we write, and therefore everything we say. After time spent writing and talking with these four principles in mind, writing and delivering our ideas in an optimal was becomes second nature. If you find yourself looking for the actual differences between an effective comedian and a bumbling newbie, I would point you in the direction of these four techniques. Sure, the actual joke ideas might become smarter or more mature, but they don’t have to. The original newbie idea is most strongly elevated and improved with structure, word economy, word choice and punchline.

And yes, after a few years of organizing our ideas to accommodate these four principles, we tend to get impatient with natural organic conversations. They mostly tend to be disorganized shit-talk without any punchline or point. Most conversations don’t care about word economy at all. Those of us who’ve become disciplined comedy communicators can feel the social equivalent of road rage – feeling like we’re stuck behind someone who’s driving too slow, wandering all over the road and doesn’t seem to know where they’re travelling to.

I’m well aware of how arrogant I must be sounding right now, and I apologize for that. I’m not trying to sound superior, just trying to understand what it is that makes small-talk feel so painful after a few years of being a comedian. And I’m not telling everyone to talk like Aaron Sorkin writes. Truthfully, I don’t even think that Aaron Sorkin can do that in real time. But I do believe that structured, conscious and point-driven talk is less tedious than pointless and meandering shit-talk. I don’t prescribe a world where everyone talks like a comedian, but I o believe that an understanding of a comedian’s tools can make everyone a more effective communicator.