The Five Fundamentals of Funny: #1– The Rule of Three

Randy Lane • May 11, 2011

Comedy usually works best by establishing a pattern with the setup and then surprising listeners with the punch line. One simple way of doing this is to pair two like ideas and then hit with a third incongruent punch line.

For example: “Losing weight is simple: eat less, exercise more, and pay NASA to let you live in an anti-gravity chamber.”


Story-type features, such as entertainment news, regular news, and stupid news, also tend to work better when in threes.

For instance: “THE THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GO.”

 
The Reason Why The Rule Of Three Works

It is an established marketing rule that three is the number of things we can most easily remember about anything or any product, including your show or station.

 

-Randy Lane

Click here to learn more about Randy

 

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