My joke timing was off for 3 years until a coworker set me straight

I always delivered the punchline right after the setup, thought that was the whole point. Then last Tuesday in the break room at Schneider Electric, Mark from accounting laughed at my joke but said 'you paused too long, the groan comes faster.' I counted my beats against a YouTube video of a live comedy set and realized I was spacing my lines 4 seconds apart instead of 2. Has anyone else found that the silence before the punchline matters more than the words themselves?

2 comments

2 Comments

pipera5021d ago

Man, @dakota_rivera, I felt that "performance art" line in my bones. My brother-in-law still brings up the time I told a knock knock joke at Thanksgiving and the pause was so long my niece asked if I forgot the words. The silence really is the whole trick, that little beat lets people start smiling before you even land it. Once I cut my pause down to maybe a breath instead of a full sip of coffee, everything changed. Now I'm just mad nobody told me sooner, like all those years of confused stares were some kind of hazing.

dakota_rivera22d ago

Tbh the 'groan comes faster' line hit me hard, I've been telling jokes with a full commercial break between setup and punchline. My friends thought I was doing performance art, turns out I was just slow.