All Entertainment Starts with the Writing

One of my nephews is a comedian. He makes funny faces, has a battery of jokes, has a unique take on the world. He doesn’t get paid, and most of his schtick is on social media.

Over the years, he has held several non-comedic jobs. Delivering pizza back in the day, working at Best Buy, working at GameStop (he loves video games) and other video and gaming stores.

Whereas I built a life in corporate America as a journalist. Scripps-Howard (as it was known back in the day), Media General (again, back in the day), Tribune Company (same). They all made for a nice 401(k) rollover when I left that life in 2011.

My beloved nephew, a funny man in his own right. (Credit: Sean McMahon)

But his path and mine, then and now, for what we want, is not all that different when it comes to how to get it done.

It’s in the writing.

All Entertainment Starts with Writing

Newspapers and books, of course, are about writing. Comedy is writing. Movies start with a script — writing. Plays start with the written word. Anything that involves performing usually involves planning . . . and writing.

I wish high school English teachers would impart this on their students. People who can write are assets to whatever organization they join. And they’re valuable to themselves.

Also, this: You don’t have to be a great speller. You really don’t. We didn’t have software for this when I was in school, but it turns out it didn’t matter then, either. I’ve seen raw copy from GREAT writers who couldn’t spell (and often misspelled people’s names. This, dear friends, is what editors are for.)

You don’t have to be the best grammarian. It helps to be good at it, but again: editors.

What you must do is show up, preferably every day, and put down on a blank page. Digital or paper — what are you thinking about? What are you creating? You must translate a story, an anecdote, a joke, from your brain through your fingers to the page.

Learn from Jerry Seinfeld

Where the magic happens is after you tell the story you want to tell on paper. Because the process has only just begun.

Invariably, that story/joke has value. You almost certainly can punch it up to have more value. And punch it up again to gain maximum value.

This is the creative process.

I’m reminded of three successful people here: Jerry Seinfeld, Taylor Tomlinson and John Sandford. You won’t have to look hard to find other examples, however.

No matter what you think of him, his humor and his place in our culture, Seinfeld is having a small resurgence these days because of his recent Amazon stand-up special or because of his production role in The Pop-Tart movie.

If you go on social media, you can run into multiple Seinfeld-centric accounts, some of which show snippets of his comedy routines, some of which show famous funny scenes from Seinfeld, some of which push out Seinfeld memes, etc.

If you’ve paid attention and listened to Seinfeld on talk shows, podcasts and interviews, he’s pretty much honest about one thing (that I know of): he doesn’t enjoy talking to people unless they are comedians. He has lived in a comedian’s world for 40-plus years, and it’s what he enjoys.

He also likes talking about his creative process. He is a master of it, in fact. He writes jokes on legal pads and hones them. Over weeks. Months. Years. Decades even. He reportedly has stacks of legal pads that have the progression of his jokes.

If memory serves, he won’t trot out an unfinished joke to an audience. But he might try one out that he thinks is close — and then polish it a bit more until he really likes it.

He once told a reporter: “I sit down with a yellow legal pad and my writing technique is just: You can’t do anything else. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else.”

“That sounds torturous,” the interviewer replied. “It is,” Seinfeld said. “But you know what? Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with.”

Learn from Taylor Tomlinson and John Sandford

Another example of this is Tomlinson, who has risen from club performer to Netflix specials to host of “After Midnight.” Tomlinson recently permitted The New York Times to document how she workshopped and polished the closing joke for her most recent Netflix special.

Her process is like that of Seinfeld’s. Ultimately, you stop polishing when you think you’ve milked the best reaction to your presentation.

As legendary football coach Nick Saban likes to say, “It’s a process. It’s a process. It’s a process.”

You find what works for you, and you repeat. It’s making a cake: mix exactly, stir correctly, bake at the right temperature for the right time. Then repeat.

The ingredients are all yours. The blend is what you decide. G-rated or R-rated? What tone? What volume? What kind of delivery?

Several years ago, I attended ThrillerFest in New York City. John Sandford was among the many crime writers who taught a class as CraftFest that year, and his topic was about rewriting. The point he drove home: writing is engineering.

For storytellers, he’s right.

A Finished Anything Is a Process

You can write the book you want to tell, developing certain characters and relationships within, pushing to a satisfying conclusion. But in that story, ask yourself if you just produced the best version? (The answer is no, but you do you, sport.)

You watch someone like Margaret Cho, Nate Bargatze or Tom Papa perform and you marvel at their seamless stories about family and life on this planet. (Yes, and some other stuff. Cho is a tad bit more risqué. Just a touch.)

The one thing they have in common is that whatever jokes they’re telling in front of an audience were written, performed, rewritten, reworked on stage, tweaked, and then put in the correct order for the final performance. As Sandford would say, you perfect every joke, and you go about building the act, joke by joke. It’s constructed — engineered.

You write it down. You set it aside. You re-read it and rework it, if needed. At some point, you must let someone else experience your creation. And give you feedback. And you need real, honest feedback, not something your best friend or mom will tell you.

Boiled down to the creation’s essence, you have to take it seriously if your goal is to move it from a hobby to a passion to something that sustains you. It’s part of you. Sometimes, the biggest part.  

Seinfeld, Tomlinson, Sandford, Papa, Cho, and many, many others have one thing in common. They get it done every day. It’s what they love. It’s what they DO — sometimes on days when they don’t want to do it.

You can’t get to the end if you don’t make progress. All you have to do is walk one step a day.

Here’s to making progress today.