Get more specific

Give the audience a specific time, place, and person.

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Get more specific. Instead of “I’ve been hearing…” go with “Yesterday, I was with my sister at the grocery store and she told me…” Give the audience a specific time, place, and person. It instantly grounds the joke in a personal reality and gives a reason why you care instead of it just being some abstract observation.

Here’s a John Mulaney bit from New in Town.

I was once — I’ll tell you this, I was writing for an awards show once, and I got into some trouble. I wrote a joke for this awards show that had the word “midget” in it. And someone from the network came down to our offices and he said to me, “Hey, you can’t put the word midget on TV,” and I said [turns head and gestures to himself with his hand] “I sure would like to!” And he said, [turns to the other side and points finger and speaks more aggressively] “No! ‘Midget’ is as bad as the ‘n’-word.”

[turns head towards audience] First off, no. [audience laughs and John chuckles] No, it’s not! “Do you know how I know it’s not,” I said to him, “is because [gestures back and forth to himself and the imaginary other person] we’re saying the word ‘midget’, and we’re not even saying what the ‘n’-word is! If you’re comparing the badness of two words, and you won’t even say one of them… [nods head with energy] that’s the worse word.” [audience laughs]

This could have just been an observational joke about the word “midget” vs. the n-word. Instead, he grounds it in a personal anecdote and tells you the place, person, and scenario where someone says, “‘Midget’ is as bad as the ‘n’-word.” Now it’s a real moment from his real life and gives him way more reason to care about this.

It helps if it’s a real person/scenario but plenty of comics make up stuff like this and put it in the mouth of a fictional character. Whatever helps get a bit over the finish line…