Public Speaking Notes

by Rick London

It still surprises me when people ask me how to become funny? At times I don’t know how to take it. I know from my line of work that I am considered funny, but, to be honest, it doesn’t feel that much different from when I worked in sales. After all, I majored in business, not humor.

I really did not understand what went into being funny for many years. The jury is still out whether I do or not. I believe I have “paid my dues” though in learning just what is funny and what is not. And there is as much science to it as their is art.

Now I keep my ears open. I listen to not just the humor but the rhythm of how it is delivered. I watch people’s reactions to other people’s humor. I take notes. I see that short is sweet.

Shakespeare said it best, “Brevity is the soul of wit”. Even then, he had the insight to know that people’s attention spans are short. Sure, they want to hear your joke or funny story, but they also have other things on their mind. Even if they think something is funny, if it is long-winded, and takes too much of their time, they may consider you “funny”, but chances are they won’t come back for more of your humor.

Consider the cartoonist and humor writer. That would be me. I created a single panel cartoon called Londons Times Cartoons in 1997. I based it on the Shakesperian theory that humor was and is the soul of wit. No long drawn out captions. Sometimes no captions at all. The picture would tell the story. It was an experiment. It was off the wall. That year, I posted less than a hundred cartoons on my website. Though I had thought of many others, those were the ones that past the litany test of “what is funny” to me.

A decade later, I have about 8500 cartoons, all of which I wrote and were rendered by my creative team on my website. I am now considered “professionally funny”. And over ten million visitors to my web site. But how did that happen?

I don’t think there is just one road toward making something like that happen. In my case, it was mainly listening to other people whom I felt were funny, reading autobiographies of funny persons, and studying humor. I watched sitcoms. I went to funny movies. I noticed one-liners in real life were really not much different than one liners in a cartoon.

I liked what I heard and it was easy to repeat. Instant value.

Finding an audience and “being funny” at least in the marketplace is to find one’s niche or voice. Sometimes that can take time. A lot of time. In my case, I tried stand-up comedy, acting and other such venues for a number of years. The problem was that I didn’t understand the art well and was not able to perfect it to the degree to which I wanted.

So I tried writing, and I finally settled for cartooning. I had read the late great Charles Schulz’s autobiography in which he said the reason he went into cartooning is because he couldn’t do much else very well. That was the story of my life. If it is the story of yours, it is never to late to develop your sense of humor. Listen, read, learn, and have a leap of faith….and oh, and don’t be afraid to look foolish. They may just laugh at you yet.

About the Author:

To see the huge body of cartoon work created by Rick London and his team, point your browser Funny Cartoon Site, and Cartoon Archive

Tags: speakers, topics, presentations