Simplicity

When I was in high school, I signed up for the annual variety show. For those who don't know, a variety show is like a talent show that doesn't require talent. For my act, I chose to do some stand-up comedy.

In order to have my act approved, I had to first give them a script of the whole thing. I sat down and collected all of the material I'd written, some stuff I was working on, and arranged it for flow and transition. As I was writing everything down, all I could think to myself was, "eh, it's not that funny, but the audience is going to eat this stuff up."

I was right. The judges who read my script for approval told me that it was so funny they were laughing out loud just reading it. In fact, they enjoyed my act so much that even though there was a 5-minute time limit, they let me do my whole 15-minute act. And at the end of the night, I won second place. I'd say it wasn't bad for my first performance ever.

For many years after that, I had learned a valuable lesson from that night: don't overestimate your audience. I studied a lot of stand-up comedy at the time. There were a lot of jokes that didn't impress me much, ones that didn't get even a chuckle from me, and yet they brought the house down. For me, it wasn't about writing comedy that made me laugh, it was about knowing what other people will think is funny and giving them what they want.

My original post was going to be that very lesson, considering your audience as simpletons who can only comprehend so much. But that isn't a very fair assessment. I had to ask why it worked. How come simple comedy works so well and yet the complex stuff that makes me laugh dies in front of an audience?

The reason simple comedy works is the same reason simple writing in any field works: it has a point and it gets to it without wasting time or energy. It is easy to understand and that simplicity adds to its power.

That's why I changed the title of this post to the current one. Good writing does not come from making expectations of your audience; it comes from making good writing. It means that any member of any audience can comprehend it, whether it is simpletons or geniuses. Writing that can do that will be equally effective to everybody.