The craft and theory of comedy, taught as the learnable skill it is — through name-the-device, identify-the-structure, and best-construction scenarios with one defensible answer, never a grade of how funny you are. How a joke is built (the setup that plants an expectation and the punchline that breaks it, misdirection and the reframe, the rule of three, tags and toppers, callbacks and running jokes), why things are funny (the classical theories — incongruity, relief, and superiority — plus benign violation, and which one explains a given joke), the comedic devices (irony versus sarcasm, satire versus parody, and wordplay from puns to the paraprosdokian), observational comedy and the relatable premise, timing and economy (why the funniest word comes last and the pause does the work), turning a premise into a bit, comic persona and delivery styles from deadpan to absurdist, stand-up set construction (the tight five, opener and closer, leaving on your strongest bit), reading a room, and the ethics of comedy (punching up versus down, knowing your room). Every explanation names the principle, the tempting mistake, and a rule you can use. Distinct from Storytelling (narrative craft), Improv (unscripted scene work), and Public Speaking (delivering a talk): this is about how a joke itself is engineered. Educational skill practice in comedy craft — technique only, and never a claim about intelligence.
• Meets you at your level — never too easy, never too hard.
• Adapts every question to how you’re doing.
• Tracks your level over time. Skill practice, not a test.
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