Funny Top Ten Lists - Advice from a List Master

Select a target audience and stay focused on it. 

Although it may seem counter-intuitive, the more carefully you design funny top ten lists to appeal to a rather narrowly defined audience, the larger your overall audience will become. You must face the fact that humorous top ten lists can not be all things to all people. 

If you try to appeal to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one in particular. And that's the kiss of death for funny top ten lists. Your aim should be to develop a loyal following of readers who will enthusiastically sing your praises to their like-minded friends. Birds of a feather really do flock together. 

Avoid the use of obscenities. 

It has become quite common for stand-up comedians to use obscene language for its shock value. In fact, there are many performers whose entire act is based upon their use of foul, offensive language. However, this practice has reached the stage of diminishing returns. Obscenities have not only lost their shock value, but most audiences realize that their use is just a lazy attempt to get unearned laughs. 

Audiences may still laugh when watching a foul-mouthed stand-up comedian, but here's the important point: they are much less likely to seek out obscene material when searching for humorous entertainment online. Most women are unlikely to be amused by it, and men generally become bored by the repetitive use of written obscenities rather quickly. 

Besides, there are many good substitutes for obscenities. You just have to become a bit more creative. As a rule, such substitutes are far funnier than the obscenities themselves. If you discipline yourself to consistently use the safer synonyms, you will be rewarded with a larger and far more appreciative audience for your funny top ten lists. 

Don't number your lists backward from 10 to 1. 

If you use the David Letterman style top ten list, in which the list builds up to an ultimate punch line, you are sending a very bad message: Namely, that the first several entries won't be very good; the ones in the middle will be mediocre; and only the last few entries are likely to be very funny. 

Instead, like the best novelists, you should start with a great "hook," maintain a high level of excitement in the middle, and top off your list with an outstanding conclusion. This means that you should put your best entries in the number 1, 2, 5, 9 and 10 positions. Then, the slightly less-than-hilarious entries can be placed in the 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 slots, without causing any noticeable loss of momentum. 

Develop a reliable system for finding new material. 

A lack of new material in the pipeline is one of the greatest sources of anxiety for those of us who create funny top ten lists. It's hard to be humorous during a panic attack. 

Devising funny top ten lists is all about finding a germ of truth that your audience will recognize, and instantly relate to, in their everyday lives. Fortunately, truth is not only stranger than fiction, but it's also much funnier than anything you could make up. And those amusing truths can consistently be found in everyday events. 

That's why news reports of current events, whether they appear on television, in newspapers, or on the Internet, are an endless mother lode of humorous material for any serious composer of funny top ten lists. 

These reports are also good sources of one-liners, currently popular expressions, and words that tickle the funny bone. Experienced comedy writers often compile computerized lists of such materials, because they can quickly be retrieved, and used to break through some very frustrating writer's blocks. 

So there you have them: Four practical insights about creating funny top ten lists that you won't have to learn by painful trial and error. 

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