how to use
your journal
A BRIEF OVERVIEW ON MATERIAL GATHERING
A Guide to our Methodology
Simple tasks to train your observation
This guide is deliberately brief.The journal gives you a structure — Observe, Explore, Create — but it does not attempt to teach you how to think, what to notice or what conclusions you should reach. That would work against the purpose of the journal. You are mining your own experience of reality for material. What you notice, what bothers you, what makes you curious, what you find strange and the connections you make between things will be shaped by a perspective that nobody else has quite had. That perspective is where original material begins. For that reason, the aim is not to imitate another comedian's technique, demonstrate polished writing or produce a finished joke every time you open the journal. Craft can come later. At this stage, something unfinished but genuinely yours is more valuable than something polished that could have been written by anybody. The method simply helps you move from noticing something, to looking more closely at it, to creating something new from what you find. The following pages explain each stage and the kind of material you are trying to produce. Beyond that, we deliberately leave room for you to find your own way through it.
three strange things
First Task from Field Notes From Reality
Today, recall three moments that strike you as strange. They might be things people say, behaviours that don’t quite make sense, unexpected reactions, odd combinations, small contradictions, unusual objects or moments where reality simply doesn’t match what you expected. Don’t go looking only for things that are obviously funny. Look for anything that makes some part of your mind say, “That’s strange.”
Observe three of these moments as accurately as you can. Capture enough detail that you can return to them later: what happened, what was said, who was involved, where you were and the particular detail that made the moment stand out. Don’t worry about understanding it yet. At this stage, you’re building a small collection of things that interrupted the ordinary flow of your day.
Explore the observation you feel most drawn to. Start with the strangeness itself: what exactly doesn’t fit? Identify what you expected to happen and what happened instead. Then stay with it for a while. Look for possible explanations, hidden assumptions, misunderstandings, contradictions or details you initially overlooked.
Create one premise from the observation you explored. Focus on the single insight that best explains, reframes or deepens its strangeness. Rather than simply describing what happened, state what the moment might reveal about the people involved, the assumptions they were following or the peculiar logic behind their behaviour. Keep the premise rooted in this particular observation and express it as one clear, interesting idea.
observe
Humour is everywhere, though it's often in disguise
I just found out Fruit Winders aren’t organic
While out in the world, I overheard a woman say this statement to a friend.
For those of you who dont know, Fruit Winders are a children's snack made from fruit puree that has been processed into a sweet, sticky strip and rolled around a piece of card.
At this stage, that was enough. I didn't need to know why it was interesting or where it might lead.
Explore
Unpacking a simple comment
these are times of extreme confusion with food, there are health warning on packets that mean nothing.
i can understand the confusion.
i think everyone is split on this issue and there is a spectrum of awareness and regard.
Fruit winders are 70% fruit, primarily pear and strawberry puree from concentrate, alongside ingredients including glucose syrup, maltodextrin, sugar, palm oil, pectin, emulsifiers and flavouring. This got me wondering - what are the lines between organic and non organic in the modern world. I simply jotted some notes:
create
Lets find an interesting premise
At what point does something containing fruit become fruit?
How much processing can fruit survive before calling it fruit becomes ridiculous?
If Fruit Winders count as fruit, what other processed foods deserve to reclaim their original identity?
What would the natural world look like if processed foods actually grew the way children might imagine?
If Fruit Winders were genuinely fruit, how would farmers grow, harvest and breed them?
How would real fruit feel about highly processed products being allowed into the same category?
Create is where you begin expanding what you discovered during the Explore phase. Rather than trying to immediately turn an observation into a finished joke, follow whichever parts of your exploration provoke the most intrigue. Ask bigger questions. Make unexpected connections. Push an idea into another setting, imagine its consequences, change the scale or follow its logic further than reality normally allows.
A Clear Premise
An idea with various paths
How would real fruit feel about highly processed products being allowed into the same category?
You now have a premise. What you do with it is up to you. A premise is not a finished joke, story or piece of comedy. It is an idea with potential — something you have noticed, explored and developed far enough that it can now become the foundation for something else. That something could take almost any form. You might turn the premise into a stand-up joke, build a routine around it, write a comic strip, create an animation or sketch, develop a character, make a short film, write a satirical article or use it as the starting point for a story. You might even discover that the idea belongs somewhere you hadn't considered when you first wrote it down. Choosing how to express an idea is another creative pursuit in itself. A stand-up comedian might investigate the premise through their own experiences and point of view. A cartoonist might turn it into characters and a visual world. A writer might follow its logic into a story. An animator might exaggerate it until an entirely new reality emerges. The same premise given to ten different people could produce ten completely different pieces of work.
