When telling a joke, stunned silence isn’t the response most of us hope to inspire.  To help improve your odds of laughter, you may want to try a couple tricks of the trade.

1.       Know your material.  Practice telling your joke several times before telling it publicly.  Try it out in the shower, car, mirror while dancing.

2.       Is the joke right for your audience?  Maybe your college buddies think your joke’s a hoot, but will your mom?

3.       Be inventive!  The best jokes are rich in interesting detail.  If you mention a car in your joke, try giving it some personality.  Is it a burnt orange Dodge Durango, a lime green Pinto? The more specific you are, the more you invite your audience in.

4.       Original jokes are the funniest.  Nothing worse than mimicking someone else’s warmed-over routine.

5.       The funniest jokes have a strong, unexpected conclusion.  If your audience can see where you are going, you are more likely to elicit a groan than a laugh.

6.       Keep it short and sweet.  Nothing funny about a five minute joke, unless you are a real pro.  There are few people who can keep an audience’s wrapped attention for more than a minute these days.  Statistically speaking, the odds are against you.

7.       Watch out for detours in your joke.  If you get sidetracked, so will your audience.  Oh look, a chicken!

8.       Don’t use accents unless you have mastered them.  Nothing’s worse than an Irish brogue that sounds more like an Indian accent.  Also, be careful.  In certain contexts, an accent in the wrong joke can be highly offensive.  Just ask Rosie O’Donnell how well her “Chinese” went over on The View.

9.       If you don’t fully understand the joke, don’t repeat it.  It’s likely to be far more offensive than you think.  I am still living down a joke I told my father when I was 12…

10.   The best jokes have a cadence to them, a rhythm.  Try to keep your tone confident, expressive, but most importantly comfortable.  Nervous giggles sprinkled about or too many “ums” and “likes” are instant mojo killers.

11.   Is your material offensive?  If so, to whom?  It doesn’t take much talent to make people giggle when you drop the f-bomb.  Unless you are Eddie Murphy or George Carlin, it’s probably just nervous laughter.

12.   Listen to your favorite joke-tellers carefully.  What makes their jokes so funny?  Ask them where they get their material.

13.   Watch stand-up comedy for inspiration not imitation.  There is a big difference between stand-up and joke telling.  Professional comedians practice an art that requires years of intensive training to master.  I would liken the difference between joke-telling and stand-up to the average blog post vs. Ulysses. If people aren’t already telling you that you are the James Joyce of comedy, you may just want to keep it short and sweet.