There are some things that I would have rather known ahead of time, because it would have avoided embarrassment. Maybe you have to learn the hard way for it to stick. Here are my lessons so far (by the way, the second person "you"s are referring to me; this isn't advice, just notes to myself):
-You're not as funny as you think you are. Those things you say that makes your friends laugh, might not make people who don't know you laugh.
-Shocking is easy, but not necessarily funny on its own. Eating boogers is gross, yes, and.....? Besides, "shocking" usually isn't even shocking; it's more boring than anything. My point is to have a point to go with the shock, if you're going that way.
-Merely observing a truth might not be funny, especially if it's a truth that everyone already knows.
-"Brevity is the soul of wit". That doesn't mean jokes have to be short, but useless details obscure what you're trying to convey.
-You have to try. It's very, very rare to be naturally hilarious enough to just go up and be funny consistently without trying (see the first note).
The list grows as I learn, and there are a lot of things that I still have to learn to do/be. For instance, I'm getting better at having a thicker skin, which is a requirement for comedy. Something else I'd like to develop is to venture a little bit outside of setup/punchline kinds of jokes, a conveying of an idea. That's part of the process of learning to "walk", I suppose, which is the theme of this site.
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