HUMOR: FILLING IN THE BLANK
“make them work for it. their version is funnier.”
The Lesson
A powerful humor technique: make the audience fill in the missing part of the story. It works for two reasons. First, if you make the audience pause for half a beat to 'solve' the joke, it hits harder because of the pause. You don't want them thinking too long. Just long enough that they're aware you made them work for it. Second, if you require the audience to fill in the blank, each person does it with the funniest version for their own sense of humor. Their version might be more risque or more wholesome than yours, but it's optimized for them.
Real-World Example
A founder giving a talk about startup failures. Instead of: 'We burned through $2 million on a feature nobody wanted.' Better: 'We burned through $2 million on a feature that... well, let's just say we learned a lot.' The audience fills in the blank with their own worst-case scenario, which is funnier and more relatable than whatever you would have said.
Watch Scott explain this lesson
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