The Stories We Tell Ourselves
The Comedy Rule of Three Back in the days when I was editing broadcast television, I once worked on a couple of episodes of Late Night with David Letterman . I'll never forget the producer, the legendary Hal Gurnee , talking about how comedy had to adhere to the "rule of three." If you get hit on the head once, it's bad. Twice, it's worse. Three times: it's funny. Just like comedy, the stories we tell are made more memorable when things happen in sets of three. Recently a colleague told me he'd had a bad year. He lost his job, his truck was totalled, and then his beloved dog bit his face. I agree, he has had a bad year. The dog bite was definitely the capper. I'm ok with telling funny stories about my life to make other people laugh. On the other hand, I have realized that I'm constantly creating a running narrative about my life, that I tell myself . I've seen first-hand that while this self-narrative may seem to reflect reality, i...