| name | Tom Segura: Observational Comedy & Storytelling Craft |
| description | The practitioner's pipeline for observational/storytelling comedy — find material with the 'that's a thing' antenna, install the story 'way in' (stakes), dig past the obvious complaint, play the absurd straight, and edit long-to-tight. The upstream craft Robert Mack's mechanics assume you already have. Use for content ideation, recognition hooks, narrative essays, story openings, satire grounding, and turning annoyance into material. |
| version | 1.0 |
| format | completion-engine |
| tier | system |
| workflows | 12 |
| source | How I Write — Tom Segura deep-dive interview (13,322 words) |
Tom Segura: Observational Comedy & Storytelling Craft
Extracted from Tom Segura's "How I Write" deep-dive interview. Segura is a working A-list observational/storytelling comedian (Completely Normal, Sledgehammer, Teacher; creator of Netflix's Bad Thoughts; author). This skill captures the practitioner's process — where material comes from, how a notebook fragment becomes a finished bit, and how it's performed.
Load genius.md before any workflow. It holds the 15 genius patterns, 10 hidden-knowledge insights, exemplars, signature moves, and the quality rubric every workflow references.
Positioning vs. Robert Mack (no overlap)
- Robert Mack = comedy mechanics for business deployment (joke architecture, virality, humor-in-marketing). Assumes you already have the bit.
- Tom Segura = the upstream craft — the antenna that finds material, the story "way in," the long-to-tight edit, playing-it-straight, performance presence. Where the bit comes from.
- They stack. See
comedy-stack (T3).
Workflows
Tier 1 — Foundation (the core methodology)
| # | Workflow | Slash | Produces | Use When |
|---|
| 1 | The Antenna Engine ⭐ | /segura-antenna | A ranked "That's a Thing" observation bank (with optional live research) | You need raw material — universal-but-unarticulated observations, friction points, ownable angles — on a topic or from your own life |
| 2 | The Annoyance Dig | /segura-dig | The joke/insight hiding in a frustration | You have a complaint or irritation and need to find what's actually funny in it |
| 3 | The Way In | /segura-way-in | An engineered story opening with installed stakes | You have a story/anecdote that lands flat and needs a reason-for-telling |
| 4 | Long-First Edit | /segura-develop | A raw idea developed and edited into a tight, punch-distributed piece | You have a rough idea/draft and need the full fat-version → cut → insert-punches → end-big pipeline |
Tier 2 — Practitioner (granular deployment)
| # | Workflow | Slash | Produces | Use When |
|---|
| 5 | Surprise Architect | /segura-surprise | A line/beat re-engineered for the swerve | A payoff is predictable, or you want the against-judgment ("reluctant") laugh |
| 6 | Play It Straight | /segura-straight | An absurd premise grounded in deadpan sincerity | A premise is so big it begs to be over-sold — ground it instead |
| 7 | Word Surgeon | /segura-words | Final-pass word/sound swaps + rendered voices | A draft is structurally done but the words are flat |
| 8 | Earned Provocation Arc | /segura-arc | A trust-then-risk sequence for a set/essay/thread | You have provocative material that needs the audience on your side first |
| 9 | Material Ownership Audit | /segura-audit | An originality/ownership diagnostic + autobiographical pivot | You're not sure if material is "yours" or the derivative 15th-AI-bit |
Tier 3 — Stacking (cross-expert chains)
| # | Workflow | Slash | Produces | Use When |
|---|
| 10 | Recognition Essay | /segura-essay | A memoir-grade essay built on the unarticulated-universal | × Parallax / Cole / Wright — long-form recognition writing |
| 11 | Antenna → Hook | /segura-hook | LinkedIn/social recognition hooks from an observation bank | × Lara Acosta — scroll-stopping recognition posts |
| 12 | Full Comedy Stack | /segura-stack | Observation pipeline → joke mechanics hand-off | × Robert Mack — find+develop (Segura), then engineer the laugh (Mack) |
Quick Reference
- Genius Context: genius.md — load before any workflow (15 patterns, 10 hidden insights, rubric)
- Source quotes: references/source-quotes.md — verbatim transcript anchors
- Cross-domain bridges: references/cross-domain-patterns.md — comedy → writing/copy/brand transfers
- Flagship: ⭐
segura-antenna — the research + observation-harvesting engine
- Storytelling spine:
way-in → develop-and-edit → recognition-essay
The One-Line Thesis
Comedy is the discipline of noticing what everyone has experienced but no one has articulated — then earning the right to say it, grounding the absurd in the real, and holding the tension until it breaks.
Execution Prompts (structure-pure v2)
12 deterministic practitioner prompts — each carries an Output Contract, Output Skeleton, and Quality Gate. When a deliverable matches one, Read it and honor its contract instead of improvising the output shape.
- Tom Segura — The Annoyance Dig —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/annoyance-dig.md
- Tom Segura — Antenna to Recognition Hooks —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/antenna-to-recognition-hooks.md
- Tom Segura — Full Comedy Stack (Story-Craft to Joke-Mechanics) —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/full-comedy-stack.md
- Tom Segura — Long-First Edit Development —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/long-first-edit-development.md
- Tom Segura — Material Ownership Audit —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/material-ownership-audit.md
- Tom Segura — Observation Bank (The Antenna Engine) —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/observation-bank.md
- Tom Segura — Play It Straight —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/play-it-straight.md
- Tom Segura — Earned Provocation Arc (Beat Map) —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/provocation-arc-beat-map.md
- Tom Segura — Recognition Essay —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/recognition-essay.md
- Tom Segura — Surprise Architect —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/surprise-architect.md
- Tom Segura — The Way In (Story Opening) —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/way-in-story-opening.md
- Tom Segura — Word Surgeon Polish —
skills/tom-segura-comedy-storytelling/references/prompts-v2/word-surgeon-polish.md
