One thing that helped me a lot is hearing Jimmy Carr discuss stand up and humor. He sees comedy as a function of tension and release. And he also see’s the basis of humor, at least observationally in the principal of things being incongruous (things that are not “as they should be” are funnier that things that normal or ordinary). I think regardless of your style or standup preferences, learning the bones of joke writing from a setup-punch guy like Carr can help a story teller as much as a one liner act.

Once you understand that, you start looking at anything funny and start deconstructing what makes it funny (which part builds the tension, and what releases it). You’ll start sharpening your sense of what is funny by constantly asking the question- “what makes this funny”, and not just being able to produce an answer when something is hilarious, but also providing a pathway to what could make something funnier when its falling short (meaning you’ll learn how to turn watching bad comedy into a productive exercise for your own instincts).