Transcripts
1. Standup Comedy Course Trailer: Welcome to the stand up comedy course. It's the complete guide to stand up comedy. Humor is public speaking and writing and performing jokes. In this course, you learn how to make a stand up comedy act. You'll learn what to do, how it works. You'll see real life examples for your learned. The tricks and techniques used Viking meetings so that YouTube could be funny will deliver a speech or you do a comedy act yourself. So topics in this course include how to write jokes. How do you develop a routine from scratch and public speaking tips so that you can get the most out of your performance? Welcome to the stand up comedy course. Come on in and let's get started.
2. The structure of jokes. Active joke writing: coming up with jokes about anything: So let's talk about the structure of a joke. What actually are jokes? And what we really want caring about in this lecture is how do you come up with jokes from scratch when you don't have anything yet? So if someone came up to you and said, Hey, I'd like you to perform at this event And can you, for example, introduced the speaker? Can you talk about this event, which is with about this charity, Maybe security bones here? Or we're at this tote giving a toast about this topic? How do you come up with material about specific area? So things is where we need to. You have a tool called active joke waiting. How do you write and formulate jokes about a subject? So in order to do this, we need to bring in a few tools to our arsenal. Took it, and the one I'm going introduce in this lecture is called a Prince. So we're going to analyze how you can use premises to come up with the foundation for the jokes, and then you'll bring in the next few doctors how to bring in things called tags and how to refine your jokes. and so on. So first of all, what is a joke? If someone said you need to write jokes on this and you said, Okay, I'm gonna go spend a day and come up with jokes. How do you come up with jokes on something? So here's the strategy that you can use to pick any subject idea that you like, and you can come up with funny material using it. The first thing you need to understand is that every joke is made up off this thing called a premise and a punch line. They premise itself is information the audience needs to have the background subject. And then the punchline is the zing attack, the part that makes the audience get surprised. The funny part. Now what's surprising is that the premise is more important than the punch line. The premise itself is the part that you need to spend a lot of time crafting, but the punch lines they could be swapped out. You can come up with 10 20 different punchlines to the same premise that this premise needs to be pretty good, and what you'll find is that once you understand how these two things are connected. It's very easy to come up with premises. It's very easy to come up with punchlines, so we have our premise. Let's break that down. A premise is made up of three parts. Three parts go into any premise. First of all, there's a topic. There's an association related to your topic, and you have an attitude that connects your topic and your association. What is the topic? The topic is a person place thing, and event event could be some historical event in time. Any of those things person, place, thing, event that you're talking, then what you do is you have a secondary idea, an association that is somehow connected to your talk. And then finally, you have an attitude, which is some kind of emotion, some kind of feeling, some kind of perspective of viewing the topic and the association. That's a high level, so let's do a few examples. Now. Let's take an example, such as online dating. Online dating will be our topic so way have a topic. Now let's think about what it could be. Associate ID with online dating. Well, there's many things you could associate with it. You just want to list them out. When I was first doing this, I was told that is a good idea to have the number 30 35 associations in the beginning, just producing out different things. Such as when I think of online dating. What's the first thing that comes to mind? Um, dating app stating websites, Um, such as tinder um, maybe making a profile, taking photos for my profile. What am I saying when messaging the person that I'm trying to pick up? Um, maybe just writing descriptions about myself in my profile thes air association secondary ideas that are somehow related to my topic. And then I need to have an attitude somewhere off connecting these things somewhere. Viewing these so in an attitude is an emotion. It's an attitude. So the most commonly used attitudes and comedy, although they're not mandatory but the most commonly used attitudes towards topics are scary, stupid, hard and weird. Okay, making a dating profile is weird. Making a dating profile is hard. Making dating profile is and is stupid. You can kind of see how we're starting to find something that might be a little bit amusing Now, now here's a few guidelines towards going towards this when you're beginning. He often just focused on the topic in this example I used earlier was online. Dating was our topic, But really, what you want to focus on is the associations, because they were trying to get from a broad of the online dating. That's kind of hard to make jokes about because it's so big. But we've narrowed it down now. So with our association. So, for example, online dating may be, our secondary association is filters. I am looking for the specific thing in my partner getting partner that I'm looking for. That's my association. That's where the jokes are gonna come from, is from narrowing it down. It is something more specific now. Maybe this is still too brought filters. What else could we break down our filters towards even more? Um, filters? Maybe we could be breaking it down into what? What kind of field is? Rather, there's filters for, like, what kind of heights am I looking forward in a person trying to date? What is their hairstyle like? So I can feel training for these things. These are kind of ah, strange, weird, stupid things were kind of odd things that we're gonna be filtering for. This is where the humor starting to come from. Often, beginners think that bigger than broader the idea easier to make jokes. Not true. It's easy to make jokes about things that are really specific. The more narrow down you can grill, the easier it is to find funding ideas, a writing exercise that is often recommended for people trying to come up with competition . Beginning is come up with a list off. I'm Aziz. When I 1st 1st doing this, I was told to come up with a list of 10 pregnancies today. Just come up with 10 topic association attitude. Come up with 10 of these and it could be anything. So let me look at some examples of some of my old premises. They're not necessarily funny because the premise doesn't have to be funny. We're not even at the punchline yet. We're just establishing the foundation for which the jokes can be built for. So let me find some, um, premises that I used to have, uh, premise. I'm annoyed when people tell me I need to buy new phones because I don't have any money. So for my topic is probably something along the lines off, um, phones. My secondary idea is probably the idea that buying a phone and then my attitude is it's I'm annoyed. This is this is bothering. I still got another premise. Um, I I'm annoyed when my tinder date turns out to be a man because it means we both lied about our gender. Eso I guess this is a one liner in this case, but you can still break it down. So the premise is probably something to do with online dating. In this case, my association is lying on my dating profile, and my attitude is, once again an annoyance. I guess I was obsessed with being annoyed with things at the time. So just to wrap this up again, the any joke can be broken down into a premise and punch line on this excess. In this particular lecture, we've been looking at how premises work. They're a topic which is a person place, thing or events, your association, which is a secondary idea, or something connected to something that could be associated with your topic. And then you choose an attitude towards you can pick whatever emotion you like. The most common ones are weird, scary, hard and stupid. You have those things together, and with this premise you can then use this, which in our next hour we'll learn in the next lecture to start using things, Go tags for adding punchlines to a premises.
3. Tagging: coming up with punchlines: So my last lecture, we looked at the premise structure we looked at. I feel blank about some topic association, because something I feel us feeling attitude towards my topic subject. Because of this now we're going to start to look at how to create the jokes out of this information. How do we start to throw in the part that's gonna make people that punchlines? So this is where we need to introduce the idea of tagging. What is a tag I work for? This is zing for what more useful is the word afterthought. What is the thing that I'm thinking afterwards? My food That's kind of off stop. If you've ever said that the line, that's what she said. You've done a tag whenever someone says something, and you add on a comment a funny remark. You've text that person, you've created a punchline joke, and what we're going to explain here is how this is useful so normally when you have a conversation and let's use that example, that's what she said. Someone says something. I have this things. That's what she said. What you've done is he tagged on to them and usually what we have. If we're writing jokes, we have a premise, and then we had tags onto it. In this case, you get to create the premise, and then you get to say That's what she said to your own premise. Someone said something because something you're going to tag on to that you're going to add on your funny comment. It's an afterthought. So whenever you have a thought, you have an afterthought. Well, I guess I shouldn't have done that. Well, maybe you should have been this way. Well, that's kind of weird, because all those afterthoughts are tags. I think America's gotta be the dumbest here. What is the superpower literally that owns crazy? It's a shield, not a boomerang means you get one shot. Wait is weakest. The dog played so in my bit. In my roots in one of the afterthoughts are It's not a boomerang, it's a shield. I mean, she gets one shot, but the tech that's an afterthought. And then I followed up with a second afterthought. Um, his greatest weakness of the dog playing fetch. That's the afterthought, kind of odd. So there you go. That's how you start tagging friends on and you can come up with lists, enlist the tax tons of tax and then you just select the funniest ones. So remember we had in our form we have our premise. We've already looked at that. We've now started adding on afterthoughts, the tags. This is where the punchline comes. Premise. First times line. You have a joke? Um, the way to come up with great tags is just to come up with a lot of them. You got to start flowing them out. Let's write them down on paper. Say them out loud. Um, pretend that this is like a two way dialogue. Normally, when someone says something and you say that's what she said, All you're doing is doing the tag part. But now you also get to come up with the premise part. You come with the premise and you come up with the tags. You're doing both sides of the dialogue, so it's very easy to come up with jokes now because you don't the wait for someone to come up with a funny idea. You can come up with a funny idea, and then you can start using it. Now, a few things to keep in mind with this is the tags are a punch like, this is the part that people have it and you can take any premise. Any subject matter that you've established is something that's already kind of funny. And then you can add on afterthoughts things that you would think from. Well, why would this be? What would what should it be like? What what is another example is what is a metaphor of this. What is this similar to? And you can list out tons of these dozens of tags and then you'll have your premise, which is kind of funny. Ready? So you want to talk about your list out your tags, and then you select the best text, the ones that you think will be the funniest. So this is essentially the structure of how you can create, uh, your jokes. Do you have your premise? You have the punch line, and you can just start listening out about any topic that, like a few guidelines for coming up with strong tax if you find that your tags aren't very funny, what you might want to do is go back to the premise and change the attitude So your attitude, remember, is the wave of your emotion towards your topic in your association. So what you might want to do is have a more extreme attitude. I think this is really hard. I think this is really stupid. Why is this so stupid? That bothers me so much. The more visual emotion you can play towards that often that's funnier. The more people want don't want to see some guys in the middle of the road. Well, it's kind of okay. I'm not to bottle this way that way. No. Pick a side, pick something that you're that you something extreme and then have reasons to back it up. That's where that people want to see someone who's passionate about stuff. It's much more entertaining now with that, uh, there's a few other things you can use to make your tags and punch them up. Beef up your punch lines, your tanks. One is the rule of three. I think this this and then 1/3 for some reason, comedy really like three things in a row. Not sure why, and they like comparisons. It's like the opposite. I have this compared to this or the exact reversal this Sometimes it helps to have contrasts something really big compared with a small, something really important computer. Something really well, you say kind things to work quite well together. So either way to come up with text um, a few of the things that useful is just contracting. Logical with illogical. A lot of jokes about about the government, the things they do, that a completely logical religion or the way family relationships behaves, things that don't really make sense. Um, ca meeting picks up something and says, What's wrong with this? This doesn't make any sense, is, and that's where the number comes from. You could be an angry rant about stuff that you just be so much some communes. That's all they do. Well, I'm like Joey D s comedian or Bill Burr or Joe Rogan. Just complain about stuff like this bothers me so much. So stupid. And it's really funny just talking on the throwing. A reason why this is so stupid. This is ridiculous, and this is one way to create an act. So this is the idea of tagging. You can come up with 100 tags, and this is essentially what your performance is about. You could just keep tagging and keep building on tax and text on top of your tags, and attack is just an afterthought. It's a thing that you're thinking afterwards, your reasoning or rationalizing of how ridiculous the situation is.
4. Passive joke writing: how to come up with jokes without trying: I told my dad, I think I wanna be a comedian. Not happy. No, it's probably no, I saw you the other day. Haggle successfully. Just go Dollar that respect flossing on the subway. You lost your honor. Woman. What Socks with sandals. Asian. The guy takes a dump it open the door. So we talked about active joke writing. Let's talk a little bit about passive joke rating. Passive joke Writing is a lot easier, and this is often where you something will happen in your day. And you can use this information to form some kind of funny routine out of this. So a few ways to take advantage of your everyday, um, routine and come up with jokes passively have a way to remember your jokes. When something funny happens, someone says something funny to you. You have a really funny thought. You need a way to record this. Personally, I recorded on my phone. I'll have a note pad on my phone, and I'm literally just start typing in my jokes and my funny thoughts, and I find it also helps to say it out loud. Voice record. The way I'm thinking that it's funny because I often find the way I'm describing it. Is this important as to the actual word choice, So have a way to record your your bits. Um, Now, let's say you wanted a way to write down this information in a story format. I want to turn your joke structure into more of a narrative. How do we go about doing that? I need some kind of beginning middle end. How do I start with that? Well, one way is to develop your joke more like a story, and one way to do that is just do identify parts that are important to your story. One thing is to figure out waste of describing characters of people in the If you are describing a character, describe about them. What is funny about this person know odd or eccentric about example, could be described the way the character is physically, emotionally their personality. Theo. Energy level. How extreme Here, what kind of relationships day today have? What kind of place do they go on holiday? What are they like? This kind of scenario? If you put them here this day, every type of a person, what were they? How would they react to this situation. Consider attacking the stereotype and defending the stereotype. Trying, attacking and defending sometimes gives you interesting contrasts. If you just want to describe stuff that happens your life, maybe you just want to talk about you. Well, what happens You in the last little while from the last week and last month last year. What significant events, specifically, things that affected you emotionally. Those are often really good. Embarrassing things are often, oh, a source of rich humor. If you can talk about it later, sometimes it helps to read the newspaper, identify events that have been going on to say, Well, okay, this this is probably something I should talk about. One thing to remember that when you're coming up with jokes is you need to get rid of your internal filter, vulgarity, things that you're ashamed of when you're writing jokes, you got to get rid of that filter. You don't have to say the joke's on the stage necessarily. You might not include those in your act if you don't feel comfortable with it. But I think you'll get rid of that filter anyways, when you start getting into comedy, but when you're writing jokes. You need to have no filter. You need to try to come out. That's one of the greatest things about comedies is very freeing to be able to describe things that you often locate to be inside, and we're ashamed to reveal. And when you put them out, if in his life of them meaning security suddenly become a lot more comfortable, come a few things to identify that a useful for coming up with jokes is long attitude for a situation that's the wrong way to approach it. How could I make the situation worse, revealing the horrible truth about something We think it a certain way, but it's actually pretty awful when you think about it this way. Um, doing something stupid and then being really proud of it. I mean, sometimes that happens a lot. We do something that's really, really had like you. I did. Someone gives you a funny statement, write it down and try to analyze what's funny. What is the premise that makes this thing of funny? We can break it down like we did our exercise. You have to stop thinking of association every attitude you look at it from that perspective that often helps to reverse engineer on what makes something funny, sort of given you hear is a bunch of tools that you can use for passive joke waiting. You can apply any of these. You don't use them all. Of course, this. You don't want to be thinking about too much, but grab one of one of these at a time. See if you can apply it to your situation to come up with you miss material, and the sooner or later you'll find out you have a lot of funny thoughts that you can use.
5. Improving jokes: getting bigger laughs: somebody heard I'm making and its people is like, tinder, people want people keep So let's say you got a bunch of jokes and maybe they're just kind of working, but they're not really working. So here's a few ways that you can use soon. Poopy jokes. First of all, list out all the jokes and drink them a joke. Be jokes ijo the joke, a jokes of the ones that actually get a laugh from the audience. The only way to know this really used to try it out. You got to go in front of people. And when you say the joke, do you get a Oh, what do you get up? Yeah, it's funny if people smiling. Oh, yeah, it's funny. It's not funny. You want the laughs. That's what you want. That's what's funny. People laugh. It's funny, people don't laugh, and they say, It's funny. It doesn't really count. If you go in front of an audience and you test it and you get a laugh and a good left, that's a joke Yet leg. Nothing like a D. You want to cut those? You want to keep that have, ideally, all a jokes in your routine and you'll have no see jokes and D jokes and your visa like you're trying to improve him, to get to your A level jokes to your ankle your jokes. Then take your A level jokes and add more tags to them. And we discussed hacking, punching them up, adding afterthoughts, trying to add more afterthoughts to your A level jokes and seeing if you can make those funnier, think of every line that you're describing on the stage as like a shot in a movie, every frame in a movie. If the directors any good is gonna have some importance to it, there's gonna be some reason that they chose the shot. This is Shot is interesting. For this reason, I'm trying to develop my story. I'm trying to get out laugh. I think this line in in this movie is funny and you're doing the same thing with your routine. When you're giving your speech, you're trying to say, Is this line important? Is this word choice working? Is there any way I could make this line better, or should I just chop it up here? The editor in your own movie except your movie is just giving a speech. Is this for the adding to the routine, or do I need to get rid of it? That's one way to think of your act. So one way to approach that is what is the minimum needed to get my message across. If you have long, complicated sentences and it doesn't answer the joke, it adds to the joke and the word choices, building up tension like a shaggy dog story. That's a reference to saying that you have this long story that's waffling over and over and over and have a really lame punchline of the ends. But people laugh because they just they they thought you were leading to something else. Unless you're doing that intentionally, wanna have minimum space between laughs as possible in a joke routine? You can have laughs after every line if you if you set it up correctly And when you go to a comedy club and the owner is watching you and deciding whether to give you future gigs, they're going to be looking and listening. Do you hearing how much is the audience laughing? How hard they laughing? Oh, and that's the difference between like, you're beginning comics and your your common to have already really know how to work with the audience. Is it going to get a lot more laughter? And so that this is important to understand that your what you choose to keeping your routine is, ah, byproduct of what you chose to get rid of from your routine? Don't give yourself to say that you're writing the jokes for yourself. You know, you know you're writing jokes for other people. This is a presentation for that. Maybe not a specific person, but you're ready to get other people to laugh. If it's only funding to you, that's good to get started to come up with ideas. But if you tried and you told that joke and people didn't laugh and you tried a few variations, you tried different tags and still not getting anything. It's not funny. We're not funding the way that you want it to be used by other people. Misstep. That's quirky. The quirky isn't what you want on stage. It's not what you want me to writing a book. Then you're trying to actually get laughs from no big differs. We want laughter, a new test out with her job might work or not before you on stage is tried out with your friends, your family, your loved ones. But don't tell them that you about to tell a joke, slipping in the conversation without them knowing and see. Do they laugh? Because that's the true reaction is to people Find it funny on its own. If you have to tell him, I'm going to tell you a joke that that I deducted a punch line laugh so hot that that's not a good judgment of whether this is a funny material. Not what you want to do is slipping in the conversation and see what their reaction is. That's what you want.
6. Self depreciation: jokes that almost always work: I went on a blind date last week, I would do the buying day. I started wondering I woman and a man approached me and said, You here for the free meal of movie recently about my possessions, my field games. I cook my currents. Virginity, just get out of the way. It is like I signed up for possible new subscription. But, you know, he's like an old TV. You can't get it like Boston. Would you like my old TV? No. Sure, it's free. I think the way I look, I look like camera. We've never been puberty. Let's talk about a self depreciation. Soft appreciation. Means is you're making jokes about yourself making fun of yourself. And this is probably one of the most important and useful tools in a comics toolbox. Because making fun of yourself is one. If I may be the only subject that everyone can always relate to people everywhere, no matter who they are, they feel insecure and they know what it's like to be embarrassed and to be upset about themselves and things that they're insecure about. And when you go on stage and you make fun of yourself, people can instantly relate to that. Oh, you're embarrassed. I know what that's like to feel embarrassed about something. So, um, making kind of yourself on stage for joke wise, there's a few things that establish trust with the audience because they know that you're not taking yourself too seriously. If you're not and you're making fun of yourself when you make fun of other topics, people can kind of be on board. They're not going to be judging you as intensely as before when you already made fun of yourself. Well, I guess you already kind of dispelled any the judgment that we had. You already judge yourself harshly enough, so I guess it's OK, so that's one of the things. Secondly, it's a topic that everyone can relate to. And that's why it's important that you considered, if you can putting self depreciation jokes at the pain of your act, or at least somewhere towards the beginning, so that you can get the audience on your side, start to build up the, uh, the confidence that you have for the audience, especially if they don't know who you are. So he's an exercise that's useful is to come up with a list of 10 things that you yourself are embarrassed about. Insecurities that you have. It's gonna be a hard exercise if you view, um, to identify things that comfortable about. Remember when I first did this? There was a guy in the room and we all had to say and what we were insecure about and one of his waas I I'm feel embarrassed to talk two strangers, Um, because my face always looks like I'm constipated. And he had a face that kind of looked like it was constipated. So everyone in the room really left it. This really bad about it. That e was This is something of a city to him. And, uh, I can see first so uncomfortable that he never came tactical shop. But the joke is really good, because if he had been able to harness that humor, it was instant, uh, essentially human for everyone else. Um, so this might not be too easy for you, but if you can take it, here's a few suggestions is identify things you're insecure, embarrassed about easier to pick things that are noticeable about the way you look or things people would assume about you. This is why people often bring in nationality and the way where they look like they came from and so on. Um, just because it's easy to point out what this is, where I come from. This is why I am insecure about these things. It's a way to approach it. So So here's the useful exercise of yourself is picked 10 different, uh, aspects that you're insecure, uncomfortable. You feel vulnerable about and specific to you and listen out and you'll might find your friend. We've got something funnier.
7. Humor Tricks of the Trade: you see that show undercover boss? That's got to be one of the shows on TV. Here's a premise of the show. Some C o High Flying goes undercover in his own company. Nothing suspicious. Who's got calls himself? Bob? Nothing suspicious about one Mongolian place. 10. They didn't notice. Guys going around. Thanks. A minimum wage cap in the end of the month takes off. This massive goes only a place of the fertility. Didn't know I didn't spend the camera phones going every conversation. I think the moment cameramen walked in the door you stop getting work time, space and numbers. That's how you exaggerate. Exaggerate The time it took Could be small. Really, Me space. Small, Really large and numbers 12 jillion. This is how you exaggerate. You pick something, and then you make extreme you make it wont rage. Small, ridiculous by time. Space enough. For example. It was so cold. The woman was wearing a minx coat. Maybe check that It's so cold. The minks was wearing a woman. Exaggerate you foot it. Somehow you make it more extreme. You could use something called act outs. Act outs are where the comedian will impersonate someone else and use a different voice or some people. The impressions of other actors, famous celebrities Jim Gaffigan is whole routine is essentially using, ah, falsetto voice. Well, say something. And then Hill hot pockets like a little voice to comment on his own joke. He essentially adding afterthoughts. He's tagging his own jokes, but he's doing it with another voice. Somehow he made this work into his whole routine. Um, so act out. So one way to do this, you can make sure you use your your body, uh, the gestures that you make. You can use physical comedy. This is what Rowan Atkinson was very famous for when he was doing stand up comedy on a stage like performances. He's very, very good physical comedian. A lot of some communes, like Sebastian, also very good physical. They can get making or Steve Martin very physically funny. They've carefully chosen their gestures, and they practice the way they move in such a way that it's tumors. People don't realize, um, that the way you move on stage could be a form of a joke.
8. How To Come Up With A Character Act: So let's say you wanted to make a character act. What's a character act? A character act is where you have an identity, some kind of stereotype, some kind of personality that you are portraying on the stage to get some kind of attitude across. And this is what happens on a lot of TV shows on a lot of sitcoms, some Santa comedians. That's what they do when you think about the TV show, Mr Bean. What Bowen Atkinson did is you created this character, Mr Bean, and he identified. How would this character react in any given situation? What is his character like? When it's his likes? What is it? Dislikes? What is his limitations? What is he not good at? What is he? Suck it the things that he's bad at really important. What is he oblivious about? And once you've sculpted all this information, what But with this character do in any given situation, you condone? Just start dumping him in. Okay, let's say we started flooding. How is he going to react? Um, it's a car broke down. What? We need you. If you've identified your character well enough, you can an approach by the perspective first person perspective off that character and say , This is how they would react in this situation, something of a sitcom like friends, the writers of friends. They created these characters so well and established their personality so clearly. But that is very easy for them to have a scenario sneer like Monica gets fired. Okay, how would she react when she tells her friends how her friends going to react and so on? You can have this whole scenario. Joey gets a part in a, um, advertising. Enjoy from friends gets a role, an advertisement for blue lipstick, and you can start of Imagine how the characters are going to react to watching Joey advertising and how he's gonna react to it so you can see how once you've established your characters, you can use this to create a comedy act. Um, another example is Stephen Colbert. If you ever seen his, uh, when he was doing his TV show. Stephen Colbert on that TV show is not Stephen Colbert. In real life, it's a character he's treated. It's opinions of this character. To get this community attitude across to the audience doesn't mean that's what he's actually like he got to realize community don't take themselves seriously. They realize they're just telling jokes. If you actually talk to a comedian at final stage, did you mean what use that? Of course not. The joke is there to get, ah, reaction out of the audience. We saw a movie called Elf was Will Ferrell. He's the first time experiencing a life in New York. You've never seen anything before. He doesn't understand anything is old, new, and nothing makes sense yet To him, that's exciting.
9. Developing A Routine: I think you guys take a lot of credit stuff. Women do like what may say me and my wife and now a days I think this is how much made Contribute your face. Nine months even. Sure that's their kid tested through the day. You is your kids smart? You don't you don't Teoh talk about the routine as a whole. How can you structure your routine to get the most out of it? Ah, few things to think of it a little bit like a narrative. It doesn't have to be a beginning of your routine. Going to the end of the routine for each bit could have a beginning a middle. And in it you could think of it as you're going from your story and each of your bits could be its own little story. Um, a climax. See part that is the most absurd of your story thing that you're building up to. Obviously that's probably towards the end of your bit, and you're working away towards it. You can use things called callbacks. Callbacks are where you referred to a joke earlier in the routine. You'll see this a lot done by longer acts especially if there's like a our special comedy on Netflix and so on. You'll often see it can be referred to a joke. I was previously done half an hour earlier and just bring it back in, but with some new reference. And when you doing you bitten? You brought this information in. That's another way to utilize the routine. What's the most outrageous part of your story? That's the climax. That's the part you building up towards. That's where you're heading. So if you structure that your jokes are slowly building up to that, you'll have a big payoff. Your biggest laugh could be at the last joke that you get. That's the kicker. Everything else is a few tags that they don't have to work on their own. They don't have to get the bigger laugh right away. You tagging, tagging and then you see your biggest punch line for the end. Wait, a structure in terms of structuring your routine, especially in the beginning, you're probably gonna be doing open mikes, and these are often five minutes, 10 minutes sets, and this is this is how you probably going to do so what you might wanna consider doing in this case is intervening you, but we don't have that many jokes yet. If you do, you haven't tested amount. You will. So it's useful to have your best jokes at the beginning, routine and at the end of the routine, you know, these jokes work, you're going to get laughs in the beginning. The beginning is important, really important. That's where you're gonna get the audience trust and get some momentum going for the rest of the team. You gotta have good jokes in the beginning, when you first get on stage and when you're closing off, you want to end off is a really big last. But when you're throwing a new, untested material or stuff that you're not entirely sure is gonna work or not, you wanna slowly into. We've that with your great material. So even if something doesn't fly very well, you can still cover once you start bombing. It's really hard not to bomb afterwards, but if you start off with a good note and you have a few not so good jokes, the onus is still on your side and you can bring them back
10. Practicing comedy effectively: So you gotta practice before you go in stage. You don't want that to be the first time you tell any jokes you're not gonna remember. You gotta know your material inside and out so that it feels like you could say it in your sleep. You have to know your guilt before you go on stage. There's something people who improvised when they go in stage. But they always have jokes if worth a good always have jokes that they can recover from. If they're improvising and talking with the autism work. A lot of the times when they talk to the audience, they only know the joke they're gonna use. They pick this couple. Where you from? Funny Remark. Because they selected this audience member because they already have a joke prepared. Something funny to say about them. People exist me to start interacting with the audience. If you don't have any material, you gotta have something to work with. How long is your routine gonna be? Well, it's approximately 100 and 60 ish words a minute, but you take out about 60 words to account for laughter. So if you would write this out in a word document. They have about 160 words a minute. You're looking for five minutes of material. They're probably gonna have about 500 words for five minutes, and then that's a way to essentially time it out. Not going to be exact. Of course, if you doing a bunch of physical humor, maybe it doesn't pan out too well. That is the way to gauge in the beginning, when you're saying and practicing your routine, don't just read it. I stayed out accord on your phone or recording device that you can hear. How are you pausing your timing, your vocal inflection? Get out, our son points. You're getting really into it. If you can record yourself with the camera seeking better, I usually find I need to do this in private. I don't find I can practice in front of other people when I'm trying to memorize my check my material. I usually find I need to be alone, but that's just personal preference. But it is important that you are able to say you material on cue. Someone says, Go on stage. You don't want to be drawing a blank. You need to have your material waiting to go In the beginning, you might have a little cue card with just the summary of the key words of your jokes. Just in case you completely draw blank, you can just write up hope and then go back. Some people place that cue card right by the water bottle. So then they say Kasich, they're actually looking at their list of jokes. I'm not recommending that you have that. You rely on this, but if you need to the way to do it, Um, when you're practicing, make sure you practicing the way that you want to say on the stage, make it casual, make it talking. You just talking with your buddies. Um, you wanted to feel like it's natural. This is the first time you thought of this material if possible. Those are the funniest moments is when the audience thinks Oh, he just thought of that. Of course you didn't think of that. You spent like, two months preparing this information that the audience will feel like it's the first time they've ever heard it so much. Maybe it's the first. Have you ever thought of it? And that's why it's funny, because it's it's ah, it's in the present moment. It might help to visualize the venue itself. If you can scatter the location if this is an option two you see How much room do you have to walk around? Are you gonna have a microphone stand? Is it gonna be the same? Do you have to have cord? Can you use that? You have a stool. You can use what tools you have at your disposal, These things to consider. If you have it chair to sit on. Maybe you can use that as part of your ex. Usually, the menus are quite accommodating to this as well, so you can usually request that ahead of time. Um, it's important that you feel mentally prepared before you go on stage. If you get on stage and you're not in the mood, you're drunk, you're intoxicated. You're probably not going to deliver the performance that you want. He might not remember all the jokes. The timing might below that off. It's good that you're mentally prepared before you get on stage. Sometimes the audience well, forget. But the premise was I love your jokes along. You've been talking so much you need to remind the audience what we're talking about. You might have to repeat certain words over and over again. The vocal variety could be important as well, Getting louder, getting quieter when you're really getting into something you can lean in when you have trying to just relax a bit. You can lean back, get you a microphone so the closer you get, see, unlike the louder it's gonna be and then the further away you get from the microphone requires the views of things to keep in mind. When you're on stage than usual. These things to your advantage. When you're practicing with your friends, try out the jokes. Don't tell him you're telling a joke. Just try them out, see if they laugh. See how they respond. Do they like it? Sometimes your watch podcasts and you'll have comedian on and they're really funny. And what you don't realize they're actually using jokes in the routine in a casual conversation. If you ever watch uh, Joe Woman's you to podcast, you'll have comedians on there and they'll say funny stuff. And then, like a few months later, they'll come up with a special and you might see the same joke, and I o I've heard that one before. I get it out way. We've been practicing this, and that's what a lot of comedians they do is they will be practicing all these funny ideas . How did they think of these things on the spot? I didn't think these things on the spot thinking, practicing anything's all along and the being testing out this jokes and seeing two people laugh. But because people don't know that this is gonna be a joke, saying they're not they're not judging them as harshly, and they can get true feedback and then use those jokes in the actual routine to see. Okay, I've tested this material. It works. That's why I can use this and guarantee I'm going to get laughs out of it. Is a type jokes so testy jokes that wherever you are
11. Getting the most out of your performance: Okay, so you're about to go on stage. The feeling some butterflies between a little bit nervous. First of material, tens of times. What do you do? Some people they need to warm up before they go on stage. So literally vocal exercises some people. What I find is, sometimes your voice gets really tight when you're nervous, and that narrows in gentlemen starting to build up and you can use that, actually, is your advantage. Because that adrenaline that butterflies in your stomach, that's energy, that's your body getting scared. And that scared fear generates energy so that you'll have more to use when you get on stage . So some people, really This depends on your personality, whether you need to be on your own, put on some the music, to listen, to calm you down. Some people they need to do some push ups, some people, and he pays back and forth on people. We just need to be away from others. Some people keep talking like crazy. You realize that you're gonna be there probably with other comedians, and everyone has their own way of preparing to go on stage, and you probably need to find your own way to. Maybe the way of preparing for in state is going to be different. But a few things that can come in handy hes the warmer pupils If you could do some vocal exercises such as humming, humming Happy Birthday, for example, in the Washington whatever that tends to warm your your body up singing a little bit and help open up there. Give you get some fresh air circulating through your lungs and to get you ready. Sometimes a little bit of exercise doesn't have to be right before that. Maybe an hour or two before helps sometimes a little bit from to use a little bit and like an apple or something, some kind of juice to get you going. But not too much because, um, if you're gonna be doing a long show, you don't wanna crash halfway through. But if you're low on energy, that can help avoid having stuff like alcohols or drugs or something before you go on stage , that's going to distract you. Um, so let's say you're ready. They introduce you. You go on stage. First thing you're gonna want to do is to remove the MIC stand is usually a microphone right in front of you, and then you have the microphone. And if you're an amateur, sometimes people forget to move the stand there, just standing in front of it, and they might even be holding the microphone in the hand. But this stand still in the way. If you couldn't use the stand, keep the state in front of you and talk to the microphone. But if they're going to take the microphone off the stand moved to stand behind you. Give it to that thing, OK, the microphone itself talk directly into it. You don't want to be talking to it. Kind of like this. You want to be talking into the microphone. If you get closer to the microphone. Nikas louder, Don't forget and is it gets further away. It gets quieter, something to keep in mind. When you're on a stage, some of the few perhaps needs. You have a little bit more exposure to being comfortable on stage. Not always the most natural thing to have a group of people staring at you, and you're the only one talking. You want to make it feel like it's a natural conversation. Love being on stage. This is something you do all the time. And a lot of that is just pretending, because who normally has a group of people staring at them while they're the only one talking, Maybe in our dreams and thinking, we're giving speeches, and that's just normal. But realistically, it's kind of weird. It's a weird situation to be in. That doesn't happen most days, so you're going to need to fake it till you make it. If you're not feeling confident, thinking, confidence kind of does the job sometimes. So what can you do? Well, pull your shoulders back, act like you're confident. If you open up and you're moving around, you look more confident. But if you're kind of hunched up and and you're compressing yourself arms crossed, then you're not only constructing a vocal chords, but you look like you don't really not confident in your own jokes, and that's going to mess up with your own delivery. People like to laugh at people who are confident with themselves, and they feel comfortable and relax and when everything is in a good mood. That's where comedy comedians become really comfortable with the crowd and the crowd becomes comfortable with them. You want to generate this atmosphere of we're here to have a good time. Were the next jokes. You hear the laugh. I'm here to make you laugh. No, we're not gonna take anything too seriously. That's why you're here to make it feel more natural, practice telling you jokes as though it's a conversation with your friends. We don't want it to be this awkward. Here is a job. Wait, Here's another dope. Wait, Now you left. I mean, there are comedians. You do that, but it's something that you want to use intentionally rather than you have to rely on. Maybe it's just a technique that you can use the advantage to align one liners, but it's a lot more powerful and shows that you have the skill as a communicator. If you can show that you're a great comfortable in front of the audience. So what else can you do to show that you are comfortable when you're public speaking? Well, when you're looking into the audience, you're probably not going to see them. That's something most people don't realize. Comedians on stage can't really see. The audience got me great light light center shining directly in your face, Theo. Audiences not lit there in the dark. So most of the time you're looking out and you can see maybe the first few rows. But anyone behind maybe a first for euros here aren't seeing them, especially if it's like like an inside theater kind of experience. So you have to pretend that you're looking at when you do Gillet deliver your punch line. Maybe you take helps to take a pause. After that, they're gonna have to experiment. Isn't a cutting drive rule. What you don't want to do is start telling your joke when the audience is still laughing and cut them off the audience. Laughing is the goal. Once the glass let them and let them enjoy, give them a moment to lash. If they're not laughing, keep throwing on the tags until it comes. But once you get that belly aching left, you want to ring that thing out for takes a long time as totally fine. Sometimes it helps to pretend that you're laughing as well. I mean, you've already heard the joke before, you know, you know it's probably not even funny to you anymore, but to pretend that you're really laughing with them? A. So this is the first time you had this idea, and this is so finding to you. Sometimes that helps to bring the audience toe laugh even more. If you laughing and they were laughing and that causes you left more, sometimes that just creates its nice cycle, and you're just feeding off each other's energy.
12. Bombing: what to do when your jokes don't work: I was talking to a girl the other day, she said. I'm a sex addict, Dan. I know nothing about that. Like, you know I can help you with that, he said. I'm not sleeping with you. I'm like, Oh, there you go cured. You already ask the woman out and she said, Sure, here's my cart. She gave me a business card at two phone numbers and email address and a website, and I found out they were all wrong. Like Dan, You made me work for that. It's like on a restaurant. The waiter gives you a menu to another restaurant. You could have just said no, the guys in the audience when I got to pick, move and it goes like I know about idea. Let's talk about what happens when your jokes don't work. It's gonna be a some point when you're going to go on stage. You might not be the first night. It might not be the third night, but it might happen in your first night where you gotta tell jokes and they're not gonna work. Theo audience is not gonna be receptive. Maybe no one's laughing. Maybe no one's listening. So let's discuss what to do when you have a fluff. When your jokes don't work, you need Teoh. Hopefully be prepared for this. And this is gonna happen no matter who you are. Doesn't matter how good you are, how good you materialise. At some point, you're gonna have a bad show. And there's a few things to realize is that this is part of a job. If you're doing stand up comedy, if you're trying to be funny on stage, you're gonna bomb. That's part of the joke. That's part of the process. It's not something that some people do it. Some people don't. Everybody bombs. OK, so first of all, if your jokes not working and you're low right away, I needed when your routine is done. Second step back. Hopefully what you've done when you're doing your performances. You recorded it on your phone and you'll what about you feel humiliated for a little while ? You feel bad crap. My bond. Ah, they didn't laugh. And maybe you have some emotion. Maybe you're so angry. Maybe you'll feel a little bit disappointed in yourself and that Well, that's normal. Realize that this is This is totally okay. This is expected behaviour. And then when you go home, listen to the recording on your phone and try to break down where exactly, it might have gone wrong. I mean, think is always to blame someone else. Right now. It's not me. I'm funny. I'm good people. Like most people like me, they left in the last time. It must just be the audience. Maybe. Maybe this. Maybe it's the venue. Maybe there was a band there. There was Ah, waiter, waitress or bartender, distracting. Maybe there was food. Maybe people drinking. Maybe people were talking. Maybe people I was born interested and all that is part of the experience of trying to do stand up comedy. I had a date and a venue Ah, music show once and I was opening for a bunch of musicians. And one thing that I wasn't prepared for was that this audience they really were there for music would not fair for comedy. But I didn't know that. I thought they to show I'm on the I'm on the list of my headliner. Why don't they must be there to see me. I got that. I start telling jokes and people just staring you and confusion. You expected me to sing? No, no, I'm here to tell jokes, and it took them like a few minutes for them. The register that Oh, I'm not going to say things is meant to be humorous. So sometimes the audience expectations have to be set ahead of time. And hopefully you're in a place where they're expecting comedy. But if not, then maybe you have to take a few moments in the beginning of your act to address that you are going to be doing jokes. Otherwise, maybe the audience isn't prepared for you. Let's go back to the flopping part. So let's say you had a flop and you show bombs. And what what can you do with it? Well, first of all, you listen to your recording of your show and you'll listen and say, OK, which jokes didn't work? Where did I say something? And it was silence afterwards, and there was no laughing or there just wasn't a response, or people in the audience were groaning instead of laughing which part of those didn't work ? So then you will have a list of jokes that people laughed at Yale. Okay, this worked well, and you'll have a list of things that you'll have to be paying attention to it you'll know right away. Oh, this doesn't feel good. These jokes, OK, and something needs to happen here. Maybe things jokes need to be improved. They need to be punched up. They need to be tagged better. Maybe the premise itself needs to be altered slightly. Maybe the tags. I just need to swap out the tax at in different tags. Maybe the subject matter is wrong for this audience. If you go to a professional like a professional can conference or something, and you tell jokes that are about sex or religion or race, and the audience is not ready for that sort of topic, maybe you picked the wrong material for this venue. Um, you have to realize that sometimes people are more receptive to taboo jokes and others, and your choice of venue and who comes into the room will be subject to. That is a lot of a stuff going on in the news, and me, too, movements about comedians again, trouble for saying stuff on stage. But that's really only the high level comedians who getting saying a joke. And then I already have lots of complaints on Twitter on the lower level, people just don't laugh when you're starting out. Just people, won't they? Well, you won't get a response that you're hoping for from them. And when that happens, hopefully you can recover because you have other material follow. We have tags. What you don't want to do is just freeze up on stage and, oh, no, don't died. What do I do should have is a list of tag jokes. So if one doesn't work, the audience might not even know it's a joke. We'll just keep throwing on the tags, and sooner or later something hopefully will hit. And if you have enough tags, then it'll just keep going. And no one will even notice that your joke bond. But if this happens a lot and perhaps that joke needs to be gone, maybe you have to scratch it up. That's on your ranking. Your jokes. A, B, C and D. Maybe that's a D joke that Trump is the goat, so those are things to keep in line. Bombing on flopping is part of the experience of making your community material better when your jokes don't work. That's assigns you that okay, these jokes should go and what you're left with a jokes that were good. So you left with a better performance by bombing removed bad parts of your acts. You've sliced out your boring scenes of a movie and you're left with just better content. So, in a sense of bombing and flopping, is a very useful tool to the comedian a little bit more difficult when it comes to writing comedy because you don't know what people after not so much. But when you're on stage, you have instant feedback. You can hear here you can see their eyes, you're looking at them. They either laughing or they are drowning here, just bored and, you know you get instant feedback. So when is a few times and performance where you know exactly how good you are onstage any moment, and a real test to know off how good of a character act if you've chosen to go that route is, are people laughing? If you took the jokes out, if you are sometimes missing your punch lines and people are still laughing, we've done a good job of establishing your persona on stage
13. How to host a show or be a master of ceremony: get known for being funny, one of the most common things that people invite you to our to be the host of some event to be the master of ceremony, and I'd like to give you a few tips here for how you can be a good master of your ability. How can you be a good host, whether that be the person who is going to be introducing other comedians onto the stage persons in between or whether it's a professional gathering like a conference and you're being the host and master of ceremony for people are not comedians. Rules are quite similar. Actually, here are some useful guidelines. First of all, learn as much as you can about the event. The venue. Learn who's coming. Learn what is theatrics, fear of the venue. What kind of customers or clients, or what kind of audience who's who's in the room going to be there with you? What's the host like things is important information. You're gonna want to adapt your routine and your material for that. Ask who are the people that you're going to be introducing? I mean role of being a host or master of ceremonies introduced the feature guests. So if you can try to do a little interview with the guests that you're going to be ringing on stage, learn about Who are these people? Why are they going to be giving a speech? What are they known for? Maybe you can look calm. Lemon line. See, what kind of stuff do they have on their social media? What is there, What are they known for? Why is the audience going to see them? And you can often come up with a few jokes based on that information, so that before they come on the stage, you'll have one or two quick lines that you can just say about this person before they come on. And that's that. You sets you up and sets them up in a very nice way because the audience is already happy and laughing before they walk on stage. So they're in a good they leave me welcome. Quite wrong, Theo. Between guest, they expect you to be the host. So every time I guess this finished, you're going, Teoh, let them leave the staging. You're gonna come back on stage, so you should have a little bit of material that you can just jump into. And hopefully you can expand and contract that material depending on what your Aventis. Maybe the next guest slow is in the bathroom. He's late or something. You're gonna need a filling some room here, so hopefully you have some decent material that you can use for this event. He prepared ahead of time you can use and that you could just jump into, Um, often, they expect you to ask a few questions for the guest. Could be. Get the guest. You introduced the guests, they gave a speech and then you come on stage or you're saying this agent. They expect you to ask a few questions of them, so it helps to have a few questions prepared ahead of time. You know, one of the improvising stupid questions that everyone kind of already knows the answer to that doesn't look good. You're the one person who knows what's coming before it happens. Use that to your advantage, so you should have a few questions prepared. And at the end of the event, when your final guest is finishing up, we don't want to end with a question and answer question to answer. Okay. Thank you. Good bye, everybody. It's nice to have some kind of closing remark. It's good for a few reasons. A. It's a nice wrap up for the conference himself. Um, the U able to sum up, perhaps provide some kind of same that people can go home with providing experience for your audience. And secondly, it helps them to remember you. You're able to be the last person that the audience sees. So why not make it memorable? Why don't you give them some thing to go by and then let them know who you are? Obviously, don't make the cold conference about you. It's being about other people. But it's a nice way to leave the audience with a message that they can go home with.
14. Conclusion: Theo Linus. Course. Now you got to do the hard part. This is the easy part. Sitting, watching this eating popcorn. Now you gotta go put on some pants and go on stage. So you got a practice of stuff. If you want to be good at it, it's one thing to try it. And one thing Did you watch it? You got to actually go out there, write some jokes, do people laugh? You got experience bombing. You gotta realize that all of this is extremely useful. If you want to be a comedian, you just want to be a better public speaker. This is one of the easiest, or at least fastest ways to instantly get there. But definitely give it a try. Stand up comedy is very fulfilling. Its a lot of fun. You'll learn a lot. You'll be exposed. A lot of cool ideas. You laugh a lot. It's one of those skills where it doesn't matter what background you come from. Doesn't matter whether you're poor. As a matter of how good looking you are. Culture and stand up comedy is open to anyone. Some people say you can do anything you want and always true for comedy. It iss Anyone could be funny. Anyone could practice a routine, come up with jokes that is specific to them, their own perspective. And they can bring in ideas that other people will laugh it. I'm glad you took this course. I hope you had a great time. And this is the end. So congratulations. And I hope you enjoyed the comedy course.
Chester Sky, Learning Academy
