Help with stand-up

Hi All,

Just a quick post to see whether anyone can throw some ideas at my dilema?? I have been doing stand-up for a short while now (mainly 5 min spots) which is built up of one liners and a few stories but, my question is how do I develop my stories so that there are more jokes in them or that they are funnier??

The main problem I face with them is that when I tell a story to a group of friends it may get loads of laughs but, then if I try to 'perform' that story on stage as part of a routine it gets a totally different response (usually silence or a small mumur of laughter).

If you have any thoughts or opinions on how to improve this or if you have any book titles that may be worth reading I would be very grateful.

Many thanks,

Jason.

Give us some examples to work on

edit; Tony's advice seems pretty sound. My original reply went wildly off topic.

There's no quick fix for this you just need to become as comfortable on stage as you are when you are joking with your mates down the pub and this comes from experience and stage time.

Keep gigging and make sure that you know your material as well as you possibly can, that way you then free up part of your brain for improvising and having fun on stage.

It'll come in time, don't panic just yet.

Hi, thanks for your replies. Unfortunately I didn't see your post before the edit Jack but, I'll relax for a bit now and just work on the performance side of things and hopefully as I relax I'll be able to get the material across a bit better.

Many thanks,

Jason.

Hi sooty,

some of the stories that I would like to work on are as follows (these mainly revolve around my father):

1) When I was younger my dad was taking us out for the day. Over the course of the journey he became more agitated to the point where he was speeding/ driving erratcially. He pulled into a disabled bay near the front of a tescos with haste and I remember my brother saying you can't park here it's a disabled bay. To which my dad replied, " I am disabled... for a shit!!" before rushing off into the shop in search of a toilet.

2)Another time he took us to the cinema. The car park was packed but, there was a space that someone was waiting for, upon seeing the opeing being to his advantage my dad took this space. An arguement ensued with the driver of the other vehicle going off in search of another space. Once the coast was clear my father said "I'm not parking here in case that c**t comes and does my motor in."

Once in the cinema the driver of the other car was talking with friends something to the effect of "you wouldn't believe that some c**t just nicked the space I was waiting for" My dad heard this marched over to the bloke and said, "that c**t was me, do you wanna start something?"

I know I've probably not painted a very good picture of him but, he's not all bad and is set in his ways but, I just remember these as quite funny stories that happened that I would like to share.

any suggestions??

thanks,

Jason.

Aargh!!! I am the devil's advocate once again. Ever notice that when a story is told and all those who were there find it funny, yet noone else, prompting the line 'you had to be there' ? Jokes will always be set-up and punch. It may not always be obvious, but that's how they work. When considering your stories, you should be able to find both parts.
I get the impression that with have doing a few performances using unrelated one liners, you now want to move to a more flowing technique that allows you to give a part of yourself to the audience, instead of reading out a list of jokes that 'anybody could do'.

This is where I put in the caveat to say I am not a comedian and may have got this all wrong, but like to throw in my ten-penny worth, even if it just gets shot down.

I see the next level for you is to start to cluster jokes so you have a few around the same topic. This should allow you to generate a 'joke story' where you can change the delivery, reaction, adjectives and type of speech to make it personal.

Some of this may not be easy. One thing is true for everyone. You should get your set memorised so you know it backwards. The intro, the links, the body language and the outro.

Hope this helps.

PB.

Yeah. I agree Fo Sho.
Did my first gig last night. 10 minute set and couple of minutes talking to few people in audience.
My set which I knew back to front ended up being something of a blur. I hit the correct markers, got the requisite number of laughs that Id set myself (few more though), but if Id got the facial expressions and body language memorised in the same way as the script, it would have been way better.
So yeah, practice. F**king loads of it. Fortunately I don't do jokes or one liners (well, not really), so my set is just one long interconnected spew of bollocks anyway haha.
Good luck

What strikes me is that:

1) I didn't find any of those stories particularly funny
2) It seemed like a long setup for a not-so-great payoff
3) Every last line in your stories there ends with an expletive, like you're using that as a crutch to get a laugh

Also, it might not be best to use your friends for a barometer of what is funny, have you ever thought they might just be humouring you? The people that you don't know have no obligation to laugh, after all.

I might not be the best person to offer advice on this, as I haven't actually done my first gig yet, but it is helping me to decide what is and is not funny.

Basically, I agree with Park Bench in that 'you had to be there' automatically means that something won't be funny to a comedy audience. Chances are, if you're telling a friend about something that happened to you, they may well have been there, thus laughing at their own memories, or they may know the person/people you were with during said anecdote, and can laugh at knowing what a certain person's reaction would be to a certain situation. They certainly know you and your personal traits. You (and I) need to remember that the audience in a comedy club are very unlikely to know the people you were with, and therefore won't have the same reactions as people that do.

Also, you presumably know your friends well enough to know their sense of humour. I know I do; in the last three months I've taken two individual friends to watch two different comedians, who I'm a fan of anyway, but who my friends hadn't actually heard of, and so went in not knowing what to expect. They both left with tears of laughter rolling down their cheeks. You can play to this when telling them anecdotes. I quite often find myself saying to friends of mine something along the lines of "You would of laughed if you were in such a place the other day" followed by the anecdote that is sometimes littered with things like "You can just imagine him saying that" or "you know what she's like", and nine times out of ten they will laugh at the re-telling, whereas a comedy audience is unlikely to because, again, not knowing people you're talking about, they DON'T know what she's like, and they CAN'T imagine him saying that.

However, sometimes friends can be useful in weeding out bad jokes. Or mine are at least... If I say something that really isn't funny, they tell me. Usually by saying "You're a dick..." or something similar, but at least I know to scrap said joke. The same goes for if I tell a joke that doesn't rely on them having any prior knowledge of people or situations and they laugh.

I think it's safe to say that I'm waffling a bit now. I'm much better at getting my point across verbally rather than through the written word, but I hope this helps.

Quote: Jason Simmons @ November 24 2011, 12:52 PM GMT

Hi sooty,

some of the stories that I would like to work on are as follows (these mainly revolve around my father):

1) When I was younger my dad was taking us out for the day. Over the course of the journey he became more agitated to the point where he was speeding/ driving erratcially. He pulled into a disabled bay near the front of a tescos with haste and I remember my brother saying you can't park here it's a disabled bay. To which my dad replied, " I am disabled... for a shit!!" before rushing off into the shop in search of a toilet.

2)Another time he took us to the cinema. The car park was packed but, there was a space that someone was waiting for, upon seeing the opeing being to his advantage my dad took this space. An arguement ensued with the driver of the other vehicle going off in search of another space. Once the coast was clear my father said "I'm not parking here in case that c**t comes and does my motor in."

Once in the cinema the driver of the other car was talking with friends something to the effect of "you wouldn't believe that some c**t just nicked the space I was waiting for" My dad heard this marched over to the bloke and said, "that c**t was me, do you wanna start something?"

I know I've probably not painted a very good picture of him but, he's not all bad and is set in his ways but, I just remember these as quite funny stories that happened that I would like to share.

any suggestions??

thanks,

Jason.

View original

The first one sounds like passable one liner.

The rest sounds like stuff you'd discuss with a psychotherapist

Most standup routine are 90% made up with a sprinkling of truth. Get more in the habit of writing I'd say

The story is a difficult form. Difficult to write and difficult to do, but - like most things - it can be learnt by watching listening to others.

Anything by Mike Birbiglia is worth studying. One of my favourites is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbsnGVWmI1M

Even if you turn the picture off, the soundtrack is funny.

Another good story from a UK comedian (Matt Price) is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N_uquhYCMA

Enjoy and emulate.