John Roy

[johnroycomic]

Character rolled for @_streamofblood_ tomorrow https://www.instagram.com/p/B-S2Lcggc-4/?igshid=iwwfq7cn8lbc

[johnroycomic]

Watch me on a live play RPG stream with some hilarious people: TOMORROW at 1:30pm PT, these souls gaze into the abyss....and the abyss gazes also into them. Watch @guybranum @ifynwadiwe and @johnroycomic brave the horrors of space in MOTHERSHIP scifi role playing game with GM @jaredlogan. Link in bio! - # #comedy #rpg #criticalrole #twitch #livestream #dnd #scifi https://www.instagram.com/p/B-S2BQKAa98/?igshid=1xldsovlpoar6

[johnroycomic]

Free Comedy Class Week Four - Revised

Comedy Class Week Four

It's me again.  You've spent a week making other people listen to you talk, so now It's my turn to do it to you.

Last week I had you watch videos by Patton Oswalt, Jay Larson, and Dan Mintz.

Patton Oswalt’s “KFC Bowls” clip was there to show you how you might play multiple characters in the same bit, yet make it clear who is speaking at all times. I wanted you to see  just how many tactics you have to use to make each character have a clear, distincit, discernible emotional point of view. If you don’t do this effectively, really pounding in who is speaking at every moment, a bit like this will be impossible for the audience to follow.  They won't know who is talking, and they'll lose track of what the conflict is.

The Jay Larson example is there to pound home the same lesson, now with multiple people talking and not just two.

The Dan Mintz video is there to show another dead-pan comedian, like Anthony Jeselnick last week. I wanted you to see that this approach doesn’t mean that Dan’s stage character doesn’t have any emotional point of view at all. He’s not a joke telling robot. Rather, Dan approaches each joke with a mixture of slight confusion and insecurity. It IS an emotional stance, just not one that changes depending on the sentence, as it does with Jay or Patton. I wanted you to see how this point of view is a careful choice for the act, not just a default “no emotion" setting.

I also wanted to show how some of the laughs Dan gets aren’t simply from the cleverness of his writing, but from the disconnect between what his character is saying, and the odd way he seems to feel about it.  

Anyway, enough about comedians who aren't you.  Let's talk about your progress. You've made it four weeks.  A month of standup!   Congratulations, you are almost to ten sets! This is a meaningless landmark that gets you nothing, but it’s cool, isn’t it?  I hope your third week went as well as it possibly could, given the endless ever-changing obstacle course that is Open Mic comedy.

Hopefully, by now, at least one of your jokes has worked more than once.

Which of your jokes is working most consistently? Why do you think that is? Can you identify any elements detailed in the last three weeks’ lessons in your most consistently successful joke?

If none of your jokes has worked to your satisfaction yet, don’t worry. Keep going through the steps I laid out last week, and eventually you will shape a joke that hits more often than not.

While we’re on the subject, here, in easy to copy bullet point form, is the Comedy Refinement Process I've been going on about, which we will further refine this week:

Write down the most consistently successful jokes from last week.

Ask yourself : Do any possible performance-based improvements jump out, like a body motion, facial expression, or change in vocal emphasis?

Would it benefit from cutting needless words in the set up? How about substituting more colorful language?

Is there room to clarify how you feel about what you are saying?

If none of these apply, put these jokes at the top of this week’s set list.

What less-consistent joke from last week do you have ideas on how to improve? Change it, keeping in mind these questions:

Is it clear what you are saying?

Is it clear how you feel about what you are saying?

Is there a clear expectation set up for the listener?

Is there a surprising fulfillment of that expectation?

After making all applicable adjustments, write that joke next on your list.

Fill the rest of your set with new ideas from this week. Form them into the best jokes you can, keeping in mind the above points.

Arrange these jokes into a Shit Sandwich, with the most successful two jokes at the top, another consistent joke to close, and the most untried material in the middle of your set.  Do this until you have all the jokes you need to fill the amount of time you will be performing.

And that, in as few words as possible, is the Comedy Refinement Process. It is an always-dependable tool for the construction of a standup comedy act.

“WAIT!” you might want to yell at this point, “If I keep repeating last week’s jokes, eventually all the jokes will be successful, and then there won’t be any room in my set to work on new stuff!”

Good point. At some point you will need to “graduate” consistently successful jokes from the Process, and make room for new ones. It would be my fondest wish for you to not have to do that until you have five awesome minutes. I would love it if you got to take a week-long victory lap through the Open Mics where your set was “all killer no filler.” Unfortunately, and this may already be evident, when you do the same Open Mics over and over again, people hear your material over and over again too. It starts to lose power, as it is no longer surprising to most of the room. There is no hard and fast rule for when this has happened. You’ve got to feel it out. If a joke that once did very well starts to do poorly in the same rooms, and you look out and recognize some of the faces from other nights you've told the joke?  It’s time to move it out of your Open Mic setlist. It will go into a new file that I will tell you about shortly. It’s also time to celebrate, because you now have your first solid bit! Your first go-to joke. The first piece of what will become your “showcase set.”

Assignment One

Create a computer file. Notepad will suffice, but you may want to use a better word processor as you're going to want to move these words around a lot. You could use an old-school paper and pen notebook for this task, but it will have to be revised constantly.  I definitely recommend a physical notebook for day to day notes and setlists. It's compact, tactile, it doesn't run out of power, and the act of writing long-hand helps your thoughts stick in your long term memory. However, the document I'm about to describe is one area where digital is better. If you want to do this long hand, you better like rewriting things.

Call this file whatever you want. When I started, I called it the “Massive Bit List.” This was ironic at first, but I watched with pride as it slowly became accurate. Divide the file into three groups.

Write down “Group One” first. These are your best jokes. As always, character lines and story beats go here as well, if you are doing those on stage instead of standard jokes. Group One is the pool of material you would draw from to make a “showcase set.” This just means a set you would do for real audience members who are not comedians on a real comedy show. These are the jokes you would choose to perform in order to give yourself the best chance of doing well. A showcase show at a bar or an off-night at a comedy club is your next most likely venue. Performing at such a show is the first goal of a beginner comic.

Don’t write out each entire joke.  Whatever one or two-word phrase you know that bit by will suffice.  Make sure Group One really is just your best jokes. These are bits that don’t need to be done at Open Mics unless you really want to open or close strong. If you feel in your gut that a bit still needs work, or has a shaky part in it, don’t put it here. If a joke needs work but you feel you can’t do it at an Open Mic anymore because the other comics and patrons have heard it too much, just rest it for a month. Then bring it back. Don’t worry. They won’t remember it any more than you remember their shit from last month. You will have a fresh chance to fix whatever you felt it lacked.

However, just because a joke gets to Group One doesn’t mean it’s “finished.” Standup comedy is a living breathing medium. Bits are always yours to change or expand. As long as you still enjoy a joke, you can add things, find new lines, new act-outs, and new angles to explore. We are not writing a script. Never think of your old material as set in stone. Comedy is nothing but a series of moments that we inhabit, and any bit has the potential to grow and change with your overall act.

Now write down “Group Two.” In this space, write down whatever jokes you have that are getting laughs here and there, but still need some work at the Open Mic level before you would trust them on a showcase show.

Finally, write down “Group Three.” This is your “in the shop” file, where bits go when they aren’t working in their current form.  These are bits you need to put aside for awhile until you gain a new insight that makes them work. I have had things in Group Three for years and then one new thought fixes them. Don’t throw anything away.

This bit file sticks with you your entire career. In addition to helping you remember all of the jokes you will write in the years you spend doing this, it’s a great way of seeing where you are in comedy at a glance. You can see what works; what doesn’t; what themes seem to resonate with audiences; what topics you may have difficulty with. So many insights can be gained just seeing your material laid out in one place. Watching it grow and watching Group One fill up with material is a rewarding way to see tangible evidence of your progress as a comedian.

Your goal at this point should be to fill up Group One until you have a solid five minutes of comedy. This is the smallest building block of a standup performance. It is the least amount of time you would ever be asked to perform on a show.  It is the standard length of a guest set at a professional comedy club.  It is also the approximate length of a standup set on a late night TV show.  Five minutes is to a comedian what one song is to a musician. You need to get that first single ready to perform.

This can take a while. Don’t rush it. Let the Process work. Take time with each new joke and make sure it is ready. Make sure a Group One joke is one you are confident about doing in front of any crowd, with a reasonable expectation of success.

As you progress in comedy, you will often be asked by bookers of shows and clubs, “How much time you have?”  

This does not mean, “If you performed every bit of material you have written in a row, how long would that take?”

This means “How many minutes of Group One jokes do you have?” You will be doing yourself and your reputation as a comedian a favor by being as hard on yourself as possible when answering this question. The booker is trying to judge how much of their show they can reliably entrust to you. Be honest and they will be pleased with the result and likely to book you again. Inflate that estimate, and you will look like a fraud, a rank amateur, or a crazy person. You want to cultivate the reputation of someone who does what they say they are going to do. A comic they don’t have to worry about. A comic who gets the job done.

Assignment Two

Make your set list for this week’s Open Mics, exactly as you have been doing. Get used to the Process until it becomes second nature.

Assignment Three.

Watch Kyle Kinane's World's Largest Pizza bit.  You will find it on the following video, from the 4:30 second mark on.  If this link is now dead, google “Kyle Kinane Big Mama's and Papa's Pizza,” or “Kyle Kinane Acme.”

http://youtu.be/WoeQybA7gqM

Then watch Jim Gaffigan break down Hot Pockets.  You can find the bit here.  If this link has died, Googling “Gaffigan Hot Pockets” will pull it up from somewhere.

http://youtu.be/N-i9GXbptog

I did not select these bits because they are both about food, but because they are both long sets about the same premise. Long chunks with tons of individual jokes in them. This may not be a coincidence. Food is a juicy comedy topic: you need it to live, yet you eat too much of the wrong food and you die.  You eat food every day, and it fuels the entire world economy. Food is on people’s minds a lot. People feel strongly about it. Whenever those things are present in a topic, it has the potential for great bits.

After asking our good old “Giraldo Questions” from week one, ask yourself these:

How many individual jokes can you identify in Jim Gaffigan’s set?

How many individual jokes can you identify in Kyle Kinane’s?

Express each individual joke as a simple declarative sentence.

Express each comedian's entire piece as a simple declarative sentence.

How does Jim feel about Hot Pockets? How does Kyle feel about the giant pizza? How do they feel about each individual sub-topic under the larger premise? How do they communicate these feelings to the audience?

Do this, and don’t read ahead to the next paragraph until you have answered all of the questions.

Notice how there is an expectation that is set and a surprise delivered on each piece of the larger bit. Notice how each individual joke under the larger premises of “Hot Pockets are disgusting” and “this giant pizza is a ridiculous example of American excess” has its own individual premise, such as “Hot Pockets would be ludicrous on a menu” or “someone who wanted extra cheese even though it was thirty bucks would be a dick.”

Look at your own writing. Have you tried to tackle a large subject on which you had a lot to say? This is how you do it. Look at your joke and ask the exact same questions you just answered about the videos. What is the over-arching premise? What are the individual premises? How do I feel about each one? You have to begin, and then complete, each individual joke one after the other. You have to clearly state each point of what you are saying.

If you don’t do this exactly as carefully as Kyle and Jim did, the audience can get lost and confused and the bit can fail. Each point must also be funny in its own right or it should be cut from the piece. You are a comic. You do not have the luxury of making points that aren’t funny, even if they are part of a larger piece. If it is going to stay in the bit, find a way to get a laugh.  

Perhaps, when you are an experienced comic, you will create a one-person show that contains stories or parts of stories that are serious, that are not expected to get laughs.  That is a task for when you have mastered the basics of comedy writing and are ready to stretch the medium.  Right now, assume that every component of your show must make the audience laugh or it has no place in your act.

Maybe, like Anthony Jeselnik and Dan Mintz from previous lessons, you don’t write in large chunks. If so, just use this week as further practice in identifying premises, expectations, surprises, and emotional angles. You can never do too much of this as you begin to write your own material.

If you do write or care to write large multi-joke bits, use these videos as a blueprint.

Ask yourself:

What is my main point?

What individual points am I making to illustrate this main point?

Is each one distinct enough to get their own joke?

Do I have a way to make each point funny with an expectation and a surprise?

Do I wrap up each bit in its own space within the larger piece, allowing the audience to keep up and digest each individual point?

That’s it for this week! Hit the mics! Kill ‘em! See you here next week.

[johnroycomic]

Entirely Free Comedy Class - Week Three Revised

Been a while, but here is the new updated version of Week Three.

My Entirely Free Comedy Class, Week Three

Welcome back.  Hope you enjoyed Anthony Jeselnik and James Adomian.  I also hope the lesson about different comedy styles and basic joke structure sunk in.

First, I wanted you to see how different comics can be from each other and still achieve greatness. Previous works on standup bothered me in that they seemed to suggest there was a right way or best way to do it. From the outset, I wanted to choose people that would show this was clearly false without me having to come out and say it.

For the Jeselnik video, I wanted you to see the setup/punch structure in its most basic form. I wanted you to see the “setup=expectation, Punchline=surprising fulfillment of that expectation" formula in an easy-to-identify state. You can’t get a much clearer (or funnier) example of the classic joke form than in Anthony’s work.

I also wanted you to see a dead-pan comedy style to contrast with Greg Giraldo’s emotive style. I wanted you to see that both were equally valid options while understanding their differences.

As for James Adomian, I wanted you to be able to recognize those same essential structural elements when they are not as naked as they are in Anthony’s work. You spotted them when they were out in the open. Now let’s see if you can spot them when they are cleverly hidden in a conversational style.

Give It Up For Everyone You Saw Tonight

With your first two weeks complete, you should now have at least six sets under your belt.  And you  most likely have seen more standup comedians in those two weeks than you have in your entire life leading up to this point.  Think about the other performers you saw at your Open Mics this week. Who was the best? Think about their set and then answer the same questions you answered after watching Greg Giraldo's “Midlife Vices.”

How would you describe the comic's stage character, that is to say, the personality they present in their act?

Were the jokes presented as true stories from life?  Or clearly false “jokes?”

What made you laugh in their act? Why?

What didn’t work for you? Why? Why do you think it may have worked for others?

How did the comic use their body to get laughs?

How did the comic use their face to get laughs?

How did the comic use their voice to get laughs?

What did you notice that made their act unique?

How did the comic structure the jokes that they wrote?

They're Not All Winners, Folks

Now, of all the comics you saw this week, who was the least successful? Answer the questions “backwards,” just like last week.

How would you describe the comic's stage character, that is to say, the personality they present in their act?

Were the jokes presented as true stories from life?  Or clearly false “jokes?”

Why do you think you didn't laugh?

Did anything work in their act?  Why do you think those bits worked and not the others?

How did the comic's use of their body fail to get laughs?

How did the comic's use of their face fail to get laughs?

How did their voice work fail to get laughs?

What did you notice that made their act uniquely unappealing?

How did the comic structure the jokes that they wrote?

Did the same person have the best set both weeks? If so, did their sets have anything in common? Write down what elements their sets had in common.  How did those elements factor in their success?

If the best comedian this week was different than the best from last week, how did were there acts different?  Were any elements to their successful performances similar?  Ask the same questions about  the performers who were least successful.

Assignment One

Remember when I said you had to write down anything funny that you may have said over the week?  I was serious.  Pull out your notes.  Look over the funny things you said and wrote down last week.  Can any of them be made into jokes? Make as many as you can into bits for this week’s set. As always, spend no more than five hours writing this material.

If you didn't write anything down, make sure you start this week.  Your jokes won't write themselves.  This is the most important element of building a successful act.  Write down anything with even a hint of humor in it.  Or even a hint of irony or just something you noticed that seemed out of the ordinary.  Don't doubt or censor yourself at this stage.  Write down anything and everything that strikes you. You will have time to be critical later when you decide which thoughts will go in your act.

Assignment Two

Look over the jokes you've performed so far..  What's your best joke?  I know it's only been two weeks, but what joke has gotten the most laughs consistently?  If none of your jokes were particularly successful, don't panic, you're doing fine.  You've only done this for two weeks. Just pick the one that got any laughs at all.  Read it over, watch or listen to any recordings you may have of it, and then ask yourself the following questions.

Without changing the words of the joke, how can I improve its effectiveness?

How can I use my voice to emphasize the important points of this joke?

How can I use movement to communicate this joke more effectively?

Write down the other jokes from your act that got laughs.  Answer the above questions for all of them.

What Am I Doing Up Here?

Think about your performances this week.  Your stage performance is equally as important to your effectiveness as a comic as your writing. If performance didn't matter, standups would simply print out the jokes, hand them to the crowd to read at their leisure, and it would be just as entertaining.

You need to make sure that, in addition to the words you have carefully crafted to get your laughs, you are doing everything you can with your body and voice to sell your bits to the audience.  Make sure that you are thinking actively about what these “non-word” elements are in your act. How are you saying what you are saying? What are you doing while you say it? Are you adding additional power to the words you have written?

I am not asking you to scream and jump around the stage like a lunatic.  Your goal is to enhance the effect of your writing, not distract from it.  Of course, if you think jumping around like a lunatic is exactly what needs to happen, I'm not going to tell you not to.  

However, a non-word element in your act doesn’t need to be big and hammy. It could be as simple as casually walking around the stage and then stopping for effect when it is time to deliver a punchline. Or doing a small double-take when you want to show that something surprised you. Or maybe you want nothing to distract from your words so you remain entirely motionless during a bit. Or whisper the set up and turn your volume up on the punchline for effect. You don’t have to make a lot of noise or over the top motions to make an impact on the audience.

Can You Feel Me?

Now ask yourself this:

How does my stage character feel about what they are saying?

You may find yourself objecting to that frame. “Stage character? My stage character is me!  What are you talking about?”  I just mean the slice of yourself that you are presentng on the stage.  Your “stage character” is the persona you are giving to the audience in the time you have to perform.  It's the part of you that you want them to see during your set.  This could be as close to you as it is possible to be while being under lights and talking through a sound system.  It could be as radically different from your day to day self as Bobcat Goldthwait's early persona was from the way he ordered food at a restaurant.  How does this version of you feel about what they are saying?  What is their emotional viewpoint towards their words? Do they love that “Their mother is always on Twitter” or do they hate it?  Are they afraid when people talk to them in the gym or are they flattered.  

Once you are sure which feelings you want to present in your material, ask yourself, “How can I convey these emotions using my face, body, and voice?”

Say you have a bit about how annoying your local post office branch is. When you tell the audience you went to the post office, is there an inflection you could use that might let them know you hate it there? How would you say it if it was your favorite place on Earth? Is there a facial expression you might use? This doesn’t have to be extreme. Yelling every sentence where you are angry and sniffling through every sentence where you are sad would look bizarre. In general, think about how you would convey these emotions in regular speech, and try to do that on stage as well.

There are many ways of relating emotionally to your material. What do I mean by this? Greg Giraldo does his best to infuse his jokes with the emotional state he is conveying. Think of his portrayal of the flabbergasted McCain pointing out Obama’s blackness to the crowd. it is straight forward, direct, and heightened. McCain is baffled and panicked and so Greg acts baffled and panicked when he says McCain's line in the bit.This is his approach throughout his entire act. While he may be sad on one joke and happy on the next, he is going to act out those emotions fully, mirroring with his body and voice the emotion suggested by his words.

By contrast, Anthony Jeselnik uses the same detached attitude towards all his jokes, investing no emotion in the specifics of his stories. No matter what the words coming out of his mouth might suggest, Anthony delivers them with the same cold distance.  He then exxaggerates his arrogance to such a degree that the audience gets a sense he doesn't mean any of this.  And, every third sentence or so, he gives them a slight smile in between the jokes. The cumulative effect of all this gives a clear message: this isn’t serious. It allows the audience to enjoy his dark jokes, safe in the knowledge that these aren't his actual experiences or opinions.  

You will find that in general, standups have a consistent approach to emotion in their act. If they are easily irritated by small things in one joke, they will be that way in their other jokes as well. This helps the audience figure them out, understand their point of view, and invest themselves in the performance.  Once you know Lewis Black is prone to working himself into a rage, you get used to it, and learn to anticipate it in the act.  You know what's coming and you start to enjoy wondering just how angry he is going to get once he starts a bit.  Just like you do with a joke, his character has set an expectation (he's going to get angry) and is fullfilling it in a surprising way every time he explodes with a new burst of creative profanity.

It is beneficial to stick with your approach to emotion throughout the act.  You want the audience to get used to you and comfortable with your presence.  Performing one joke from Anthony’s detached perspective, and the next from Giraldo’s highly emotional point of view without any justification for the switch will be jarring to the audience. It will work against the crowd's ability to connect with your comedy. This may seem confusing and abstract. It’s OK. Don’t think about it too much.  Just start considering how your stage character feels about what they are saying.

Assignment Three Now that you have written down the jokes from your first two weeks that worked, write down the jokes that didn’t.

Did anything work last week that didn’t work this week? Ask yourself why this may have been. Did you perform it differently? Change the writing? What can you do to make it successful again?

Write down the premise of each joke that didn’t work as a declarative sentence.

For example, this classic Tom Papa joke : “Pet owners say pets love being pets.  Really? Open the door...”

Becomes “Pets will sieze any opportunity to escape your house.” It feels gross to ruin a joke breaking it down like this, but it helps you understand the foundation your joke is built on and see if it needs fixing.

Look at each sentence and ask yourself:

Does the sentence make sense?

Does the joke you wrote express that idea clearly?

Did your performance help that idea to be understood?

Does it have an element of expectation and a surprising fulfillment of that expectation?

Is the expectation clearly set up before the surprising element is revealed?

Modify your jokes so that you can answer “yes” to all of the above questions.  

Take the most promising of these jokes and write it down in its new form. Put the rest of the jokes that didn’t work in the “In the Shop” file you started last week. Every month or so, read the bits in the file. See if a new angle on how something might be fixed presents itself, either from the performance or the writing side. Give it a shot. Sometimes your mind sees a new solution after some time away from the idea.

Assignment Four

Make your set list for the open mics this week.

Last week you went through your jokes from Week One and kept the ones that worked. Do this again for Week Two.  Even if you’ve already done a joke six times, you need to get used to repeating the same bit over and over, infusing it with new energy each time. You will be surprised how much better at delivering it you can be once the words are second nature. Jokes improve dramatically when you start with confidence in the material and a knowledge of how people tend to react to it.  And it takes many repetitions of a bit before you are no longer worried at all about remembering words and can turn all of your attention towards nailing the proper timing and inflection.

If you had enough jokes that worked these last two weeks, you may find yourself looking at a list that's nothing but bits you've already told.  Good for you!  But don't just write out a set list full of oldies and go out for your victory lap.  Make sure you have room for at least one of the jokes you wrote down as sentences in Assignment Three.  And make sure you have room for at least brand new joke you wrote this week in Assignment One.

Fill up the rest of your set with new jokes from this week. You will notice that this is the same process as last week. It will be the same next week, and every week you do standup. This is the never ending “joke refinery” that leads to a great standup act. I call it the Comedy Refinement Process, but that sounds pretensious and gross, like I am teaching graduate science and not the art of making drunks laugh.  Maybe you'd prefer calling it the “Cotton Candy Machine” or “The Laugh Grinder,”  Call it what ever you like, but respect it.  This process has produced every joke I have ever told onstage. This process works. Get used to it, and let it work for you.

How Much Time Do I Have?

It can be hard to predict how long your set will take while you are planning what jokes to do.  I am constantly telling you to put five minute sets together, but until you perform the jokes, how do you know how long they take?  You don’t want to plan too many jokes to get to, or end up with too few to fill your time. No one wants to find themselves uttering the deadly “So what else is going on... halfway through a five minute open mic set.

Eventually, you will learn to judge the duration of a bit off the page. For now, you have to do it the hard way. Once you have your jokes in order, time yourself saying them out loud. But how do you time how long they are going to laugh?  This next thing sounds beyond stupid, but you can allow time for the audience to laugh by saying the words “laugh laugh laugh” out loud after each Punchline. For big, fat, bit-ending punchlines, or if you are preforming for a big audience, say “laugh laugh laugh” THREE TIMES after the last word of your joke. It is possible for a fat applause break to take longer, but if this happens at an Open Mic, you will be so happy you won’t give a shit if you got to all your bits. You will probably want to just get off the stage right then and look like a genius.

It is a crude system, but the “laugh laugh laugh” method is a shockingly accurate predictor of how long it takes a crowd to laugh. I have used this to time sets within seconds. But it is a rare Open Mic audience that will give you the kind of response reserved for the triple “laugh laugh laugh.” Saying it once after each Punchline when you practice your set should give you a good idea what is going to fit in the time you have.

Any One From Out of Town Here Tonight?

If you feel a real call to do crowd work, to get laughs off interacting with the audience, I understand. Please hold off another couple weeks. Get used to the material generating process until it is second nature. Open mic sets are very short, and I want to make sure you get to practice the most successful jokes, the “fixed” jokes, AND the brand new jokes in every set. In a few weeks, when you’ve gotten the hang of it, it will be OK to add a minute or two of crowd work to your set.  Keep in mind, though, that a comedy open mic is perhaps the worst place on Earth to do crowd work.  It's an audience full of comedians.  They are not going to act in any way like a regular person at a comedy show would.  Expect resistance, silence, or constant one-up-manship if you attempt to “Spritz” at an open mic.

The “Shit Sandwich” Structure.

“Okay, so I have selected my jokes for the week. What order should I do them in?” Good question. I like a set structure I named after a line in “This is Spinal Tap.”  In the movie, the fake rock band made an album called “Shark Sandwich” and a critic wrote a one word review: “Shit Sandwich.”  Funny, and also a great discription for the way I structure my standup performances.  You can use it in any length of set and it will serve you well. It is by no means the only way to structure a set list. It may not be right for you down the road, but try it for now.

This structure is based on the psychology of the audience. It is great for open mics because it gives your new bits the best possible chance at being well-received by the listeners.

I call it the “Shit Sandwich” because your best jokes are at each end (the bread) and your newest, most unsure stuff is in the middle (not that any of your jokes are shit, of course, but you get the idea.) You open with your biggest, quickest laugh. This establishes that you are funny, winning the audience’s confidence and trust. Do another bit that you know works after that, so the audience builds a positive impression of your act.

Then, do the newer jokes dead center. The crowd will be more willing to take in your new stuff with an open mind now that you have built some trust and good will at the top of the act. Also, If they don’t work, it won’t ruin the good feeling you built at the beginning enough to derail your whole set.

Close with another thing that usually works, so you reward the crowd for sticking through the experimental stuff and leave them with a positive impression of your act.  Give the good seals a fish treat for their patience.

This structure allows the audience the maximum chance of enjoying your set while creating a safe space in your performance for you to take a risk.

You are simply arranging your set so the most unsure material is in the center, with the best stuff on either end.  This way, the Sandwich can expand or contract to fill any length of show you desire. It is simple, elegant, and versatile.

Assignment Five

Arrange the set list you made in Assignment Four into a Shit Sandwich.  Put the joke that worked the best in the last two weeks at the top.  The second most successful joke second.  The one you're trying to fix after that, Then a new one or two.  Finally close with something that worked last week.  If you are ony getting two or three minutes, obviously, you have less room.  Do the best joke, then a new one, then the one you are trying to fix.  If you have enough time, close with another joke that has worked for you before.

Assignment Six

Watch the following videos:

Google “Patton Oswalt KFC Bowls.”  Then Google “Jay Larson Wrong Number Laugh Factory.” Then Google “Dan Mintz Letterman.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfan5MacmsI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvHZBlHbN3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFO0CkSiZfI

As always, answer our favorite questions after watching their sets.

Video Questions

How would you describe the comic's stage character, that is to say, the personality they present in their act?

Were the jokes presented as true stories from life?  Or clearly false “jokes?”What made you laugh in their act? Why?

What didn’t work for you? Why? Why do you think it may have worked for others?

How did the comic use their body to get laughs?

How did the comic use their face to get laughs?

How did the comic use their voice to get laughs?

What did you notice that made their act unique?

How did the comic structure the jokes that they wrote?

It is important to try and understand as many different approaches to comedy as you can. Now that you have thought about each comic’s approach, answer this:

How do the two comedians use non-verbal elements in their act?

Write down one thing each comedian does  with their face or body to make their material connect.

What is their approach to emotion?

Find one line from each comedian’s act that conveys a strong emotion. How did they deliver this line? Did they do anything with their voice to enhance or to downplay the emotion in their words? What?

Patton Oswalt presents many characters who all feel differently about the KFC Bowls.

How many different viewpoints does he present?

How do you know they are different characters?

How does he underline this with his performance? How does he show you when he’s switched parts?

Which point of view does Patton seem to agree with?

How does he let you know?

What can you learn from this set about differentiating between characters in a joke?

What can you learn about clearly presenting conflicting emotions?

Watch Dan Mintz on Letterman.

What is Dan Mintz’s emotional relationship to his jokes?

Hint: He definitely has one.

It is well chosen and specific. Does it seem appropriate to what he is talking about? Is he closer to Anthony Jeselnik’s approach to emotion or Greg Giraldo’s?

Describe the mood and emotional state of Dan’s stage character.

In what ways is it unusual?

How does he make subtle use of his body, face, and voice to convey this?

How does this affect the way the things he says are viewed by the audience?

Find a laugh Dan gets from the disconnect between what he is saying and how he seems to feel about it.

Look at your own bits from the last two weeks. Do you use any similar techniques to the comedians you watched this week? Do you know how you are using emotion in each of your jokes?

Assignment Seven

Write down a list of the emotions you convey in each joke. Ask yourself how you can convey it clearly, both verbally and non verbally. If all this stufff about emotional viewpoints seems like too much to pile on to material that you are still working to just get out clearly, don’t deal with it this week. Work on what we learned last week until it feels comfortable before adding new elements. It is ALWAYS cool to skip a week, as long as you keep going to your Open Mics, writing new jokes, and refining your set the way I taught you. It’s an on-line course after all. Move ahead at your own pace.

But when you are ready, I want you to begin to consider the following elements when you develop your jokes:

Can the audience understand your premise?

Do they know how your stage character feels about this premise?

Do you use the most concise and colorful language you can?

Does it have elements of expectation and surprise?

Do you use your voice and body to perform it clearly and effectively?

All of these elements will ensure that your material has the highest chance of success.

And that’s it. Give the “Comedy Refinement Process” another week. Think a little about emotion in standup comedy. Try and make a Shit Sandwich. Perform this set at least three times. Record your observations. Kill ‘em! Contact me with any questions and I’ll see you in a week.

[johnroycomic]

The Musical Brilliance of John Mulaney’s Stand-up

Revisiting one of the comedian’s best jokes, “The Salt and Pepper Diner.”

I wrote another installment of The Great Bits, this one about one of the best stories in all of standup, 

[johnroycomic]

Philadelphia!  I am doing standup in your city for the first time on Wednesday!  Come out!  Link to tickets above.

[johnroycomic]

Entirely Free Comedy Class Week Two - Revised!

WEEK TWO

You made it!  You're alive and you're back for more.  That's great.

First, a huge round of applause for doing what the vast majority of people who think about doing stand-up never do. You did stand-up  Someone, somewhere, right now, is telling their friend at the bar how they always wanted to do it, and you have gone and actually done it.  The next time it comes up, you can be the only one in the conversation to say, “I've done stand-up”  And that's for the rest of your life. However it went, and we will delve into all the ways it could have gone soon enough, you deserve real praise for making it happen at all.  A character in Stephen King's “The Dead Zone” remarks on how the world is split into two groups: “bullshit people” and people who do what they say they're going to do.  It's a tough standard, but on this one thing at least, you're in group two.

It's a scary thing to do.  Those studies where people say they fear public speaking more than death aren't just something someone made up.  Even though stand-up comedy is far less likely to harm you than taking a shower, that fear is real.  Those of us who do this for a living felt it too, and sometimes still do.  It's just that our desire to do it is stronger.  And so was yours.  

Okay, that's enough. We have sufficiently admired your participation trophy.  Put it down, and get out your notes.  It's time to get to work. First things first:

The Answers to Last Week's Video Questions

I asked you to watch “Midlife Vices” and fill out the worksheet. There are many possible correct answers to these questions.  Everyone will be struck by different things when watching the special, and because the special is so good, there are a bunch of things you could've picked.   A highlight for me is The Obama/McCain bit.  His joke quickly cuts straight to the heart of the issue, and his exasperation as McCain is sold so well.

  But whatever your specific answers, there are two things I hope you saw.

I hope you recognized that this was the work of a true master.  You can’t get better than Giraldo.  Everything that makes up great comedy is on display here: a strong point of view, an energetic, compelling, and precise performance, and clear, engaging writing. “Midlife Vices" is a tour de force.

I also hope that watching Giraldo drew your attention to the performance side of stand-up. Reviews often focus solely on the content of a comedy special, as if only what the performer is saying counts, and not how they say it.  If that were true, why bother to perform the jokes at all?  Why not just print out the script and hand it out?  I wanted you to pay attention to all the movements and facial expressions that add up to create an effective stand-up act.  

If parts of it weren't your thing and you weren't feeling it, don't worry.  There are many clips of wildly different styles coming up and something will be sure to line up with your tastes.  Comedy isn't track and field, where you're either the fastest or you're not.  It's not even diving, where the judges all basically agree what a success looks like.  Lots of people can be equally good at the same time, and no one is going to like all of them.  Laughter is an involuntary reaction and there is no argument than can make something funny for you.  Just understand that there is a difference between comedy that isn't to your liking and comedy that isn't effective.  And if “Midlife Vices” wasn't your cup of tea, take some time to watch it again until you can understand why the people in that theater are going nuts.

Grinding

You should now have performed stand-up comedy three times.  Please wait until you have done that to continue.  You won't get anything out of reading ahead.  These lessons are just words until you can relate to them from experience on stage.

Ideally you were able to do all three sets in one week.  If that can't work for you because of your schedule or your area, you can space them across two weeks.  You will ultimately need to raise that to three if you intend to go professional, though.  Once or twice a week is fine for the purposes of this class, or to see if you even enjoy it. Beyond that, you simply will not improve quickly enough if you can't increase it to three or more.  Stand-up is a physical activity that relies on muscle memory.  The memory of how your last set felt must be fresh in your mind to learn from. Perform less than three times a week, and it fades.  You have to constantly re-learn lessons that don't stick.  You seriously handicap your rate of growth. You will have to consider changing your work schedule or city of residence if you decide to get serious about stand-up as more than a hobby.

However, if you are one of the lucky ones able to go up more than three times in week, don’t skip ahead to the next week of the class after three shots at it. Take advantage of your good fortune and practice the same lesson all week. You will have a really solid handle on it when Monday rolls around.

Give It Up, Everybody

It's best if you do your sets for this class free from any chemical influences. If you had a beer or a shot or a puff of weed before you went up this week, I understand.  I didn’t say anything about it in Week One because I just wanted you to get on stage and get started, whatever it took.  There is nothing wrong with having a small amount of a legal substance before you go up every now and then.  There is something wrong with needing it.  I’d like you to go up without it for the rest of the class.  

I understand some of you may like to calm your anxieties.  Fear of performing is natural.  I had it for years. Conquering that fear is part of stand-up, and learning to do it from within, on your own, is necessary to becoming a comedian. Using intoxicants to skip that step creates much bigger problems down the road, especially in a world that will never stop pushing free alcohol at you.  

I don’t care what you do after the show, but during this class’ duration, go up sober.  So many formative experiences happen here at the beginning. You owe it to yourself to observe them as carefully as possible.

This Mic Sucks

Hopefully at least one of your performances this week took place in a room that wasn’t empty, full of jaded comics who didn’t listen, or drunken patrons talking over the comedy.  Unfortunately, a lot of open mics fall in to one of these categories.  It’s something you are just going to have to deal with, the way a golfer accepts that sometimes the course is a goat track.  

The worse the circumstances, the harder it is to measure how well your jokes did.  When the audience isn't giving big laughs to anyone, you need to tune your ear to whatever they are giving out.  Watch comedy until someone on the show genuinely makes you laugh. Listen for the level of audience response to that joke.  That's what counts as a “win” in that room.  Get a laugh that big or higher, and your joke is a keeper.

Of course, difficult comedy nights don't need to stay that way.  Open Mics are direct reflections of the comics that populate them. If you want a more supportive Open Mic, be a part of that change.  If you want a great audience, work at being a great audience member.  Laugh when you think something’s funny. Watch the other comics’  sets. Keep your face out of your phone when someone’s doing their act. If someone you like is going up, tell the person next to you that this comic is funny.  They will be more likely to listen and laugh. Buy something from the venue.  Get to know the staff.  Tip well. Get them behind the show.  Just a couple comics working to foster the kind of environment where they would like to perform can make a big difference.

Assignment One

Think back on your experiences this week.  Answer these questions wherever you are writing all this shit.  As always, there is a copy in the Worksheets section.

How did it feel to go on stage?

What did you enjoy?

What did you not enjoy?

Who was your favorite performer of the night?

Why?

Assignment Two

Think of everyone you saw go up this week.  Which comic did you enjoy the most?  Fill out a Video Questions Worksheet about their performance. Compare the answers to the ones you gave for “Midlife Vices.”   Notice anywhere they were similar to Greg?  What did they do differently?

Assignment Three

Who was your least favorite performer of the night? Why?

Think back on their set.   Find the Unsuccessful Set Questions Worksheet in the back of the book, with all of the other handy worksheets.  They are like the Video Questions but flipped backwards.

Unsuccessful Set Questions

How would you describe the comic's stage character, that is to say, the personality they present in their act?

Were the jokes presented as true stories from life?  Or clearly false “jokes?”

Why do you think you didn't laugh?

Did anything work in their act?  Why do you think those bits worked and not the others?

How did the comic's use of their body fail to get laughs?

How did the comic's use of their face fail to get laughs?

How did their voice work fail to get laughs?

What did you notice that made their act uniquely unappealing?

How did the comic structure the jokes that they wrote?

Assignment Four

You are now the Head Writer for your own act and that act requires material.  Constantly.

Keep something to write in that fits in your pocket.  It could be a notebook, a journal, or an app on your phone.  Record anything you say throughout the week that makes someone else laugh. Record anything you think or see that makes you laugh.  You need to do this from now on. You cannot afford to waste anything that might become a joke.

I said this last week, but I'm saying it again.   Make sure you write the whole idea down.    You may think that one or two key words should be enough for you to remember what you meant.  Believe me, from experience, a lot of times it isn’t, and that idea never comes back.

Assignment Five

Once a week, look through what you have and try to form the writing into jokes.  Ask yourself why you thought it was funny, or why someone laughed when you said it.  Add in the information you would have to tell an audience for them to get it.

Assignment Six

Pull out the jokes you told last week.  Pick a title for each joke. Whatever feels like it will trigger the bit in your mind best.  The first thing you think of is usually the right one. “Lazy/Pot/Carl's Jr.” can now be written as “Carl's Jr.”  “Comedians don't hang out/Now I get it”  becomes “Comedians.”

Now list all of your jokes from last week this way, in the order you performed them in. Look them over.

Did any of them work?  Congratulations. You just did what most people who try stand-up never achieve. You got a laugh.   From scratch.  You thought of something, you performed it, and people laughed.  That moment is the basic building block of stand-up comedy, and you proved you can make it happen.  You can do this.

Did none of your bits work? Don’t despair or panic. You just had the same first set experience as some of the funniest comedians who ever lived.  It is so completely normal for your first set not to work that it isn’t worth a second thought.  On top of that, you just did the hardest thing there is to do in stand-up  You bombed. Congratulations, you just endured the worst thing comedy can do to you. You also found that it did not kill you. There is no longer anything to fear!

Now it’s time to figure out why the jokes aren't working.  I deliberately told you not to adjust anything last week, even when a joke didn't work on night one.  I wanted you to experience the frustration that only a bit that bombs can give you.  Now let's get under the hood and see if we can't stop it from happening again.

When a joke fails, the problem can only be two things: writing or performance.  Let's look at performance first.  Did you perform your material clearly?  Could they understand your words?  Let's find out.

Assignment Seven

Make an audio recording of your next set.  People often think they are talking clearly when in fact they are racing through their words, mumbling, or yelling. Make sure the audience can understand the jokes.  In our little corner of show business, that's the whole game. Green

Day can do a concert in Argentina and it won't matter if the crowd understands the words because the music carries the experience. Comedians need complete comprehension of our every word or the whole act is a failure.

Assignment Eight

Think about the audiences last week.  Were they comfortable with you? This is important.  Your friends laugh easily when you're hanging out because they know you and like you.  The audience just saw you for the first time.  They don't know how they feel yet.

Think about how you began your shows last week.  Did you start telling jokes from the minute your set began?  Just launching into your material at the top of the set can be jarring. You are a new element in the show. The audience needs time to take you in and get comfortable with you.

Next time you perform, take five seconds before you say anything at all. Let the audience get used to looking at you. Let them find a context for what you're going to say.  Then they will be ready to process your jokes.  If you have a specific character that you want them to see, you will want to be in character during this moment as well.  If not, just be yourself and let them get used to that.  

You may feel that five seconds is too long to wait at the top of every set.  I think I myself wait around two and a half.  But taking some amount of time before you start talking for the audience to get used to you can only improve their reaction.

Assignment Nine

At some point this week or next;  after you've done the five second pause; take ten seconds before opening your mouth. This is much longer than you normally would and will feel awkward in the room.

Doing this just once is fine, but I want you to watch the audience assess and scrutinize you.  It's going to happen every set for the rest of your life, and I want you to observe what it looks like closely without trying to tell jokes.  Study their faces.  Watch the wheels turn as they try to figure you out. They want to be comfortable enough with you to be able to laugh.

Maybe you can help them.  During this ten seconds, without using words, try to convey to the audience whatever you would like them to get about you or your stage character.  Act like the kind of person you want them to see.  You may even get a laugh or two from a facial expression.  See if you can see the audience's faces changed based on your actions.  

This exercise is also here as a toughness builder.  You need to get used to standing there in awkward silence so you're not afraid of it. Jokes will tank.  You will lose crowds.  Silences will occur and you need to be cool with that and not fear it.  

Silence can even be your friend.  A long pause like this can be helpful in the middle of a set

that’s gone haywire.  Say people in the audience begin talking to each other or a joke went down hard, a long pause can reset the table.  It can focus an audience’s attention. Silence and stillness can prompt people to look and listen more carefully.  Silence is a part of comedy, and the sooner you can tolerate it comfortably, the better.

Assignment Ten

Enough about the audience's comfort level for a second.  How about yours? Were you comfortable with your space?  Was the stool in your way? The mic stand? This can take you off your game.  A visibly annoyed comic is hard to enjoy.  

Next time you go up, before you start telling jokes, take time to ensure your performance space is how you like it. Hate that mic stand? Get it out of there. Want to sit on the stool? Do it.   Don't have a joke get ruined because you start walking across the stage and realize the microphone cord is three feet long, stop in your tracks, and flub the punchline.

We are our own Stage Manager as well as Director and Actor and Writer and everything else. Arranging the stage for your show is your job as well.  Even if that show is three minutes long on the middle of an open mic.

Check the tech as well. You may not have a sound engineer at an open mic, but if the microphone is off, broken, screeching, or covered in the spit of the last performer, deal with that before the set starts.  

Are You Joking?

If the audience could understand your jokes clearly, and you were comfortable enough and situated enough to give a competent performance and it still didn’t work at all, it’s time to look at your writing.  

If your approach isn't bearing fruit, you need to make sure your jokes are properly constructed. You may have just gotten a little nervous at that last bit.   Didn't I say there was no “right way” to write comedy?  Didn't I say I believed in letting you write whatever you like?  Of course.  A joke can be about anything in the world, it can be performed any way you like, but it has to be a joke.

All jokes have two things in common:  a moment where the comic sets up an expectation, and a moment when they fulfill that expectation in a surprising way.   What does that mean?  For a second, let's stop analyzing jokes and listen to one.  

“I used to drink a lot,” says Dave Attell to the crowd, in a knowing tone like he's over it now,“but that was way back... there.”  He points to the bar in the back of the club.

In this twelve word joke, it's easy to see both essential joke elements. Attell sets up the expectation that we are going to hear how long ago this drinking took place, but he surprises us by fulfilling it in a way we can't see coming.  His drinking didn't back in the past, but in the

back of this very room.  Our use of the word “back” to mean both time and distance allows Dave to hide the meaning switch until the very last word. All at once, our image of Dave turns in a second from brave recovered addict to a drunk so gone he's hammered right now.

A joke sets an expectation and delivers what was promised, but in a way you don't expect.  Once you know how to look for that, you will see these two elements at work throughout comedy.  In the hands of a master, it can be done so subtly, you can't see a joke there at all.  But if they said something and you laughed, those two things had to be present.  The trick was just done on too high a level to notice it.  But to get there you have to conquer the basics.  You have to learn to poach an egg before you can capture the essence of juevos rancheros in a foam.

Assignment Eleven

Let's dissect some jokes.  Anthony Jeselnik is an exceptional joke writer, and he works in a very old-school way.  His bits have perfect structure. Understanding what makes them work can help you diagnose why your jokes may not have clicked the way you wanted them to.

Google him on “Just For Laughs 2012” and a three minute clip will come up.

Answer all the Video Questions from the worksheet in the back of this book about Mr. Jeselnik's set.   The same way you did for Greg Giraldo. Asking these questions of each new comedian you encounter will deepen your understanding of the art form. Hopefully it will spark ideas on how to approach your own act as well.  All done?  This week let's take an extra step.

Write out Anthony’s jokes.  I’m serious. Word for word.  For each joke, circle the group of words with the most surprising element of the joke. This is the Punchline. This is where the audience’s expectations are fulfilled, but with an added twist they didn’t expect.

Now look through the other sentences in each joke you circled.  Answer these questions.

What did Anthony lead you to expect?

How did he do this?  

What did he give you instead?

What was the element in the resolution that was unexpected?

Now go back to your jokes from last week. Make sure what the audience is being told to expect is clear. Make sure the surprising element comes later, and after all the information they need to know for it to work. I am not asking you to Jeselnik-ize your own writing.  Be yourself.  I am simply asking you to identify the basic elements of joke structure. Then make sure your own jokes contain these elements, in whatever way you like. They gotta be in there somewhere, or you have written words, but not a joke.

Assignment Twelve

The elements of expectation and surprising fulfillment are not as easily identified in every comedian's act as they are in Mr. Jeselnik's. They are always there, however.

Google “James Adomian Just For Laughs Chicago” and watch the clip that comes up.

Adomian does not work in the strict set up/punch style Anthony uses. Stories and character monologues abound, all in a conversational style. Underneath it are the exact same elements.

Fill out a Video Questions Worksheet for Mr. Adomian's set.  Then go back through his act. Write down as many examples as you can of an expectation he sets up and its unexpected fulfillment.

See how many pairs you find. They will start to reveal themselves everywhere as you get better at spotting them. Once you have found such pairs in James’ act, write one of the jokes out as a two sentence joke.  In other words, strip away Adomian's conversational style and write his jokes in the most direct setup/punchline manner, the way Anthony Jeselnik might write it.  Do it a couple more times until it becomes second nature.

You can write any way you like, but the elements of expectation and a surprising fulfillment of that expectation are necessary for comedy writing to work.  They should always be present in your work. Even in the absurdist act of Steve Martin, in which a joke might simply be Martin standing there with a gas nozzle and gloating, these principles apply.

This is an actual Martin bit from Live at the Hollywood Bowl. For a long time, Martin stands silently, holding a gas nozzle.  No hose.  Then, looking smug, Steve says “I got this...”    

He pauses, very pleased with himself.

“For five bucks.”

Even here, you can find the essentials.  The silent pose with a bizarre prop is the set up.  Your expectations about a man with a broken piece of a gas pump kick in in your brain.  It's not normal.  Why is he doing this?  He’s going to have to address it at some point. Then he does.  He brags about the price.  The last thing you could have expected him to bring up.  Even in this strangest of comedy pieces, the two basic elements are there.

Assignment Thirteen

Get ready to do three more open mics.  Get out your jokes from last week. Write any that bits got a laugh down at the top of this week’s set list. I want you to open with those jokes this week.

Opening with something that you know has worked in the past is a good way to get the audience to trust that you are funny.  They are more likely to give your set a fair listen.

You will also get a quick read on the room. Open with something that usually works and you

can gauge what a decent joke gets from this crowd right off the bat.

You also start your set comfortably, not anxious from attempting something new.  You look confident, and the crowd gets comfortable quickly.

Assignment Fourteen

As you look over the jokes that work, think of ways you might improve them.

I hesitate to give you too much specific advice here.  I don’t want to influence the development of your own personal style.  Patton Oswalt said that giving a comedian advice only makes that comedian more like you.  That's not helpful.  After being funny, being unique is the most important thing in stand-up  I don't want to leave you completely in the dark though if you're feeling stuck.  I'll keep it as general as possible.

Could the setup line be shorter? Getting them to the surprise quicker?   Do you tell them more than they need to know to understand your joke? No one has ever said, “Man I wish that comic’s setups were longer.”

Punchlines should also aim for brevity.  The punchline is the moment our expectation gets its surprising fulfillment.  The quicker this happens, the bigger the punch.

  Here's a great example, by Paul F. Tompkins:  

”I love amusement parks…I think because I hate money.”

Quick wind up... and Pow!

He sets up the expectation with one sentence, and then surprises you with one word.  Nice and punchy.

On the other side of the issue, is the language colorful and specific? While brevity is your friend in comedy, bland colorless words are not.  Is “car” the best word for your joke? How bout “rust-bucket” or “82 Fiero?”  It seems contradictory to my last point, but it’s all about balance.  In general, the most vivid picture you can create in the audience’s sense memory, while using the least possible words, is the comedy sweet spot.

Assignment Fifteen

Once the words of a joke are as concise and colorful as you can make them, think for a moment about their content.

Look at the first joke on your list. What is your emotional point of view in this joke?  How do you feel about what you are saying?  Is this point of view clear in the writing?  Is it clear in the way you say it onstage?

  Do you love that “everyone has an Iphone,” or do you hate it?  Can the audience clearly tell? The audience must know this at all times, or they aren’t fully understanding you.  Make sure they can, with the both the writing and your delivery.

Apply these questions to the jokes that work, but don’t over-think it. If nothing obvious jumps out, let’s trust the jokes that worked to work again and not try to fix what isn’t broken. Just do them the way you did last week. If something from the above questions really strikes you, make the change. But don’t be afraid to go back to what worked if the change turned out to be a wrong move.

Assignment Sixteen

For this second week of open mics, make a list.  First do the jokes that did the best.

After that, do whatever unsuccessful joke from last week you feel you have the best shot at repairing. Whatever joke suggests the most obvious fix. Whatever joke you think you might best be able to help with the lessons from the James and Anthony assignments.

Fill up the rest of your set with new jokes. Make sure at least one minute of your set is all new, written this week.

DO NOT THROW THE UNSUCCESSFUL JOKES FROM LAST WEEK AWAY. Make a new file called “In the Shop” or whatever phrase you prefer. No idea is dead. There is always the possibility that you will return to it with a new perspective in the future.  We’re just putting them aside for now.

Go do three open mics.  Go to more if you can, and then turn ahead to Week Three.

I know I just put a lot of work on your desk this week, but I deliberately left the first week light. I didn’t want you to begin with anything guiding you but your natural comedic instincts.

I also didn’t want there to be a bunch of crap in your head that you were trying to remember while also trying to do one of the hardest things in show business. Some of the basics got saved for this week and you got it all in a big dump.  This is elementary stuff that you had to get eventually.  I would start the book with it, but I wanted to wait until you understood what doing stand-up felt like before dropping it on you.

Next week won’t be nearly as heavy in new ideas.  We will mostly elaborate on what we started here. I never want to add new elements beyond your ability to process them. Doing your act as a newcomer to stand-up comedy is hard enough.  If you ever feel like repeating a week, do it.  Move ahead only when you feel like you understand the lessons completely.

No go out there and make them laugh.  See you next week.

[johnroycomic]

Entirely Free Comedy Class - Revised Edition

Hey all, my Entirely Free Comedy Class is now over five years old, and looking back, it could be clearer and better, and more detailed.  So I’m revising it.  And the first week is ready.  Here it is!

WEEK ONE

In every major city, someone is teaching a stand-up comedy class, often charging hundreds of dollars for the effort. While I know some professional comics who have benefited from these classes, the majority consensus among my fellow comedians is that they are of dubious value.

They may help a little to build courage and comfort on stage, but they will not replace any of the many hours you will have to spend in Open Mics if you want to tell jokes for a living.

There is only one way to get good at stand-up comedy, and that is to do stand-up comedy. There is no short cut.  There is no homework.  You can practice your jokes in your room until they are tight and polished.  You can practice them on the very stage you are going to tell them on.  You still won't know if they are funny they are until they encounter a live audience.  You can't know anything about a joke until an audience of everyday people, who expect to laugh, reacts to it.  

A comedy class is an artificially supportive environment.  You can't get the honest reactions you need to build an act from fellow students and a teacher who wants a good Yelp review.  Only performing stand-up in real “game time” conditions will do.  Not only do you need to learn on the job, you can only learn on the job.  For the comedy beginner, there is no substitute for the open mic.

I am not saying stand-up instruction is impossible.  I'm not saying all you can tell a new  comic is to go out, plow through their sets with no game plan, and hope for the best.  I did that.  It was a nightmare.

I would love to have had some kind of road map to help me know what to focus on.  I got important advice later in my career that I would have loved to have had access to at the start.  Many aspects of this art form took me years of wrong turns to figure out.  I would love to spare the next generation some of that confusion.  They might get better quicker if I could tell them what they needed to know right when they needed know it.

This is my twelve week class on stand-up comedy.  It's everything I've learned about writing and performing comedy. This book is the textbook.  Your city's open mics are the classroom. And through the magic of Youtube, the best comedians of all time will be your guest speakers.  

Read one chapter a week.  Watch the featured video clips and answer the study questions.  Then put the instructions into practice at your local Open Mics.  After you have gone up at least three times practicing the lessons of that week, read the next chapter. Repeat for twelve weeks.

There are two goals of the class. One is for you to have a five minute set you can do at any comedy showcase with confidence.  The second, more important goal is give you an effective process for improving your act that you can use as long as you do stand-up comedy.  It's the  

process I use every week to this day.

I focus on basic fundamentals. I don’t tell you what to write or talk about. Previous books about stand-up presented a “right way” to write jokes.  As the sheer variety of modern comedians shows, there isn't one.  My process can help you with any style you might choose. As long as the essential elements of comedy are present, you can make people laugh any way you like.  

Assignment One:

Find out where the comedy open mics in your area are.  Maybe they are on a web site that lists all the comedy shows in your city.  Maybe they are listed with the music shows of the week.  Maybe you can find them listed among the offerings of local theater companies.  Googling your city's name and “comedy open mic” is as good a way to start as any.  Find out how many you can go to this week.  

Find out what you need to do to perform on them.  Sign up if necessary.

If at all possible, go to open mics that are listed as specifically for comedy.  This class was designed with those in mind.  

It may be hard to find comedy open mics in some areas.  If this is the case, all is not lost.  Many music open mics will let you do stand-up as well, but you'll want to check with the host and venue first.  If you don't know who to talk to at a venue, ask the bartender.  They always know.  

Music open mics will be a tougher audience to crack.  You will have the added challenge of getting the audience to stop talking and focus. Music acts generally do not require an audience's undivided attention the way comedians do.  That will be something you have to earn.  If you can grab them and make them laugh on a night that's not conducive to comedy, that's a win you can be proud of.

Assignment Two:

Write five minutes of material.  

What sort of material? This is up to you.

I know this is a vague assignment that doesn't give the student much guidance.  Even the word “material” is vague.  It seems specifically chosen to describe as little as possible.  It just means “something that exists.”  It doesn't get any clearer when you look at the other words comedians use to describe what

makes up their act.  “Stuff.” “Chunks.” “Bits.”  Bits of what?

Well, bits of whatever you can think of that might make someone laugh. You'll need all of it.  Those skewed insights on life you've had over the years?  Those things in the world everyone thinks are normal but you can prove are actually insane? Remember your analogy that made your  friend say “I never thought of it that way”    You finally have a place for all that stuff.   And they give you a microphone!  

As a famous comedian once said, “You should write whatever you can't stop thinking about.”

Still stuck?  Don't worry.  It's understandable.  You haven't had any practice.  Somehow, for all the millions of different writing assignments you get in school, “Write something funny” never comes up.

Try this.

  Think of something you said that made your friends laugh. What additional information would strangers need to have to laugh at that?  What words could quickly explain the situation and context just enough that the funny part made sense?  Add those words in before the part you said to your friends.  Your punch line now has a setup line.  You now have a joke.

I've written many jokes this way.

Once a brutish guy came up to me after my act and said “it’s weird you’re hanging out after the show. Most comedians won't hang out after the show.”   He said “comedians” like a snotty kid would if they were going, “Ooh... look at the big comedian.”

I didn't respond to the tone in his voice.  I was nice. “That’s weird, we always hang out after the show,”  I said. We do.

The guy ignores it.  He says, “Fucking queers don’t want to drink with me.”  Oh, he's a bigoted asshole, I thought.  No wonder no one wants to drink with him.

I whispered to my friend Adam, under my breath, “Now I get it.”   He laughed.

In real life, I only said “Now I get it,” and Adam laughed.  I didn't need to describe the guy.  Adam was looking right at him.  I didn't need to tell Adam we were at a comedy show.  He was with me the whole time.  All Adam needed was “Now I get it,” and it was funny.  An audience of strangers needs more.

When I related the story in my act, I began, “I go all over doing comedy. Sometimes you meet cool people. Sometimes you don’t.” I described the guy's initial question, and how I was confused because comedians always hang out after the show.  Then I did his asshole voice going “Fucking queers don't want to drink with me,” followed by, “and I was like, “Now I get it.”   I got a laugh in the same place as I got it from Adam that night.  

With those modifications, something I said that made my friend laugh became a joke I could do on stage.

Incidentally, Adam doesn't appear in the joke at all.  His presence at the scene is not essential to why it's funny.  The joke is about me and the guy, not Adam.  That night, Adam was the audience.  In a comedy show, I have a real audience.  Telling them that Adam was there is just needless words that don't serve my purpose, which is to get a laugh when I say, “Now I get it.”  You only need to include what the crowd absolutely needs to know to get the joke.  Everything else should go.  

Don’t spend more than five hours writing your material.

It's not a novel, it's five minutes of comedy.  

The important thing is to get up on that stage as soon as possible. Don’t put off that first performance.   I know it can be scary.  It may be nerve-wracking when you picture yourself up there, but prolonging the wait only makes it scarier.  Best to rip the band-aid off as quickly as possible.  Your fear will diminish once the experience is no longer a scary unknown.

Some people wait months and months trying to hone the perfect material before they do their first set.  This is pointless.  There is no way to anticipate the reaction your jokes will get before you tell them. Further hours of editing are a waste of time.  Get your ideas in front of an audience as soon as possible.  You will have all the time in the world to re-write it later, when you actually know what worked.

Some of you may be asking, “Wait! What if I don’t want to write ‘jokes?’ What if I want to do characters or tell stories or just talk to the crowd? Why can’t I get laughs that way?”

You can! You can do anything you want as long as you can get them to laugh after you do it.

Stories and character monologues work a lot like “jokes.”  If one of these is your thing, for every sentence in this book that mentions “jokes,” just replace “joke” with “character monologue line” or “story beat” and the principles are the same.  

Keep in mind that a stand-up story has to have laughs peppered throughout the entire piece.  It can’t just pay off at the end. No matter what approach you take, you are still going to have to make the audience laugh at the rate they are accustomed to, which is roughly between two and four laughs a minute.  You can make them wait longer here and there to build tension, but the longer they have to wait, the bigger that payoff is going to need to be as well.  Stand-up is both the widest and the most narrow form of performance there is. You can do anything you want…. as long as the audience does one specific thing over and over again.  

Improv and talking to the crowd are a little tougher to teach than jokes. They rely on you being funny in the moment. They are a product of your pure comedy instincts and the amount of practice you’ve had expressing them.  The only way to improve is to start racking up stage time doing improv and crowd work,the way an athlete must practice being in the moment to perform better in those moments. Week Nine of this class is devoted to doing just that.

For now, follow the joke writing exercises and develop written material anyway. It is the best way to learn what makes a series of words funny. Think of it as practicing improv in slow motion.  Besides, improvisers and crowd workers like Rory Scovel and Jeff Ross still need something to do on TV sets where they don’t let you wing it.  Even in your live act, it can help to have some surefire lines.  While improv can light up a crowd like nothing else in comedy, it misses sometimes.  It's unavoidable.  You will appreciate having tested jokes to fall back on when the riffing doesn't work.

Write your new five minutes in a dedicated space for this class.  It can be a notebook.  It can be a computer file.  But it should have no other writing in it.  I find a small notebook is the best because you can carry it anywhere.  If you prefer to just type your bits into your phone that works too, but I feel that writing words out long-hand helps commit them to memory.  

I advise writing your jokes out in full sentences, but if you can remember:

“I gotta get healthier. I can’t have one more day go by where the BEST thing I can say about myself is that the pot I smoked made me too lazy to eat Carl’s Jr. TWICE.”

from:

“Gotta Get healthier/best thing I can say/too lazy from pot to eat Carl’s Jr. 2x”

…then I am not going to make you write it all out just because I think you should. But the MINUTE you find yourself staring at “Candy Crush/Slot Machine guy WTF?” in your own handwriting with no idea what it means, it's complete sentences from now on. A forgotten bit could be the Netflix Special closer that now you’ll never have.

Assignment Three

Once your five minutes is written down, it's time to memorize it. Don't freak out from the “m” word.  You don't necessarily have to know it word for word.  But some level of memorization is necessary.  You don’t want to be in actual danger of forgetting the point of what you’re talking about.

Some people like the certainty of knowing the words by heart. It's one less thing to worry about, and besides, they’re proud of that wording so why not make sure to show it off?

Others find memorization a source of stress and would rather not have another thing hanging over their head they have to remember not to screw up. For them, a loose idea they can sort of “jam on” is better.

Whichever sounds best to you is how you should do it, as starting out in stand-up is all about increasing your comfort level as you do something that provokes intense anxiety.

However you choose, I have found that whether a joke was written out verbatim the minute the idea appeared or whether it took ten tries through informal riffing, a “right way” based on brevity and the strongest, most colorful word choices begins to suggest itself. By the time a joke is ready to be recorded, even the “jazziest” comics tell it pretty similarly from night to night.

There are advantages and drawbacks to both approaches. A memorized joke sounds polished and can be delivered with confidence, each syllable emphasized for maximum

power. You may discover interesting language sitting down and writing that your onstage riffing brain would never have landed on in the moment.

On the flip side, there is a directness and energy to an improvised wording that a memorized bit can lack. It sounds like you're just hanging out with the audience and that's powerful.  

When you script a bit out verbatim, there can be a tendency to think of it as “set in stone.”  You deliver the lines like an actor and only those lines.  You can forget that there is always room to add things because you are not talking “in the moment.”

Personally, I go up with at least one written-out punchline for each new bit that I intend to work on. On a fresh page, I write down all the punchlines and premises in a list before I go up. The Carl’s Jr. bit from above might be listed as “Lazy/Pot/Carl’s Jr.”

My set list might look like this:

Lazy/Pot/Carl's Jr.

Comedians don't hang out/Now I get it

40/Green Day

40/Close Bar/Bulls

Favorite Gay Bar/Ke$ha

After it's all written out, I take the list up with me and riff.  No matter what, I always make sure I hit at least one prepared punchline for each subject I bring up.  That way, bomb or crush, the audience will know I had a purpose to each bit. You will test their patience if they feel you are just meandering around with no payoff.  They will check out.  I feel I owe it to them to reward their attention with at least one thought-out comedic idea for each of my premises.  They should know I respected them enough to at least have a point to each of my ramblings, even if the jokes don't all land.

If they happen to really like one of those punchlines, I will keep talking, in case I find something else funny. They seem to like where this is going, so let’s find out what else is there.  This has lead to great stuff, but if it’s a dead end, at least they got a solid joke they liked before I went exploring.

Over time, as the repetition and trial and error process continues, I find my jokes inevitably find their way into a series of words that changes little from night to night.  It's the best way I have found to get that idea out, and I know it by heart.

Assignment Four

Do your five new minutes at an open mic.  Then do this same five minutes at two more open mics.  Write down what worked and what didn't, but don't adjust anything yet.  Perform the same jokes in the same order.

With the amount of people trying to do comedy now, some open mics give you just four, three, and sometimes even two and a half minutes to do your act.  If this happens, do as much of your material as you are able to get out in the time allotted, but don't rush.  Tell your jokes the way you think they work best.  Don't try to jam them all in just to say you did it. Get to what you can and give those jokes the best chance they have to succeed.

Assignment Five

After your week of performances, or however long it takes to do a set at three open mics, look over your notes.

Write down your answers to the following questions.   In the back of this book, you can find them on the easy to copy “Set Questions” Worksheet.

Set Questions

Which of your jokes got a laugh?

Which jokes didn’t?

Why do you think the jokes that did work worked?

Why do you think the jokes that didn’t work didn’t?

What could you change about the ones that didn’t work to maybe make them work?

Could changing jokes that worked make them work even better?

Keep this info handy for next week.  We will get into it in depth.

Assignment Six:

When you've done your three performances, and you've written down your initial thoughts about your jokes, search the internet for the late, great Greg Giraldo's special “Midlife Vices.”  It is currently view-able on Youtube.

Watch the special.

Answer the following questions.  They are also printed out on an easy-to-copy Worksheet in the back of this book.  It's the one that says “Video Questions.”  Every week there will be comedians to watch and you will answer these same questions every time, so making a bunch of copies of this one might be a good idea.

Video Questions

How would you describe the comic's stage character, that is to say, the personality they present in their act?

Were the jokes presented as true stories from life?  Or clearly false “jokes?”

What made you laugh in their act? Why?

What didn’t work for you? Why? Why do you think it may have worked for others?

How did the comic use their body to get laughs?

How did the comic use their face to get laughs?

How did the comic use their voice to get laughs?

What did you notice that made their act unique?

How did the comic structure the jokes that they wrote?

You will find answers at the beginning of next week's lesson.

That's it!  That’s week one. Get started and I'll see you again next week. Kill 'em!

[johnroycomic]

In Maria Bamford’s Stand-up, Facing Nightmares Is Unusually Fun

No comedian provides a more riveting portrayal of their own fear, doubt, and despair.

Another Vulture piece in my Great Bits series, this time about Maria Bamford.

[johnroycomic]

Vulture piece about Brody Stevens

Here’s something I wrote for Vulture about comic great Brody Stevens, who passed away recently.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/03/comedians-remember-brody-stevens.html

[johnroycomic]

Why Roy Wood Jr.’s ‘Black Patriotism’ Bit Is Olympic-Level Stand-up

“Every time the comedy beach ball starts to lose altitude, Wood smacks it back into the sky.”

I wrote something for Vulture!

[johnroycomic]

John Roy

[johnroycomic]

Portland! There is no soccer Sunday night! You have no excuse not to see me and Dan Van Kirk at the Siren Theater!

[johnroycomic]

New Standup Set

Enjoy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ellTvtROjB4&rdm=33i7tnk0&noapp=1&client=mv-google

[johnroycomic]

I wrote another great bits piece for Splitsider, about Paul F Tompkins’ “Peanut Brittle”

[johnroycomic]

Check out new standup about #edm, white people in general and specifically the white people in the #chainsmokers

[johnroycomic]

Wrote this for Splitsider.