Creating a Comic

Last Thursday night was my first time back on stage after a hiatus of about two months, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I hadn’t lost too much in the interim. My stage presence wasn’t as confident as I’d like, but the stagefright beforehand wasn’t very bad at all. It helped that I was the very last comic of the night which, at open mic, means a dwindling audience with low expectations.

I was tempted to play it safe with proven stuff, but instead ended up going with about 90% new material. I have one new batch of jokes about my fear of spiders which, when I wrote them all out, turned out to run for five full minutes. I tried to polish and condense them as much as possible, throwing out some of the weaker ones, and got it down to about three minutes.

So I went up and did the three minutes of new material, and the audience quickly helped me realize that there is, in fact, only about two minutes of good stuff there. It’s so bizarre how a single run-through on stage can totally change your perspective; when I look, now, at a couple of the jokes that bombed, I find myself thinking “How could I have thought that was funny, beforehand? It’s so obviously terrible!” Funny on paper is definitely not the same as funny on stage.

On the other hand, there’s one joke that didn’t get much of a response that I still feel pretty good about. I’m going to give that one a few more tries, since it’s possible that I bungled the delivery, or maybe a different audience is required. I refuse to believe that the joke just plain sucks, at least not until it bombs a few more times! I’ll be at Laughs in Kirkland tonight if anyone wants to see me take it for another spin.

Related entries in Creating a Comic:

• How to write a joke: Joke Structure
• How to tell if new material is any good
• Preparing a set list
• Working new material into a stand-up set
• Writing For the Stage
• Open Mic: First Timer Primer
• Stand-up Comedy Glossary

 — Posted by CJ under Creating a Comic. Please comment or trackback!