I still get a bit tense before a show, but it’s gone from nearly debilitating to fairly mild. If a 10 is passing out on stage, a zero is total comfort, and the guy from my earlier story was maybe a 9.5, then I’d say the worst my stage fright got was about 8.6. Someday I’ll talk about what goes into that estimate, including the time I almost peed myself…

Nowadays I probably don’t spike higher than about a 5. Whereas I used to be nervous and unable to concentrate on anything else for the 2-3 hours before the show, these days I can happily relax and read a book on the bus trip on the way to the club.

Part of this is just that I’m a lot more familiar with my material, now, but the greatest help is simple experience. And I do still get butterflies about fifteen minutes before going on stage. I worry that my mind will go totally blank, etc. Then my name is called and I feel a surge of adrenaline; I’ll spend the first thirty seconds on stage a little stiff, but after the first laugh or two I’ve usually calmed down.

This is an old axiom among TV comedy writers, and it applies equally well to stand-up comedy. Since the key element in humor is surprise, leaving your funniest and most surprising word until the very end gives your joke the most punch. And you want your punchlines to be as punchy as possible, right?

If you have a joke or story that ends with “and he was eighty-three years old,” for example, drop the unnecessary “years old” at the end. The funny part is that he’s eighty-three, so just end with that.

It’s not always as simple as cutting excess words; very often it’s necessary to rearrange the story in order to put the funny word last. For example…

“I tried to shield my junk, but her kick was too fast for me to block!”

…is notably inferior to:

“And then, out of nowhere, she kicked me right in the junk!”

Junk is a just plain funny word, so that one’s pretty self-explanatory. However, sometimes the funniest word in the punchline isn’t inherently the goofiest word, it’s the word that packs the biggest surprise. I have one punchline that I originally told as follows:

Everyone knows that when you’re on vacation, (stuff) doesn’t count as gay.

Out of context, gay is the funniest word in that sentence, so it wasn’t an entirely stupid mistake on my part. But the funniest part of the joke is actually the word vacation, because that’s where the surprise is embedded. I started getting bigger laughs when I rearranged the punchline to:

Everyone knows that (stuff) doesn’t count as gay… when you’re on vacation.

Sometimes getting the funniest word to the very end requires mangling your point beyond grammatical recognition. Making sense is more important than strict adherence to this rule, so in those cases, just get it as close to the end as possible. Make sure the funny word is in the very last sentence clause, at least.

And remember, if all of your punchlines rely upon extreme vulgarity in the “funny word last” spot, then they’re probably not real punchlines, and you’re probably just being an unfunny foul-mouthed motherfucker.

Related entries on this site:

• How to write a joke: Joke Structure
• Funny stories are not jokes
• Writing for the comedy stage
• New jokes through the wringer
• How to tell if new material is any good

The distinction is subtle, enough so that I’ve been accused of splitting hairs by making it — and in fairness, it took me a year’s worth of immersion in stand-up before I recognized it. But there is definitely a noticeable difference: bits include a series of punchlines that are all embedded within a longer narrative, whereas jokes are shorter and stand on their own.

Jokes: short and punchy

The basic structure of a joke is simple: setup, punchline, laugh. Tags, or additional punchlines, may follow. Jokes are short, punchy, memorable, and easy to tell to your friends because they don’t rely on a larger narrative. Comedians who primarily tell old-fashioned jokes include Mitch Hedberg, Demetri Martin, Gilbert Gottfried, Stephen Wright, Anthony Jeselnik and Jimmy Carr:

Joke-oriented comics in Seattle include Ross Parsons, Andy Palmer, and Barbara Holm, all very funny people whose acts are worth making an effort to see.

Bits: narratives with punchlines

Bits, on the other hand, are collections of related jokes strung together in the form of a story or rant. They still adhere to the basic physics of joke structure — setup, punchline, tag — but each punchline is embedded in a larger narrative, and wouldn’t make sense in isolation. David Letterman’s top ten list is a bit that contains ten different jokes.

My favorite example of extended bits is the material that Chris Rock includes in the middle of his acts, the searing social critiques (i.e. “rich” versus “wealthy”) that he sandwiches between crowd-pleasing raunchy material. Along with Rock, well-known comics whose acts are primarily filled with bits include Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Dane Cook, Patton Oswalt, and Bill Burr:

Fantastic Seattle comics whose material is largely based around funny bits include Mike Cummings, Brian Boshes, Jen Seaman, and Andrew Rivers.

Comedy envy

There are two unassailable truths about the bit/joke dichotomy: (1) Neither format is qualitatively better than the other; it’s really just a matter of formatting. Funny is funny, just as delicious food tastes delicious regardless of whether you take it home from the store in paper or plastic. (2) Comics who are comfortable writing in one style invariably envy the writing style of The Other. What comes naturally to us often seems less impressive than what doesn’t.

As an example of that point: Chris Rock and Louis CK are my two favorite stand-up comedians, and their sets consist almost entirely of bits, including some bits that are so intricate they go on for a full twenty minutes. Both of them are famous and successful comedians, yet here they both are, in awe of the more purely joke-writing stylings of Mitch Hedberg:

Years ago, Chris Rock and I were writing a shitty movie together. We were talking about comedians. We went to Mitch Hedberg’s site (this is before he died) and watched one of his Letterman sets. At the time, Chris and I were (and are) both wind-bag, stage-stalking, hammer a premise to the ground comics. We watched Mitch, who just fired beautiful fastballs one after the other. Joke joke joke. All solid. All amazing. Non-stop. Five minutes of it. We were in awe of it. Much respect to Mitch Hedberg.

Most comics do some of both. While Mitch primarily told jokes, he also did some bits — like the hilarious DuFrenes bit (located halfway down this page). But have you ever tried to find one of Mitch’s jokes based on his CD track titles? It’s virtually impossible for most of his material, because the title often refers to a single 30-second joke sandwiched in between a dozen other unrelated jokes.

Self-diagnosis: not pithy

This is true for me, too. Since my own comedy is mostly based around bits, I get super excited on the rare occasion when I come up with a pure joke-joke. That pithy style of writing is just not how I’m wired¹, whereas the flow of a bit comes to me a lot more naturally. My fifteen minute act contains maybe one minute’s worth of straightforward jokes.

So how is this useful, then, this distinction between bits and jokes? It really isn’t, in any practical sense. It’s vaguely helpful when referring to material; being able to precisely refer to “that bit” or “that joke,” for example. But not really. Mostly it’s the kind of navel-gazing, circle-jerk topic that comics spend endless amounts of time arguing about backstage — and writing about on their blogs.

1. Some might say that’s because I’m too wordy, and would point to this blog as evidence. I wouldn’t argue.