How I wrote my first stand up comedy set and succeeded

I’m funny. This will be easy.

As someone who has made people laugh intentionally since childhood, I have wondered how difficult stand up comedy would be. I had seen Eddie Murphy’s Raw and Delirious before I was old enough to understand half of it, and it sparked a love for stand up and comedy in general.

Eddie Murphy Raw is a bit much for a 12 year old

Fast forward nearly 20 years. I’ve seen countless stand up specials, including Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I’ve been front row at local shows. I’ve been to the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. I know comedy.

I’m at a work Christmas party telling a story I’ve been asked to tell again and the table is in tears. I notice this and think “I can tell this on stage.” I apply at a local open mic night at Absolute Comedy and get a spot for the first Monday of the New Year. I have four weeks to write a set.

I know enough to know that making people laugh isn’t enough. Like everything I do, I start researching how to do stand up comedy. I quickly learn comedians don’t document their craft, they just do it. I also realize researching this is like researching how to do art. There’s got to be a process I can try. I find two things.

Jerry Seinfeld explains process to the New York Times

This short video of Jerry Seinfeld leads me to write my set by hand, accept countless rounds of revisions, and to trim all the fat. I haven’t written anything longer than my name by hand since University, but know it’ll help me commit what I write to memory. I’m used to iterations coming from an Agile software development background. Trimming the fat or making my jokes as lean as possible while still being funny is new.

I also find a show called Kill Tony where comedians judge open mic participants, like American Idol. Half the show is roasting the participants, but the other half is useful advice. The most common advice is to keep trying and getting on stage, but the applicable advice is all about reducing jokes to their essence. Stand up comedy is about telling jokes, not stories. I have a process and a joke structure now.

My first attempt at writing looks like a novel. I write about the environment and describe the characters. I’m writing a story. I try again but keep falling back into writing for readers and not for stage. I know how to stop this: freewriting.

I don’t think about writing, I just write. When I think I have the jokes in paper, I use the pen like a machete and hack away at the fat. To know what’s fat, I tell the joke out loud and ask myself if I need a specific detail for the joke to be funny. Does it add anything? No? Get rid of it. Every word matters.

A draft of a joke

The end result is a mess but it’s strong. I group jokes into sections and play with the order of the sections. I practice by recording myself and timing it. I have to keep it under five minutes. I’m more worried about having five minutes of material. My wife helps by reminding me that if people laugh, it’ll buy me time. She’s supportive.

I’m ready to get this over with. I don’t want to practice anymore. I don’t even know if I want to do it at all anymore but it’s day of. I’m sixth up and I have been half paying attention to the comics before me. No one is bombing. I don’t want to be the one to bomb tonight.

My name is called. Uh oh, how do I hold the mic? Where do I put my other hand? I forgot to hold a brush like a mic in the mirror. I can’t see anything except the front row. I’ll pretend to see the back row and talk to them too. It’s got to be five minutes soon, I’m running out of material. I’m finishing my last joke and the red light is still not lit telling me to wrap it up. Never leave the stage without the MC I remember reading somewhere. I tell the joke I didn’t think flowed well that I cut out. I remember from high school that saying “thank you” is a better way of ending a presentation than saying “I’m done”. The MC runs up on stage and I wait and hand him the mic while shaking his hand.

Now what do I do? I go and stand with the other comics. They tell me I did great. I think I did well but don’t remember the last 10 min. I get home and watch the recording I made. People laughed. It worked. I win. I’m going to sleep.