5 Ways To Strengthen Your Writing

Writing standup is a never ending effort and you’ll only get better at it the more you do so with that in mind here are 5 of the best ways to approach your writing to get the most out of it as quickly as possible.

1.Find your LPM

I don’t subscribe to the idea that a comic should base their entire presence around jokes per minute. I know comics who do that and they end up with a set that comes across like a script reading of the big bang theory where quantity has truly demolished quality. Moreover by basing your quality as a comic on purely jokes per minute you remove the intricacies of good performing including pauses, pacing, build up, tension and the fact that different bits will just be flat out funnier than others but still enjoyable to you. You can have two jokes in a minute and if they both get huge laughs and applause breaks then they're going to beat out 10 jokes forced into a set just for quantities sake. A better gauge to work from is laughs per minute where the number of individual jokes being told, the number of times the audience laughed and for how long are all taken into account.

That being said just because you shouldn’t base all your writing on cramming as many jokes as possible into a bit doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be aware of jokes per minute also to understand how you’re bits and progress as a comic are doing. There are apps online that allow you to count how long your laughs go for but most charge a fee so I’d recommend recording yourself and timing how long your laughs are going for then do the math to get an overall percentage per bit or set. Don’t pick a night at a good room that’s packed out and already hot, but don’t pick a three person audience open mic either. Something in the middle that’s going to give you real feedback is ideal. Then see how much of your set is laughter measured against how many jokes you have in there.

If you’re batting less than 2 jokes per minute as a new act you have a problem. 

It also pays to notice what jokes are punchlines, what are tags that follow punchlines and what are call backs jokes to previous punchlines. More callbacks than punchlines and you are beating a dead horse, too few tags and you’re not getting the most out of your punchlines, not enough punchlines and you’re waffling in your setups.

Be aware of where you’re how many jokes you’re getting into a set and always be looking for ways to cut the word-fat to fit the next related joke or new premise and use your laughs per minute breakdown to identify lulls in your routine that either need to be punched up or cut.

Here's a great video from Jerry Seinfeld on how you can get the most funny into a single joke. It's all good but about two thirds of the way through he begins to talk about punching up a joke.

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2. Tags, Tags, Tags

Tags are a great way to pump up the amount of jokes your fitting into a set because they aren’t jokes in a traditional sense. Rather than relying on a setup they are playing off the already established setup and punchline that came before it or even the tag that follows that. In this way you don’t need a new setup for each joke and can put multiple on the back of a punchline ad infinitum.

Consider anything that follows a punchline that doesn’t move onto a new premise as a tag and work to make it funny.

I recommend writing multiple punchlines for a joke if you feel it can work in multiple ways then pick the funniest one and use that for the actual punchline and see if you can re-purpose those other jokes as tags. Alternatively take the punchline you already have and push it further making it more outlandish and "out there" relative to your original punchline to create your tag. You'll get an additional laugh in there if you find a way to circle back from an evolved tag to the original punchline or idea because the audience will get a kick out of applying this now absurd evolution to a more grounded idea and the novelty of said combination.

Try to keep your funniest tag for a given joke as the last one so you end on the highest point. If you feel you’re burning the audience out then cut the ones that aren’t getting the least laughs and continue to do so until the reactions begin to pick up again. Tags are really a matter of feeling the energy the audience is giving you and using that to inform whether or not you should push a bit further but they are always better to have an not use than to not have.

I’ve made a distinction between tags and call backs but in reality a call back is just a punchline or tag for a joke that is separated from it by other jokes and premises. It's waiting for just enough information and time to sit between a joke that you can illicit an "oh, remember that thing from before?" feeling that we as humans love because nostalgia makes everything funnier.

Open your set up to call backs by looking at ways to reference a joke that comes later in your set back to one that happened earlier. This works especially well for stories told earlier in your set. If you can I recommend making your closer a call back. It’s a good signalling point to the audience that your show is over and has a nice sense of rounding out for your set.

3. Rotating Material

Sometimes it feels like you just can’t write any more for a bit but you know it still could be improved. Louis Ck has some interesting thoughts on this in the documentary “I Am Comic” in which he says in order to strengthen his material for a new show he’ll change the order of a set list by moving material out of comfortable positions in the act and into areas that will force them to be stronger. This is a great way to kick your brain into a new gear for jokes. If you have a bit that isn’t working as well as you think it can then move it to the end of your act so you have to close strong which will force you and the bit to have to pull its weight. Alternatively you can move a bit to the front and open your set with it. This works well for material that might be dicey because you need to be able to sell it straight off the bat without the audience having a chance to get to know you. In this way it needs to be relatable, funny and easily understood (especially if it’s less child friendly).

If you have material that you feel could be better that’s sitting in the middle of your set I’d recommend rotating it to a different position and form a habit of doing this to ensure that you have versatile bits that can work anywhere in your set so that when interruptions can and do happen you have a more flexible set list to work with. This also works for jokes that are coasting off the back of a stronger bit. Incubate new material by putting it in the middle of stronger jokes to get a feel for it but once you have it down then kick it out of the nest to really polish it.

When I was starting out and really getting into pumping out more material I would "leapfrog" bits. 

Seeing as most sets at an open mic are only 5 minutes it gave me enough time to try roughly two bits which was the length of my starting out premise based material. I’d open with something I’d done before and halfway through the spot I’d swap to the newer bit. I’d do this until I felt comfortable that the new material was working then I’d swap out the older bit and move the new material to the top. The new bit was forced to have a good closer and when I moved it to the front I could better shape it’s opening as it would be the first thing the audience heard so it had to be palatable.

4. Write from different perspectives

In my ebook I talk a lot about increasing your sphere of comedic understanding and this means broadening and adding to the amount of ways you know to pull comedy from an idea.

If you find you’re stuck on a bit then use a flip or tilt on it. Change the perspective you’re looking at the idea from or the perspective that you as the writer are using to examine the topic. Simple things like putting yourself in the place of another gender, age, time are easy starting points. You can get more abstract as you go. What if you were a famous person from history? What if the idea was its parallel like cats are to dogs? What if you were an alien? What if you were an illegal alien? What if you were an illegal alien from the alien franchise aliens?

We’re creating hypothetical’s to shoot off from your base idea and then you create jokes around that from linking these new hypothetical’s back to the original idea centred in the reality you’ve created.  

If you find a great joke looking a premise from the perspective of the opposite sex that is honest, relevant and funny then include it! Just be mindful it won't make sense if you run head first into that concept saying "I'm now a different sex and I think “XXXX”. Smooth it over with a simple "I have a new found understanding for my "XXXX" friends because for them "XXXXX" must be like "XXXXX".

Now play that new angle against your original angle to create a new combination premise and write jokes on either the conflict generated or the result of the successful combination of those ideas.

If you're struggling to think about things from other peoples perspective then ingest new content. Watch a Ted talk, read a book, see a movie, go out with a friend or watch some good specials from people who are doing what you want to be doing only way better.

Writing with other comics can be a great way to increase the perspectives you can apply to a bit but fair warning, when writing with others you NEED structure. Go into a writing session as a session. It's not coffee, it's not a catchup it's you and another writer working with each other. Have material already planned out that you'd like to go over. Establish a turn structure where you work with them as much as they work with you and set timers! Stay on track and give yourself a time amount of time to write, discuss, edit and write again. Do this for an hour until you're burnt out and offer to pay for coffee you mooch.

5. Kill Your Darlings

You are going to have to get used to this. You cannot include every joke you write on stage and what's worse the vast majority will be too terrible to do so even if you had unlimited stage time. Comedy writing is panning for gold, there will be a lot to get through and it’s a grind. You will never be able to move past this process you can only ever become more experienced and efficient at it.

So here’s a general rule for jokes. Try a joke 3 times at 3 different venues and if it doesn’t work either cut it or change it but do not keep it the way it is. 

By “don’t work” I don’t just mean only those that don’t get a laugh. Even you’re quieter laughs need to be accessed as to whether or not they help the set or whether they are just padding. At the end of the day 2 minutes of killer is better than a bloated 5 minutes. See Attachment: Kevin Hart.

You might feel like you have less by getting rid of material but mentally it’s hugely important. You’re brain can only hold so much in the foreground at once and mentally pruning back bad ideas makes space for new ones to grow. This doesn't mean just jokes, excess verbiage and unnecessary setups are a literal silent killer. They will destroy any momentum your set has and ruin any chance the audience has for following what you're talking about. Cut jokes, cut sentences, cut individual words. This is how pedantic you need to be because the biggest laughs come from the biggest ideas being communicated as efficiently as possible. So cut the rambling, the exposition of a joke, the um's and ah's and just tell the audience the bare minimum they need to know for the punchline to make sense.

This video exactly covers how as a comic you need to be in full awareness of what you're saying and where you're going at all times. Notice how he uses the same joke but paraphrased as a hybrid tag/callback and see exactly how much he got out of so few words.

BUT be sure you don’t jump the gun and start cutting back as you write. Only cut back when you’re confident you have something to cut. A half formed joke is destined to tank but that doesn’t mean you should cut it. Flesh your jokes out fully before you cut them and explore all avenues to get there. Finding what does work and what doesn’t are both important and will affect everything you write after that point.

When seeing if a joke should be cut check the punchline. Ask yourself where the audience is meant to laugh and then see if there's anything to laugh at. Be honest with yourself and be thorough. If there isn't anything to laugh at then you've just written a setup. But don't fret that's half the work but you still need to go the extra mile and write the funny part.

I know it’s hard to cut something you like but that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. There’s only two scenarios in standup when cutting a joke. Either you look back in 10 years and can see how much better off you were for cutting the joke or you wait and find a new place for it in a better form by putting it aside and using it later. These are both wins so there’s nothing to lose from getting rid of the gag. If you really like it and if it’s truly good it’ll find its way back into your set.

CUE JEFF GOLDBLUM IMPRESSION "Life finds a way".

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For more guides, tips and exercises you can buy my new E-Guide "How To Write Standup". Send me an email at hello@colinebsworth.com to get your copy today.

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