Step By Step to Stand-Up Comedy Chapter Thirteen

Making a Good Show Great

Polishing a show is a continual evolutionary loop of developing material, rehearsing, performing, and polishing which leads back to developing material, rehearsing, performing, and so on. The following guidelines can help you create your own working style.

Rate the Jokes

Edit, Rewrite and Rearrange
-Editing the jokes
-Rewriting the jokes
-Make sure the joke was heard clearly
-Refer to the guidelines in “From Funny to Funnier”
-Put the joke on the Joke Diagram
-Rearranging the routine
-Learning your B, C, A’s
-Graphing your show
-Hammocking
-End with the sex material
-Place the more controversial bits near or at the end of your show

Rehearse and Perform Again

SAMPLE

LEARNING YOUR B, C, A’S
Having gone through the A, B, C’s of comedy, you’re now going to learn the B, C, A’s. A comedy rule of thumb is to open your show with your second-strongest or B material, put your weakest stuff or C material in the middle, and close with your best or A material. Hence, the routine or show should be ordered B, C, A.
This makes a lot of sense, because if you open with your C material you may lose the audience, but you don’t want to give them your A material first, either. Then you’d have nothing stronger to follow it with, and the show would end with a thud. If you get the audience laughing with your B material, however, it’ll make the C material work even better. Then you can top yourself and close with your A material.

END WITH THE SEX MATERIAL
Here’s something else worth considering when you’re structuring your show: People tend to laugh harder at sexual material than they do at non-sexual material. Since that’s the case, it follows that you should end your show with sex jokes. To test this theory out, rent any of Richard Pryor’s concert videos. He always ends with dick jokes. Watch Jay Leno’s monologues on the Tonight show. Nine times out of ten he closes on a big laugh from a joke with sexual subject matter.
This doesn’t mean that you should end your show with raunchy material. Sex jokes can be playful without being crass. But whether it’s playful or raunchy—end your show with the sex jokes.