Reddit reviews Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy

I don't think you need to read the whole book (there's a small summary that's a few pages out there), but I found Greg Dean's book helpful for learning how to write simple setup/punchline jokes.

For improv (and it applies to sketch too imo), the UCB manual is the best book I've read.

For writing, this book from one of the founders of The Onion is really good. I think if I had to recommend just one comedy book, it would be this one.

Pretty much everyone who starts comedy has no idea how to write a joke but has been told they are funny. Just try it, https://www.reddit.com/r/Standup/comments/3jvwy7/welcome_to_rstandup_please_read_this_before/ has some good links on how to start standup. Books like this one from Greg Dean are a great place to start understanding joke structure. This website is an excellent resource for joke writing and id recommend starting here first.

If you really want to try standup you just have to do it, writing and all. Do some research on joke writing, ive listed some good starting points but even googling "how to write a joke" will work. Try to understand the joke structure, follow some basic formulas and start writing. Your jokes are not going to be funny when you first start out and thats ok because no ones first jokes are funny. Follow this class from the reddit link above once youve started writing something, anything, and then find an open mic.

If you want to be a successful comedian you have to find your voice in comedy, and you cant do that if someone else is writing for you. It can be nerve rattling to get on stage and tell jokes youve written but its the only way to get good at standup.

Please, for the love of god! do not quit. Keep sucking until you suck less. If you think that's hard try working for a living. It sucks and you will suck for just as long at a job where they pay you to get better. If possible do stand-up instead. Also, don't be afraid to take people's advice who are not cynical assholes.

Surprise: A lot of people don't understand that a good joke catches you off guard. You start walking someone down a path and change it at the end.

Premise, Punch Line, Tag:
-Premise: short as possible while giving the listener a vivid description.
-Punch Line: a violation of the premise
-Tag: additional punch lines that can optionally build off the previous punch line/tag.

Premise: "There’s a reason it’s called 'girls gone wild' and not 'women gone wild.' When girls go wild, they show their tits."
Punch line: "When women go wild, they kill men and drown their kids in a tub."
This joke set's us up to think that Louis CK will talk about how when women go wild it's milder. Instead it's horrifying.

Source Material: You're young and I'm going to guess you don't have any profound insights to share at this age. So pay attention to people. Pay attention to how they talk, where they look, how they feel and what they do. Pay attention to yourself. What are you thinking about when interacting with others? What do you think they're thinking about? Do you have messed up thoughts? Congratulations! We all do but we don't say it or pay enough attention to them. Keep these observations in a notebook.

Also, try to keep your material general so most people understand what you're talking about. This doesn't mean you can't talk about obscure subject, it just means it's harder to set up a premise.

Some things to riff on:

• Other people (if you know them personally change their name)
  
  
• Weird experiences you've had
  
  
• Crazy people on TV and different ways of thinking about their actions (if everyone things the crazy person sucks, find a reason to like what they're doing)
  
  
• Your desires (really wanted that lambo but I don't know how to extort people yet, that will take college)
  
  
• Anything that you can get people thinking one way and switch it on them
  
  Read some books:
  
  
• How to Write funny by Scott Dikkers
  
  
• This one was recommended in another post
  
  Some people say that reading books about comedy is useless like taking a stand-up course. These people are cynical assholes. Ignore their pessimism and devour as much information as possible. Drew Carry read 5 stand-up books then became famous. You can bang your head against the wall trying to carve a new path or you can just read what people have already discovered.
  
  Cheers!

Obviously you'll need to write some jokes, which is a process that's just as much art as it is science. I recommend Step By Step To Standup Comedy as a great starting point for joke theory, but his basic formula boils down to:

• The Setup: Say something that puts an assumption in the audiences head (ie. "I split my pants at work yesterday and everybody saw" makes the audience assume "He must have been embarrassed". You don't need to SAY you were embarrassed because we're already assuming it)
  
  
• Then, the punchline: Say something that shatters the audiences assumption ("I wore my splittable pants specifically to get compliments on my ass, and nobody even says anything!" implies that you actually were NOT embarrassed, proving the audience's assumption wrong)
  
  While you're writing and preparing to get up onstage, check out some open mics just to watch and get a feel for the scene. If you've only seen professional comedians do their A-material, you can get a lot of perspective from watching amateurs and local heros do open mics. Watching people bomb teaches you so much.

Off the top of my head..look at the connector .. from setup to punch line.. there is supposed to be twist... my suggestion is revisit a joke book or a joke podcast ..

https://www.letstalkaboutsets.com

https://www.amazon.com/Step-Stand-Up-Comedy-Greg-Dean/dp/0325001790

https://www.standupcomedyclinic.com/breakthrough-comedy-writing-system (w

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OR just watch your favorite comedians and pick a 5 minute set and identify the setup, premise and punch.. and ask yourself .. how did they get there..

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here's something off the top of my head for your second setup

Like for example when I went to make my Linkedin account there was no agriculture category.. but there was one for gambling.. you know what that means…  Being a professional gambler is a career….  Whatever the fuck I studied is a bad life choice… 

Greg Dean's "Step by Step" is a good, short introduction to mostly just the basic formulas of joke writing with not a lot of bullshit about "what makes a good comedian". Once you learn the basic setup/punch formula and the handful of different additions to that (tag, callback etc.) the real secret is just to write 10,000 jokes until you write a really funny one... Then write 10,000 more. It's time, repetition and getting on stage that does the magic after you learn the basics.

Link because if you're a comedian there's a good chance you're also really fucking lazy:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0325001790?pc_redir=1406445869&robot_redir=1

Hiya! Where have ya been?

Ok so if you normally like to tease him:

[The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1879505215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_O2eVAb1688K79) and [Law School in a Box: All the Prestige for a Fraction of the Price] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594741468/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_m-eVAb9K1X382)

Or if you want to encourage him: Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy and [The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1481246380/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zbfVAb6E6NG1V) and you can write him encouraging notes inside the covers.

Jeselnik talked about taking a class by greg dean. Tracked the book down, - http://www.amazon.com/Step-Stand-Up-Comedy-Greg-Dean/dp/0325001790 - very succinctly explains the structure of a joke. Very well written and insightful on how to set them up and deliver. Read that, follow it, and you will be in the top 10% of open mics.

Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy

So there's potential here, but you definitely have that complaining=comedy vibe going on, I'll give you the information handed down to me by Redditors.

1. Don't wear a hoodie or read directly off of your book/note sheet.
   
2. Write jokes, not speeches/monologues
   
3. Book
   
4. Keep your set short and end on a high note

Greg Dean's Step by Step to Stand Up Comedy was really helpful when I was starting out.

The book helped me a lot in my writing. Especially those parts are great where Dean dissects a bit and shows its evolution from an idea to a polished routine.

Performing, it did not do that much - but I think that you'll learn performing mostly by doing it over and over again and seeing what works for you.

The beginning section of this book is good for that.

https://www.amazon.com/Step-Stand-Up-Comedy-Greg-Dean/dp/0325001790

from a glance at the table of contents, would you say it's a waste of time to read?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0325001790/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36EJLW9RCOX12&coliid=I3LKPWTUCRN7Y8

Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy

This review sums it up well for me:

First of all Dean gives you his joke writing method. It is formulaic and unnatural. However it does have a number of virtues. In the first place it forces you, a neophyte, to begin to think analytically about what goes into making up a one-liner. This is a very important first step - it is not good enough to intuitively know when things are funny, you have to learn to analyze what the elements are which make it funny. In the second place Deane's method does something important, which I think any good writing method does, it forces you to ask questions about what you are writing, and the answers to these questions give you the seed for the ideas for the next thing you write, or for editing what you have already written. Again this is a bit unnatural, but if you've ever written anything and tried to seriously edit it, you will know what this is like. It involves taking a critical look at your own creation and crossing out the things that don't work or trying to improve them.