https://soundcloud.com/you_sir/stand-up-29715

You're going to bomb a lot more, and the best comics had their best material bombed. Perhaps its a case more of delivery and not the joke itself. I'll listen to it later when I'm home.

I have to say, that's a pretty misleading title.

Quote from Nish

You're going to bomb a lot more, and the best comics had their best material bombed. Perhaps its a case more of delivery and not the joke itself. I'll listen to it later when I'm home.

Thanks man, looking forward to it.

Though it is kind of discouraging when some of your best material was the weakest out of 40 other open mikers.

Quote from _Ai_

I have to say, that's a pretty misleading title.

Looks like I might have a job in the newspaper industry.

you lost me at the virgin part the first time through, it was a little hard to follow. the ice cream truck joke definitely has potential but I feel like the delivery got in the way. same with the scissors joke, something about the way you said the punchline made it sound.. forced? not sure how to describe it. maybe you were nervous in front of a tough crowd, but considering the conditions I wouldn't take it personally at all, having to sit through 3 hours of late night amateur comedy sounds pretty rough on a crowd.

Yeah man you ought to just shrug that set off. It's hard to control the energy of a crowd that's burnt out already.

lol those awkward laughs are so good

Quote from Envoy

Looks like I might have a job in the newspaper industry.

Haha!

I don't get what you're talking about man. You're hilarious.

Back to uni, new set.

This was the most satisfying one for me yet, despite the laughs being a little patchy. A couple of weeks after the last one I found a comic by the name of Mitch Hedberg. Man, his jokes were legendary and he didn't need to rely on anything dirty or profane to get laughs. I also read an article by Demetri Martin (another inspiration) about the process to writing these type of jokes and it really clicked. So I started writing full clean and concise and when I got on stage I dialed up my chillness to 6, hand in pockets and all (I just didn't know what to do with my hands with this kind of style without a mic); although I was back into an environment that I was used to, so I wasn't really anxious to begin with. I still had trouble remembering my set so I had to rely on looking at my set list multiple times. I originally created a memory palace, but I just forgot all about it when I went up. Goes to show that I still got work to do with stage confidence.

I also read on a reddit (I think) the way you should arrange a set list. You start with your second best, leave the best till last, the third best then goes after your second, etc. It was interesting to see my expectations of the outcome vs what the crowd thought.

Mitch Hedberg was amazing.

One other thing I want to point out Envoy (people always voice similar opinions here, so I didn't post last time cause I didn't want to repeat the points) is that you don't seem to have a clear picture of what kind of Stand-up you want to be. But thats competely natural and its what this stage of your career is for. You seem to have a very likable delivery on stage so I think you should find ways to play that up more, or perhaps use that for some kind of comic contrast.

There are the one-line joke comics like Hedberg and Wright, and the longer story-tellers. You tell short jokes with punchlines, but you also personalize them with the "I find...", "I like..." and "I am...". I'm wondering whether longer, much more personalized jokes about yourself and things around you would be your thing because your short observational jokes about tacos and communism are pretty much of the 'groan' variety. I much prefer your joke about your grandmother, and you should write more relatable material along those lines.

The set-list arrangement concept is spot on, I"m quite surprised you didn't research that part more before you went on the first time. You always open with your second-best joke and close with the best. You definitely closed with your best joke in this set, so thats fine.

I have trouble with longer, story like jokes. Some reasons:

. Personally I think the process of refining a long joke is difficult in comparison to one liners. The mistake I sometimes make is writing too much or trying to pack too many ideas into one bit. There is a greater risk of it going stagnant and by the time I reach the intended punch line it may just go over peoples heads completely even if it was funny because they were bored. It's also quite shitty fully knowing that the bit is bombing but you still want to continue simply because the biggest laugh may be at the end. It's like crawling through a tunnel of shit and finding that the exit is blocked by iron bars. Whereas with one liners you are just dipping in and out and you have a chance to catch your breath. However, I do see this longer process as a viable method to help me discover new one liners and a few of my jokes have been a result of that although not intentionally.

. A lot of my jokes I write rely on the twist at the end. I think my strength lies in setting peoples expectations and then giving them something unexpected or something they haven't thought of yet that still bears a connection with the setup; usually when I write I try to stay 2 steps ahead of what the audience is thinking. There is a methodical process to it, or more so compared to the other style. The problem with me is by searching for the unobvious I don't find writing the obvious funny; and I think the obvious is what is needed to lengthen the bit. I'm not saying it's not funny, I'm just saying how they could possibly know what they write was funny. Look at this bit by Ronnie Chieng. His ranting style is hilarious yet for most of it I already had those thoughts before but it never crossed me as funny. The metal detector I use to find humor just didn't buzz at those points (Also interesting read)

. Honestly I don't think I have enough personality to pull off longer bits. I can't do impressions, I can't do accents (my attempt at the asian accent made me cringe), my emotional range is limited to annoyed and frustrated, and I just can't act in general. Without variation in a long bit I think it'll just get stale.

. My life is just boring. I have no struggles or tragedies. Really the most interesting thing that happened was me taking up comedy.

The style that I would say has the greatest similarity is probably that of Anthony Jeselnik. He has some one liners, but he also incorporates these "paragraph" jokes. Part of the rationale behind padding some of the jokes before hand is that I didn't want to be too predictable and there is still a little guess work for when the punchline will arrive. Another reason is that it just allowed me to collect my thoughts a bit. A better comic might have just called it excess and trimmed those bits and went straight for it, but I feel that it also gives a chance for the audience to recover.

Btw, how much of my set would you say is of the 'groan' variety? Was it just those 2 jokes?

I've heard of the set-list before but not to the detail where you have that alternating kind of pattern. I would put my strongest joke at the end and second in front but I didn't care what happened in between. The first time I did stand up with purely one liners, I just did the list as it was and it ain't fun having a great first half and silent second half; at the very least the reverse would be way better.