The NEW Comedy Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Writing and Performing Stand-Up Comedy

🎀 Highlights

“Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path. Unless you’re in the woods and you’re

“Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path. Unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path, then by all means you should follow that.” —Ellen DeGeneres Back in the green room, a manager enters, looking for you.

The audience wants to hear your original story and voice.

That’s your bankable asset. Among comics, stealing is the original sin.

Truth is stranger, and funnier, than fiction. Authenticity is the secret sauce of your act. Audiences want to know you and can tell if you’re being disingenuous.

Thou Shalt Pay Your Dues Stage time has no substitute. When you fail, get back onstage and try again.

The recipe for success is: Bomb • Try again • Cry • Try again • Eat a pizza • Try again • Repeat!

be friendly to the emcee/host, stay and watch the other comics, and thank the club owner.

Many New York comics wish they had been nicer to that bartender at the Improv who went on to

bashing those you perceive as less fortunate, based on religion, race, and sexual orientation, isn’t smart. Don’t use your comedy to oppress others.

Thou Shalt Not Try to be Funny Trying too hard to get laughs on a stage is equivalent to trying too hard to get love on a date. Either way, you’ll end up rejected.

Develop material to communicate your opinions and ideas in a way that’s authentically funny. (See Commandment 2.)

10.Thou Shalt Write Every Day No resting on the seventh day. Comedy is a 24/7 job!

Funny is something you are or aren’t. Being funny is a talent, a way of looking at the world that cannot be taught. But, if you are funny, then this book will show you how to successfully workshop, write, and develop stand-up comedy material through tried and true exercises. These exercises will develop your comedy persona as well as enough

Funny is something you are or aren’t. Being funny is a talent, a way of looking at the world that cannot be taught.

Write a punchline to this setup: Three things will survive a nuclear bomb: venereal disease, cockroaches, and…

Stand-up (Mixes) Finish this setup: An ink pen is like sex because…

Self-Mocking (Contrary Thinking) I’m chubby, but there are some advantages to being overweight… List Three Funny Advantages to Being Overweight

6.Acronym Jokes (One-Liners) KFC, CPA, and VIP actually stand for… Write Out Funny Definitions for These Acronyms 7.

8.Family Jokes The weird thing about my father is… Write Two Funny Things

It often takes ten tries before anything even remotely funny emerges.

Congratulations! You have the personality of a true comic! All comics procrastinate. As the saying goes, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

Go to TheComedyBible.com and fill out a commitment form!

most comics procrastinate when it comes to writing new material. Or any material.

How does Seinfeld avoid the pitfall of procrastination?

creating great material means writing every day. Seinfeld sets an egg timer for twenty minutes and writes without stopping

Seinfeld told him the way to be a better comic is to create

Seinfeld told him the way to be a better comic is to create better jokes, and the way to create better jokes is to write every day.

Notice Seinfeld didn’t say anything about writing “good” material. The secret to the Seinfeld Strategy is to banish all expectations of being brilliant. It’s about simply committing to write every day so you “don’t break the chain.”

Don’t let your anxiety, a fight with your partner, a bad day at work, or partying the night before take away your commitment to a daily writing schedule.

Matter of fact, when you write, you’ll probably find all those things that used to distract you from writing are material.

Personally, I like recording (versus jotting it down) so I can hear the energy, the attitude, and the delivery of my idea when it happens.

I once rewrote a joke for two years before telling it. —Jerry Seinfeld

That means in the middle of a dinner conversation, church, or even in the middle of sex—roll over and write it down! (No wonder so many comics are single.)

don’t go, ‘I’m gonna write a joke.’ I just go through the world and see stuff. It’s like I exercise the part of my mind of noticing things, to the point where I’m now noticing things without even trying to notice them.

I don’t go, ‘I’m gonna write a joke.’ I just go through the world and see stuff. It’s like I exercise the part of my mind of noticing things, to the point where I’m now noticing things without even trying to notice them. —Stephen Wright

I had scribblings on junk mail, on utility bills, and in thousands of files on my computer. It was chaos. Jokes got lost, forgotten, and needless to say, never delivered. (Someone at the gas company has probably been doing my jokes for years and wondering why I haven’t sent updated material.)

“What? Are you, insane? I don’t have an act! Why in the hell would I book myself for a gig?”

Matter of fact, my first time doing stand-up was with no act. No rehearsal. No material.

Many clubs have smaller rooms, such as the Comedy Store’s Belly Room in LA, and Gotham Comedy Club Basement in New York, where they host “bringer shows.” Comics are required to bring in paying customers in exchange for stage time. In other words, your comic ability is less important than your ability to fill a seat.

The quality of these shows tends to vary, and a bad comic schlepping along thirty friends is given priority over an amazing comic who has no “plus one.”

Just look at a giraffe and you can tell God has a sense of humor. And where you pray may also be a place you can perform. Some religious organizations host shows for their members and, as long as your material conforms to the sensibilities of a religious audience, you could get a gig and even get prayed. Sorry, “paid.”