Learn Stand-up Comedy Fast

Yes, it is possible to learn stand-up comedy very quickly if you are a funny person in everyday life and you can embrace a few concepts that go against antiquated and ineffective “joke writing” techniques being taught today.

Let’s take a look at some of the ancient and mostly useless strategies that most people try to use when they make the decision to learn stand-up comedy, along with a fresh approach that can help you master the comedy stage very quickly.

Useless Strategy: Jokes that read funny on paper will be funny on stage.

Nothing could be father from the truth. We write much differently than we talk. Also, mere words and sentences on paper lack the presence of body language, voice inflection and tone impact that the spoken word must have to generate big laughs on stage.

Better Strategy: Use paper (or your word processor) only as a tool to structure and format what it is that you want to talk about in your stand-up comedy act—the way you speak naturally, not the way you write a memo.

Useless Strategy: Special stand-up comedy techniques must be employed to get the big laughs on the comedy stage.

This too is false. If you are a naturally funny person, then you already use stand-up comedy “techniques” that work for you in everyday life.

Being able to merely identify a particular technique (double entendre, exaggeration, etc.) does absolutely nothing to help the aspiring funny person apply those techniques.

Better Strategy: Don’t focus on any particular joke “technique”. Focus on identifying what you would like to talk about on stage and “react” to what you have to say naturally – the way you would if you were talking to a group of friends.

Useless Strategy: Anyone can learn stand-up comedy and become funny on stage.

Once again, this is false. Short of getting a brain transplant, it is impossible for someone to learn stand-up comedy techniques and somehow “magically become” funny.

The good news is that most people have all the sense of humor they need to perform at a high level on the stand-up comedy stage. The key is to capture and structure that already developed sense of humor for the stage (which is not difficult at all).

Better Strategy: Have the courage to be yourself and to use and apply the sense of humor that you already developed and use effectively on a daily basis.

If you seriously want to learn stand-up comedy fast, here’s the very first thing you should do:

1. Transcribe just 3 minutes of your favorite comedian.
2. Note that the transcribed comedy material does not usually “read” funny and does not look like it’s “written” to be read from a piece of paper.
3. Make a note of the number of laughs for each transcribed minute and when they occurred in the transcription.
4. Make a note of the number of words used before a laugh occurs.
5. Make a note of the simplicity of the topic or topics being talked about.

This will reveal a basic blueprint that you can use to learn stand-up comedy structure very quickly. You can then apply this structure to anything that you want to talk about on the comedy stage from your own unique point of view.