Late last year, I made a New Year’s Resolution. It was spoken out loud. Rookie mistake. The Universe could hear me: get on stage and deliver a “tight five” at an open mic. You forget your resolutions. The Universe is like an elephant: always expanding. And an endangered species.
A couple years ago, I aborted an attempt at stand-up. Went to the first free class. Pulled out just in time.
Recently, I committed. Six weeks. Three hours a week. The “graduation” showcase would be on a comedy club stage in front of hundreds of people. I would tell no one. A furtive hobby on Tuesdays nights. AA for laughs.
Enrolling in a stand-up comedy class revealed a hideous truth. After two decades of publishing blogposts, newsletters, and posting in public, it turns out I was the flasher on a subway platform this whole time: nobody asked, everybody saw it, and it wasn’t what I thought it was.
This was a writing class. I’m a writer. Performing my own words out loud involved reconciling that my writing voice and my speaking voice were two different people. One of them would be introduced to a room full of strangers with alcohol in them.
The writer’s voice would be on stage, under bright lights, speaking into a microphone, to an audience that has been given the expectation they will LOL. Normal writers do not get satisfaction from speaking their words to 40 people at an open mic who sit in stone silence. As an art form, it attracts all types. None of these people are normal. This was my tribe.
Writing for stand-up comedy has a specific purpose: to surprise the room. It’s stream of consciousness with an objective. To break the crowd’s assumption, jump-scare people’s shared prejudices, and shatter their expectations.
There is a reason dad jokes are funny: double-entendres and puns are misdirection. You think dad means one thing and it turns out he means another.
It’s easy to make people laugh when the shared context is “we’re all very serious, elite, high-performing professionals”, and that assumption is broken by “what if we all weren’t, though?” Years of ruthless and joyful observations of workplace absurdities can give a man delusions of Netflix.
Some people journal to brain-dump. A comedy writer’s brain doesn’t have an off button: it’s Magneto meets the Tasmanian Devil.
Stand-up comedy is a performance art, but before the words are spoken they must be written. Stand-up comedy writing is articulating internalized experience, perspectives, and opinions on what is “weird, scary, hard, or stupid” within a structured design for a specific purpose. On paper. Or a Notes app. Or a transcribed Voice Memo.
It takes practice. Some people are just naturally funny. Everyone else with a half-hour special is the comic-muscle equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Punching down isn’t a joke, it’s mean. Look around your group chat. If you can’t tell who is the mean one, sit down. I’ve got some really bad news.
The most challenging aspect of stand-up comedy writing: deep-diving and introspection within Kahneman’s System 2 when the spoken word will be performed in front of a live audience operating in System 1.
I spent a 15 years writing tweets that needed a thesaurus to unpack. The room at an open mic doesn’t hand out dictionaries.
Land the smart joke and it feels worth it. For about ninety seconds, until the next bit dies in total silence.
