The Most Important Thing I've Learned about Stand Up Comedy
Seriously, this one made a difference
Last week I promised you that this week I’d to give you the lesson that has made the biggest difference in my comedy career, the most important thing I’ve ever learned about comedy. This is it, in two parts, STFU, and Know How To Bomb.
Part 1: STFU
Say your Punchline and then be quiet. Give the audience time to process your joke and laugh. This is easier said than done. It’s actually terrifying to wait that beat after you tell your joke. This is because they might not laugh, and by waiting for them to laugh you made it clear that you intended them to laugh. You told the joke, you waited for a laugh, they didn’t laugh and now life is horrible and you look forward to the sweet, sweet embrace of death.
You have to take this chance. Your self preservation instincts will try really hard to throw in some chatter after the punch line to fill in that silence or even just to jump into your next joke. This is the number one mistake I see with newer comics. Talking immediately after your punch line like this will step on the laugh and weaken it. You have to risk your joke bombing or it’ll never have a chance to kill.
You have to risk bombing. The thing I learned that made this possible for me, was knowing how to bomb. For the first two or three years I did stand up, a joke bombing was the end of my set. It would tank my energy, create discomfort between me and the audience, and every joke that came after was doomed. Then I learned how to bomb.
Part 2: How To Bomb
Know how to bomb a joke, because you’re going to bomb a lot of jokes, even some of the best jokes you’ll ever write will bomb sometimes.
The good part is, it’s easy! I have heard comedy defined as “Creating tension and relieving it in a surprising way”. Well, you told a joke and they didn’t laugh. Congratulations, you just created tension. You know that tension. Your unfunny uncle, or neighbor, who always wants to tell you horrible jokes has made you intimately familiar with that tension. It’s the worst. It’s fascinating the psychology of someone telling a joke that doesn’t illicit a laugh. I think the audience actually gets angry at the comedian for being uncomfortable and putting them in the position of feeling responsible for that discomfort. It’s excrutiating.
And you can relieve that tension simply, just by acknowledging it. Just say out loud that your joke bombed and they will laugh. I promise you.
You can stop, pull out a pen, and cross that joke out of your notebook, assuring the audience you won’t do it again. I see this done at least once a month. Not the most original bomb response, but it works, and it lets you survive to give the next joke a fair shot, so until you have your own bomb response, feel free to use it. Comics often point out the one laugh a joke got, “Thanks, one guy.” Again, kind of a public domain response to a joke not working, but at this point you're about surviving. See also, “Thanks, Mom” or “Thanks, Dad”, or “I’d like to buy that guy a water.”
My favorite bomb response that I’ve come up with goes like this:
Yeah, that one bombed but you know, the behaviorist BF Skinner, with his pigeons, proved that inconsistent rewards are more effective at establishing behaviors. Otherwise I’d make all my jokes awesome.
Sometimes it bombs. Then I have to bomb response my bomb response, and I swear on a stack of bibles (or comic books) if I say, “Oh damn, my response to my joke bombing also bombed!” they will laugh.
Homework: Go on youtube and look for Johnny Carson bombing. Truthfully you could just watch any Carson or Letterman monologue, they always bombed a good number of jokes. They had to do a monologue every night, so it was a given that they’d bomb often. Both of them, (but especially Carson) are masters at getting a bigger laugh from the jokes that bombed than the ones that worked. Most of Carson’s trademark gestures were bomb responses, from the golf club swing, tugging at his collar, rocking on his heels. There are even compilations of his greatest bombs.
Here’s a great example, watch the master wait patiently at the end of each joke, and at the two minute mark see him have a great time with a joke bombing, including acknowledging that he isn’t able to road test his jokes! It’s pretty incredible.
You can show an audience a great time even with writing that isn’t working, and it’s a skill you should learn. They’re there to have fun; if you offer them the chance to do that, they’ll take it. When you combine these techniques with sharp writing, you’ll be unstoppable. Just kidding, you’ll still occasionally bomb and be full of self loathing until you find the next gig or open mic to redeem yourself, it’s part of the game, but you will find yourself killing more often and bombing less. And, you’ll recover when you bomb. You’ll tell the audience that you’re okay, they didn’t hurt you, they don’t have to feel awkward, and you can all move on together.
Read this post again, bookmark it. I meant it when I say that learning to survive bombing a joke is the single greatest jump forward I made in my development as a comedian. Once I learned to not let a dud joke derail me it changed everything; I could take chances, I could develop new material quicker, I had a much higher percentage of successful sets.