When I first started in comedy, I made the mistake of breaking almost all of these rules below. As I corrected these issues, I started receiving more laughs. The difference between people just smiling at what is funny and actually laughing is how the joke is delivered and worded. More on that in future posts.
PACING & FIDGETING ON STAGE
Pacing was a big issue I had when I first started on stage. If you took a public speaking class in school, your teacher probably told you not to fidget. When you fidget or pace, the listeners are paying attention more to your fidgeting and pacing than on your jokes. If you want to pace do so only when your not talking. The key to comedy is FOCUS & INTEREST. If you can keep the audience focused and interested the whole time you will do extremely well. If you hear talking in the background you're sets going down hill.
START WITH YOUR FUNNIEST JOKE
When I first started I wanted to finish strong, so I always told my best joke last. I recently changed this. I start with my strongest jokes at the beginning, and by the end I go with my least funny jokes. The only exception to this rule is if someone could possibly think badly of you from your funniest joke. Ie it is to edgy. It should be a universal joke everyone in the audience will enjoy. At the start of your set your job is to get the audience on your side and for them to like you. Do not alienate your audience! So it may not be best to start a set with a political joke, unless it is general and does not offend either party. Your last joke should still be funny, and get laughs, just don't make it your best joke. It is also best to end your set with your more edgy materisl. This goes back to FOCUS & INTEREST. You need to get the audience to give you 100% of their attention, and focus on what you are saying. If you start with a really funny joke that makes everyone laugh, I guarantee you that 100% of the audience will be paying attention. (Unless they weren't there for comedy in the first place) Finish with a funny joke as well, just not your funniest joke. Make your last joke something people can remember you by. Celebrities and some Professionals can get away with telling sub par jokes at the beginning of their sets because people paid to see them specifically, so they will pay attention to their entire set. This is not going to be the case if the audience does not know who you are.
TALKING ABOUT JUST A PREMISE (IDEA)
If you are Jerry Seinfeld you may be able to get away with this. He does sometimes. But the majority of his jokes do have punch lines. Telling a joke that has no punch line, and getting laughs is next to impossible. You may get smiles, but you won't get laughs. Unfortunately, smiles don't show up on tape, so if you send a demo to someone and there are only smiles with no laughs, you are not going to do very good! If you are only getting smiles, the joke probably is funny, but you probably have an issue with either the wording or the delivery. Most probably it is a wording issue, because either it doesn't have a punch line, or the punch line is not located in the right place. I will talk about punch lines in future posts. I went to an open mic last night and there was a new comedian that just talked about premises but never delivered a punch line, and it was a painful set. The next comedian that followed him said something like, "I am going to tell you one joke tonight, which will be one more than the last
guy." This is true, no punch line equals no joke.
NO SETUP
The audience may need a little of background on the joke you are about to tell, before you tell the joke. You have to ask yourself, if someone knew nothing about this topic, how you would setup the joke so that everyone would be on the same page. Of course if you take premises that you know that everyone in the audience is going to know about, then you will do much better, because you won't need a setup.
INSIDE JOKES
Just because your friends and coworkers laugh at a joke, doesn't mean an audience will. If the audience doesn't know you, they are not going to have a proper setup on the joke. As per the previous item, setup is very important.
FILLER WORDS
Cut out words like "UH", "UM", "SO", etc... I still throw in a SO occasionally, and it is not horrible, but you sound more professional if you don't use filler words. If you memorize all your jokes and the order they appear in your set, you should be able to cut filler words out. Silence is okay, so it is better to be silent than to say filler words.
USE AS FEW WORDS AS POSSIBLE
Try delivering the joke with as few of words as possible. Trim as much as possible, but make sure that you still have enough to where the audience will not be in the dark on the setup. Keep it simple and don't complicate the joke. The first joke I ever wrote when I was about 8 years old, was majorly complicated, so it never got laughs, because it was way too complicated. I reworded the joke to "I was driving down a back road and came to a do not pass sign. So I stopped." A couple of notes on this joke. First if you don't know about punch lines, the punch line in this joke is "Stopped". This is what creates the surprise that gets the laugh, because it is not what the audience is thinking. Another note is that I have to pause about 3 seconds on this joke, because it takes a little bit of time for the audience to get it.
STOP TALKING AFTER YOU SAY THE PUNCH LINE!
Once you tell a joke, you need to stop talking!!!!!!!!!!! Adding filler words and phrases after you tell it is going to kill any laughter that you may have received. Saying words like "You know", or you "know what I mean", "pretty scary", etc...
PAUSE
The punch line should be the last thing you say in the joke. After you say that you need to pause so that the audience knows it is time to laugh. Instead of rushing through your setups, you can even try pausing in your setups at the end of every sentence. If the setup is kind of funny, you can get laughs from that as well. If you note professional comedians they get people to laugh even at their setups. This is how you get to the next level.
PUNCH LINE / WORDING
I think that the phrase "punch line" is deceiving, since this makes you think it is an entire sentence. It is better to call it a "Punch Word" or "Punch Phrase." The punch line should only be one to three words that appear at the very end of the joke. The less words your punch contains the better your joke will be. The reason for this is that the laughter many times is created by the surprise of the joke in combination of it being funny. Without the surprise, you will generally get just a smile if it is funny. You should not say anything after the punch line. If the punch line does not appear at the end, then try to reword it so that it does. Occasionally this is not the case but about 99% of the time it is. If putting the punch line at the end messes up the flow and delivery of the joke, you may be better off going with the wording that does not ruin the flow of the joke. Try it both ways in these cases and see what works best.
Looking at this list you may know professional comedians that break some of these rules. They may get away with it for many different reason. The premise of the joke may be so good that they are going to get a laugh no matter what. It must be also noted that professionals have a fan base that go to that specific comedians shows, so they know what they are in for. Whatever the reason for it working for the professional, if you are not a professional and just starting out in comedy, you need to do everything right to get people to start laughing. Comedy is hard so it is important to do things as correctly as possible.
