I want to give you an example of the incredibly lame information that is provided to new and prospective comedians in popular stand-up comedy books, workshops and classes as well as on online stand-up comedy tips sites.

The Standard Blah Blah

Here’s the anatomy of a stand-up comedy joke that you will get from almost every resource:

A stand-up comedy joke has 3 primary parts:

1. The set-up lines. These are the informational and unfunny parts of the joke.

2. The punchlines. These are funny lines or parts of lines that generate laughter from the joke.

3. The tag lines. This is an additional punchline or punchlines (optional) verbalized after the initial punchline in a joke.

Now that you know the “traditional” anatomy of a stand-up comedy joke, answer this question for yourself:

How does the information I have presented help you in ANY way develop a stand-up comedy act that actually works on stage?

The answer is that outside of mere academic recognition of the parts of a joke, the “traditional” information I have just provided you is basically worthless when it comes to helping anyone develop stand-up comedy material.

But what if I gave you these definitions AND gave you a ton of examples of actual stand-up comedy jokes from other comedians? Wouldn’t that help?

Does Studying Stand-up Comedy Jokes Help?

The answer is no and here’s why:

1. No mention is ever made of the punchline structure that is needed for 90%+ of all punchlines.

2. Most of a comedian’s laughter power comes from delivery — not the words as they are “written” on paper. That part always seems to be missing too…

Without knowing the delivery style, attitude and method of expression used by the comedian who delivered the joke, it is difficult at best to even “see” what’s funny and why from stand-up comedy joke examples on a piece of paper.

Here’s the bottom line:

You will make little if any progress as a comedian trying to use “traditional” methods and techniques because most traditional stand-up comedy education is based on non-actionable definitions that DON’T help YOU develop stand-up comedy material at the level you desire.

Some of the reasons that Killer Stand-up clients and Comedy Pro Members have a HUGE edge over virtually all other comedians because:

1. They are given actionable information designed to help individuals structure the sense of humor that they already have.

2. They understand effective punchline structure and frequency.

3. They don’t work on individual “jokes”. They work from a topic based approach and work on chunks of comedy material at a time.

4. They understand that we write differently than we talk and that most of a comedian’s laughter power comes from delivery.

5. They are able to use precision tools like Comedy Evaluator Pro for measuring true performance results and act improvement which can literally shave years off the time it takes to kill on stage.

But don’t take my word for it. Do some research and see if you can find ANYTHING useful beyond what I have provided on this single page:

– Go to eHow.com and check out the videos there on how to develop a stand-up comedy routine.

– Get ANY of popular books on stand-up comedy.

– Take a comedy workshop or class.

Sad, But True

I will promise you this…

You will get little or no useable information on how to effectively use YOUR sense of humor and YOUR personality style to develop stand-up comedy that actually works on stage.

In my opinion you have 2 choices:

You can go about becoming a comedian the hard way or the easy way. The choice is completely yours.

Related video and article:

Related Article: How To Write Stand-up Comedy Material

For more information about Steve Roye, author of this blog and the Killer Stand-up Online Course, click here.

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