5. Put the Idea into Action

By now you should have come up with a Joke.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Pat yourself on the back. Open a bottle of Champagne. Do a silly little dance. Combine all three! Pat the Champagner, open yourself and then do the silly little dance on your back!

Who is a good Comedy Writer? Who is a good Comedy Writer?

YOU ARE! YES YOU ARE!

No, really. Be proud of yourself. You just made a step in the right direction.

But there ain’t no rest for the wicked. It’s time to get some sweet, sweet feedback. There are several ways you can go about getting feedback it and each possibility has its own advantages and disadvantages.

But let’s take it step by step and go looking for ways to maximize the efficacy of your feedbackees. And for that, you have to…

Kill your darlings

When I was living in London I did a spot at an open mic and afterwards some of us comedians stayed and had a beer. One guy who had just done his very first gig asked us if we would listen to some of his other jokes and we agreed.

Which we then immediately regretted.

He produced at least 30 pages of notes from his bag and started reading them out loud. One joke after the other. And they were bad. As in “Here are my unfiltered thoughts on random topics which I wrote down and never looked at again before I read them to you” - kind of bad. And it went on for what felt an eternity.

The thing is: There were some funny thoughts in the midst of all but they got drowned in his unfiltered stream of consciousness.

Don’t be like this comedian.

Give your ideas your best shot by choosing the ones with the most potential.

Because getting feedback is like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing which will stick. Except that the wall is your friends or, even worse, your audience and with every unfunny joke they will be less inclined to laugh at the next joke.

Somewhere I read the advice, that if you need five minutes of comedy write ten and just use the best. And I agree. By making yourself choose, by killing your darlings, you will give the other 50 percent a real chance at living.

But deciding beforehand which jokes have the most potential is not the only thing you should do before getting feedback.

Edit your material and give it some kind of structure by being the first one to give feedback to your own material.