How to Start Doing Stand up Comedy

Booking Sets

Call into an amateur night at a comedy club. Most comedy clubs have specific times where you can call in to get booked, even if you haven’t done stand up before. You might not get a set the first time you call, so keep calling in until you get one. Most clubs will post a specific time period with a small window to call in. You might have between 9:30 and 10:00 AM on a Tuesday to book a slot, for example. If you don’t get a set at the first club you call, try a different one! Keep calling comedy clubs in your area until you find one that will let you in.

Discuss payment upfront with any gigs you land. When you’re first starting out, you probably won’t get paid much of anything for a gig. Make sure you talk to the club manager or owner to figure out how much they owe you, when you’ll get paid, and what you’re expected to do. Some club owners require you to sell tickets or work the door (greet guests) before your set. Some gigs don’t pay at all! It’s up to you if you’d like to accept those ones, but they’re great experience to have when you’re first starting out.

Host your own comedy show if you’re having trouble booking gigs. Getting your first stand up set can be tough, and it might take a few weeks (or months) until you manage to get up on stage. If you want some experience in the meantime, host your own comedy show and invite your comic friends to come perform. You could rent out a bar for the night, hit up your local community center, or even host people in your own backyard.

Post your material on social media. If you had a really good set and you managed to record it, post some snippets on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. You may be able to drum up some excitement about your performance and get invited to more gigs that way. You don’t have to post every show or every joke if you’d like to save some material for your in-person audience members.

Writing Material

Get inspiration from live comedy shows. It’ll help you keep up with what’s relevant and what’s not. Head to your local comedy club to get a sense of who’s performing, what jokes work, and what to stay away from. You could also try going to different types of comedy clubs. Popular, mainstream ones might be different from underground or alternative ones. You can get inspiration from different comedians, but never steal their jokes directly. That will give you a bad reputation in the comedy sector.

Put together 5 to 7 minutes of material. Almost every open mic or comedy club will want you to start out with 5 to 7 minutes of content. Take your funniest jokes and put them into your first set. You can always have a little more material prepared, but 5 to 7 minutes is usually the average.

Save your best joke for last. If you put your most interesting material at the beginning of your set, it can only go downhill from there. If you know you have a killer joke, put it at the very end to leave your audience on a high note. You can slide your second best joke in the beginning of your set to hook the audience in and keep them captivated.

Rehearse your material out loud. The most important part of stand up comedy is timing. Practice saying your jokes out loud so you can get your punchlines down and really make the jokes land. You can practice alone or in front of your friends; whichever you feel most comfortable with. If you’re practicing alone, try standing in front of a mirror to check out your facial expressions as you tell your jokes. Memorize your material! It really disrupts the flow of a comedy show if you’re constantly looking at your notes.

Ask for feedback from experienced comics. If there’s another performer in the crowd who you admire, check in with them after your set to see if they have any critiques. You don’t have to take their word as gospel, but it can be helpful to get advice from people in the business. Not every comedian will be open to giving you advice, and that’s okay too.

Rewrite any material that didn’t land. If you told a joke and only got a few chuckles, it might be time to head back to the drawing board. It’s totally fine to revise and rework your content to make it funnier or snappier for next time. You don’t have to have fresh content for every set that you do, but you should try to mix it up a little so you aren’t just repeating the same few jokes over and over again.

Performing

Invite your friends to watch your performance. Talking to a large audience is much more fun than an empty room. You can tell your friends when and where you’ll be performing so they can come and watch the show if you’d like to. If having your friends there is going to make you too nervous, don’t invite them. You can get your bearings at your first couple of gigs before you invite people you know.

Adjust the mic to your height when you get on stage. It might sound like a no-brainer, but when you’re in front of an audience, you might feel a little frazzled. When you first get on stage, either adjust the mic stand to fit your height or hold the mic in your hand. If you’re going to hold the mic in your hand, move the mic stand behind you where it won’t get in the way.

Engage the audience by looking out into the crowd. You might be nervous, which is totally normal! However, you should still try to look out at your audience to connect with them. If making eye contact is too tough, stare at someone’s forehead instead. Making a connection with your audience will lead to a funnier show, since the crowd will feel like you’re talking directly to them.

Read the crowd by listening to what they laugh at. If you’re telling a raunchy joke and it doesn’t land, maybe stick to more PG-13 jokes from here on out. If you’re joking a lot about politics and the crowd seems bored, move onto a different subject. Try to have a few jokes up your sleeve so you can change tactics if you need to. Crowds are different depending on where you are, what time it is, and which club you’re performing at. Not every joke works for every crowd!

Stick to your allotted time. Many comics use vibrating watches so that they know when their time is up without the annoyance of an audible alarm going off. There might also be a clock in the back of the room that you can keep an eye on so you don’t run over your time.

Do a little improv to deal with hecklers. Hecklers are people who don’t like your set and aren’t afraid to tell you about it. You might not have any hecklers right away, but there is a chance you’ll deal with some at some point. Think on your feet and try to turn it into a funny situation so the audience doesn’t get uncomfortable. You can prepare a few one-liners to use if you ever get heckled. For example, if someone yells out, “That’s not funny!” you could say something like, “Well, my jokes are for smart people, so I’m not surprised.”