#01 Nitty Gritty Advice For Stand-Up Comedians

by Andi Whiskey

I still remember my first year of comedy so fondly. There were some horrifyingly cringe moments, some ridiculously high triumphs, and such a self esteem rollercoaster through it all.

When you first get started with comedy, you’re busy first learning how to write jokes and figuring out how to get on stage. Once you learn the ropes, it’s time to step up your game, especially if you want to start getting regularly booked on shows.

The following advice is a good mix of stuff I learned from awesome comedians that took the time to help me out, as well as some hard lessons I learned by struggling through it. Take it all with a grain of salt because at the end of the day, everyone’s comedy journey is incredibly unique to them. These are just a few nuggets I picked up on my own journey.

Comedy is an Economy of Words

I’m going to quickly point out the irony of this being my longest section of this article but hey, this isn’t my set. Moving on.

My uncle gave me this little comedy wisdom when I was first starting out. He was also a stand up comedian way back when, performing all over Southern California. He actually refused to give me much advice when I started, but this is something he told me that really stuck: Comedy is an economy of words.

It’s also something I struggle with. I’m a storyteller, which means I like details and context and I want to paint a whole picture for you. But… that’s not good comedy.

So if that’s something you struggle with, too, here’s something I use to practice writing better, tighter jokes.

I’ll first write down a premise. Then I write down the whole joke as it first comes to me. It’s wordy, breathy, ugly at that point. 

Then I start chopping away at it. If that doesn’t get me to a laugh at minimum every 10 seconds if not every line, it’s time to go back to the initial concept.

Here’s an example of a process I went through recently. I have a joke I like that always does well and it’s one simple line:

“I’m so bisexual, I named my dildo Alex.”

It took me 3 years to write that one line. That’s stupid. But the first time I told that joke on stage, it was full of words and bullshit. I mentioned the dildo was purple, I explained the joke by saying that the name was gender neutral, blah blah blah. I kept getting wrapped up in the context and details, and the joke never did well. It felt like filler fluff between my heavier hitting jokes, and I eventually dropped it. 

But I really liked the premise, so it sat there in my notes waiting for me, and one day I came back to it and I just wrote down the premise of the joke again in one sentence as if I was giving an elevator pitch for the joke I was about to tell.

“I’m so bisexual, I named my dildo Alex.” But then boom. Done. Why did I need to say anything else. 

Once you do that, and have a solid break of expectations or twist in as few words as possible, then you can go back and add in more context in the form of tags, but keep them just as simple. My tag for this joke? “Their pronouns are they/them.” Easy laugh with the right crowd. 

When I was a younger comic, I had to resist the urge to explain the joke and tell the crowd, “Because Alex could be a girl or a guy depending on my mood.” Sure, I’d get a little laugh out of that but it’s weak. Too many words, and it breaks a main (loose) rule of comedy: don’t explain your joke. 

Don’t treat the audience like they’re dumb. Act like you both share a little secret and the secret is you both get the joke without having to explain it. If that’s not enough to get a laugh out of the crowd, you don’t have a strong enough joke yet, keep writing.

When can you explain a joke? Generally, when the premise is so stupidly obvious, that explaining it to people is funny because it breaks the expectation that everyone gets it. Otherwise, resist the urge and write better. Explaining your joke comes from feeling insecure about how you wrote it.

Underline Your Punchline

I forget where I first heard this advice, but it’s killer advice no matter how long you’ve been doing comedy.

Write down your whole joke. Underline the punchline. And circle your tags. 

This is good practice to teach yourself basic joke structure, and to also make sure your jokes have structure.

And just as a refresher, basic joke structure is: Setup, punchline. (Tag optional)

If you look at your jokes and it takes a while to get to the underlined part, you have a problem. You’ve just lost the audience in the setup. Get there quicker.

Generally it’s said that you should be getting a laugh every 6 seconds (some say 10 seconds, some say 20 seconds, look, it's a loose rule). Since I’m a storyteller, I weave a lot of jokes together into long bits, but I still aim for a laugh at minimum every other sentence. I don’t consider a bit “done” until I get there. And even then, everything can be punched up.

Delivery Matters

This is obvious, but we’ll dissect why delivery matters just a touch. The important thing about delivery, besides just “sounding funny”, is to tell the audience when to laugh.

Pause For Laughs

A lot of new comics make the mistake of running right over their punchlines into the next joke, stepping on the laughs, usually because they’re nervous. You have to give space for your audience to laugh. This comes with practice, but something that can help is telling your brain when to pause by writing down the pause. 

What I mean is use the above method of writing down your joke and underlining the punchline, but then add a pause visually by skipping a line or two in your notebook or in your document, however you write your jokes. That visual space as your brain reads your joke that you wrote will force your brain to read in the pause after your punchline.

Delivery matters SO much that you can have a sh*t punchline that a third grader could write, but if you have enough charisma and strong enough delivery, you can convince a crowd to laugh when your inflection says laugh.

Cadence & Syllables

If you really want to get nerdy with it, pay attention to your best jokes that get the most laughs and how you say them when they land. You may recognize a pattern. Everyone’s pattern is a little different, but your cadence for how you tell your jokes will clue in the audience for when they’re meant to laugh. They’re subconsciously looking for this pattern in how you speak, so make sure you pay attention and recognize your pattern, then lean into it. The best way to figure this out is to record every open mic, every set, and watch them back religiously.

Fewer syllables are funnier. I have a punchline that ends with “And suddenly you’re a trash human being,” but I originally wrote it as, “And suddenly you’re a disgusting human being.” They both draw the exact same picture, but you can probably tell which one is going to be funnier, even without knowing the whole joke.

I’m going to write more about this in the future, so keep an eye out for those articles. I have a unique experience on this topic because of a brain injury I sustained in 2024 that caused me to have a stutter and be monotone when I spoke. It gave me a new perspective on speaking and joke cadence.

The Only True Test Of A Joke Is In Front Of A Real Audience

Comedians aren’t good measures of what’s going to be funny sometimes. Your friends are not a good representation of an audience, either. 

There is a specific formula that creates magic when you’re on a real stage in front of a real audience. They’re ready to laugh and they want you to give them a reason to. How you show up and deliver your joke in that moment is the only true test of a joke.

And here’s something important to think about: an open mic is not a good measure of if a joke is good or not.

Open mics are not a good place to figure out if a joke is good or not. Oftentimes, the audience at an open mic is comprised of comedians and people who were not expecting a comedy show. Neither of those demographics will behave like a true comedy show audience.

When you're initially starting out, yeah, open mics are for learning if a joke is worth telling or not. But after you figure out your basic joke structure, that's not the place to judge if a joke is good or not.

One of my own mentors told me early on to use open mics to:

• Figure out the delivery of a joke.
  Telling it into a mic will feel different than putting it on paper or saying it in your head. And it’s even different from how you said it in your car on the drive over.  
• Practice what to do with the microphone.
  Practice keeping it in the stand sometimes, practice how you hold it, practice how far you need to hold it from your mouth. This will vary based on room and sound system, and you need to learn how to figure that out on the fly. And for gawd’s sake, get the stand out of the way first thing, and do not fiddle with the cord.
• Practice how to use a stage.
  Most mics won’t have a real stage, but it’s still good practice to learn how to use the space given to you for the performance. Do you move?  Do you hold still? Do you need to practice being more still? Do you sit? Does your energy on stage match your joke style and your character? (That’s a more advanced question to ask yourself, but it’s worth keeping in mind).
• Get comfortable in front of an audience.
  They fidget, they talk, they look at their phones. Open mics are to condition you to push through or even interact with the distractions.
• Practice memorizing your jokes.
  Did you get all the words right? Did you remember the punchline? If not, practice makes perfect. Keep getting up and doing it over and over until you nail it.
• Figure out if your joke is too wordy.
  If I get up and feel like there's too much time until I get to the new punchline and can feel myself losing the momentum, I have something to work on.

But open mics are not to figure out if the joke is good or not. If people don’t laugh at an open mic, that doesn’t necessarily mean the joke is bad. I’ve had dead silence on jokes that I’ve had a crowd rolling with. 

Comedians at an open mic are too in their own heads about their 5 minute set to pay attention to you. And open mic audience members have been taking a firehose to the face of bad punchlines (or a lack thereof) from new comics. This is not a crowd primed to laugh.

That said, if you see an open mic crowd pull back from an especially controversial joke, use the feedback and learn from it. 

A Caveat: Open Mics in San Diego Are Different From Other Comedy Scenes

This is really a note for anyone who has moved here from other scenes. San Diego is one of the few cities where some open mics regularly have a true audience who are there to laugh. This is rare. I really want to emphasize this, as someone who’s lived in other states and cities and performed all over the country. This is something really special that San Diego has to offer.

But it also means not all open mics here are great for practice. Some of them are better used as auditions for bookers to get on real shows. Unlike other comedy scenes, in San Diego there are certain mics (I’d say American Comedy Co. and Mic Drop, to be specific), where you are performing to real audience members who are there to laugh, and bookers could be in the crowd gauging your performance. Make sure you bring a solid 3 minutes to get considered for future shows.

Until You’re Headlining, Treat Every Time You Step On Stage Like a First Date

My uncle gave me this advice before I stepped on stage for the first time. Each crowd is a new relationship you have to build from scratch. You have to introduce yourself. You have to give them a reason to want to be there on this date with you. 

And you don’t want to frontload the heavy stuff. Guide them through your 3, 5, or 10 minutes of getting to know you in whatever form fits your character or style best.

I’m leaving this ambiguous intentionally. Everyone’s character on stage is different, and everyone’s relationship with the crowd is different. It’s your job to figure out what that looks like for you. Just know that first impressions matter, even in 3 minutes, so how you introduce yourself to them will set the tone for how they feel about you for the rest of your set.

Have Any Nitty Gritty Advice Of Your Own?

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