Introduction

Once you have your comedy topics identified and initially transcribed with your talking points and sense of humor reactions…

Now you need to know how to go about the process of structuring your “bulk” stand-up comedy material for the stage for a number of very important reasons:

1. To visibly represent your natural speaking rhythm and sense of comedy timing.

In other words, you want to structure your comedy material the way you naturally speak — not the way you “write” information that is designed to be “read”.

This is one of the important aspects of your natural expressive comedy traits that you can represent in “written” form, provided you understand the formatting structure identified in this lesson.

2. To make sure that you have the minimum amount of set-up lines before each reaction (punchlines and tag lines) in your material.

Set-up and punchline basics as they relate to structuring your stand-up comedy are covered in the next Training Module.

3. To make sure you have ample reactions (punchlines) for each minute performing minute on stage.

Headliner level material will consist of 4-6+ laughs per minute (reactions or punchlines) with a minimum average of 18 seconds of laughter, cheering or applause for each performing minute.

4. To make sure that most of your punchlines have the sentence structure that contributes to the element of surprise (keywords or keyword phrases at the end of punchlines).

5. To help you estimate how much time your comedy material represents on stage, keeping in mind that audience size always affects the actual amount of performing time your comedy material represents.

6. To associate what you say and express to an audience with Comedy Evaluator Pro performance evaluations to pinpoint specific areas in your comedy material that need immediate attention/rework.

While words and sentences on paper will never represent your true expression and delivery of comedy material, which is the vast majority of your laughter generation power on stage…

Having what you want to say structured in the proper way that accurately represents how you verbally express yourself in everyday life is the only way to visualize and analyze your comedy material for maximum laughter impact — before you take it to the stage.

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Understanding Line Length In Verbal Communication

When we read the written word in a book, magazine or newspaper…

We read from the beginning of a sentence to the punctuation at end of a sentence, just like you are doing now.

But when we speak, we don’t necessarily speak from the beginning of a sentence to the end of a sentence (unless it’s a short sentence).

We usually speak in 5-15 syllable bursts, followed by a natural breathing pause — a breathing pause that is based on each individual’s normal speech rate, natural speaking rhythm, word selection and breathing patterns.

We also use other brief, natural pauses when we communicate verbally that are not as a result of needing to take a breath, but based on an individual’s speaking rhythm, speech rate, word selection, timing, etc.

What you do need to know is this:

You already have a natural means of verbally communicating with others, which is a combination of all the factors that I have identified so far.

Subsequently, you already have a natural sense comedy timing if you are a naturally funny person, most of which can be identified on paper or using a word processor by simply breaking up spoken lines on paper based on when you take breath pauses and other natural pauses when you speak.

In other words…

The true length of a line is determined when you begin speaking until you take a breath pause or other natural pause.

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Capturing The Way You Naturally Speak On Paper

Let me give you an example in order to understand and apply this very simple, yet powerful process.

Read this sentence out loud and make a note of where you take natural breath pauses or other speaking pauses in the process:

That’s a long sentence!

But like I said, while we may read a sentence from the beginning to the punctuation at the end, we don’t speak that way because we need to breathe and take other pauses when we speak.

That same sentence may look like this if we break it up based on when natural breath/speaking pauses are taken into consideration when spoken out loud:

While the natural breath pauses (and other brief speaking pauses) taken by each individual when speaking may vary just a bit as the long sentence above is actually spoken, understanding this concept is critical because…

1. I just showed you an example of what true line length really is as it relates to communicating and expressing oneself verbally — NOT “writing” information designed to be read from the beginning of a sentence to the punctuation at the end of a sentence.

2. When you structure what you want to say on paper, broken up one line at a time by separating each spoken word “line” based on your natural breath pauses and other speaking pauses, you are structuring your own natural speaking rhythm and sense of timing on paper (or on your word processor).

3. Using the formatting technique above, it now becomes very easy to determine how many true spoken word lines (not sentences) you are actually using before delivering a punchline and to determine if you have enough reactions (punchlines) in order to deliver headliner level material.

This structuring technique is called Single Line Format.

Here’s what I need you fully understand and embrace if maximum laughter generation is your goal when delivering stand-up comedy material…

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Why Understanding Line Length Is Important

Stand-up comedy represents a balance between using the minimum amount of words possible to get to your reactions (punchlines), while maintaining your natural (and already developed) speaking patterns and capitalizing on your natural expressive comedy traits.

Unfortunately, most comedians don’t understand or use Single Line Format to structure their stand-up comedy material.

Because of that, here’s what happens:

They “write” their material in sentences (using traditional paragraph format) that are designed to be read, not spoken.

Subsequently:

1. They don’t realize that a single written “sentence” may actually be 2-4+ spoken word lines depending upon breath pauses and other pauses that occur naturally when actually communicating that sentence verbally.

2. While they may only “write” 1-4 “set-up” sentences before getting to a punchline, in reality, that may be 3-12+ spoken word set-up lines.

Subsequently, their “set-up” for each “joke” or punchline is way too long and they never really have a chance to experience headliner level material.

Note: If the comedian is talking, the audience isn’t laughing.

3. It is difficult at best to identify punchlines or their frequency in material transcribed (or “written”) in paragraph format.

4. Because most comedians “write” the way they were taught to write in order for material to be “read” and not transcribe what they want to talk about the way they naturally speak…

They tend to use many more unnecessary words, lines and/or sentences because “writing” is one dimensional and doesn’t account for the other channels of communication that are used simultaneously, specifically:

Body language, facial expressions, voice inflection and tone changes that effectively REDUCES the number of actual words required when expressing oneself verbally.

5. They don’t have even a clue of how to estimate how much of what they have “written” represents comedy material delivery time in front of an audience.

The end result?

Most new comedians bomb night after night, without so much as a clue as to why, no matter how much energy and effort they expend in the process.

They can never seem to “get on a roll” — not even remotely close.

All they know is that they just need to keep “writing jokes” and bombing night after night until somehow, as if by magic they suddenly “get it”.

And any success these comedians may have is accidental and purely the result of trial and error.

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Headliner Comedy Material Example

Let’s take a look at this formatting technique using stand-up comedy material from a video I have used as an example before in this course:

Here’s the way the material delivered in the video would look like using the traditional paragraph format — the way most people would do it the way they were taught to “write”:

Here’s the way that same material would be represented on paper (or using a word processor) using the Single Line Format, based on breath pauses, natural speaking pauses and more deliberate laughter pauses visible in the video:

There is a little bit more to know about this particular structuring technique which I will cover in the next Training Module. But for now…

I simply don’t want you to get overwhelmed with what is actually a very easy and straightforward process once you know all the details.

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Your Turn

Here is what you want to do next:

1. Using your word processor, take the “bulk” stand-up comedy material that you have developed and put that material into Single Line Format by saying the material out loud, using your natural breath pauses and other natural speaking pauses as a guide to determine the actual length of any spoken word line.

Don’t worry about identifying set-up lines and punchlines in your stand-up comedy material at this juncture — I will cover that information soon.

2. You can have more than one topic in Single Line Format on a page if you so desire.

Note: In stand-up comedy, the only “transition” you need between one topic or subject and the next is a laugh.

3. If you use Arial 14 as your font, a full page of stand-up comedy material in Single Line Format is roughly 2.5 to 3 minutes of stand-up comedy material in the live performing environment depending on the size of the audience and the laughter response generated.

4. Another way to determine how many minutes of stand-up comedy material that you have is to use your normal speaking rate (average words used per minute), then divide that number into the number of words in your stand-up material that you are trying to measure for time (most word processors will provide a word count).

You just need to realize that this method doesn’t include the time an audience would spend laughing, just the time needed for delivery at a person’s normal speaking rate..

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