Jonas Polsky

by Jonas Polsky

There are two different approaches to stand up comedy. One involves precise writing and rhythm, the other is going onstage and talking about whatever comes into your head. One approach is thought of as for beginner’s only, the other is considered the ultimate endgame for performing stand up.

There is no glory in writing comedy. All the excitement and fun happens onstage, and sometimes things you didn’t plan on saying get laughs, so why bother with writing at all? All the “cool” comedians are up there “figuring out ideas” while all the nerds are reciting jokes they wrote. Which would you rather be?

Here’s where the confusion comes in. Professional comedians will tell you that they no longer “write” comedy anymore. That’s not for you.You have not successfully toured the country for two-plus decades. What those comics are actually doing is experiencing something, and storing in their brains several takes on it, then trying each one out at different shows. After they’ve figured out the best angle, they refine and add material to that.

Let’s forget about stand up for a moment and look at getting laughs offstage. In an average day, how much of what you say is funny enough that people crack up? It’s just you being you, getting laughs at the water cooler, elevator, and coffee shop line.

For most people, life isn’t a constant laugh riot where everything they say has a punchline. I’d estimate in my own life, I probably get laughs around twenty percent of the time. So in a normal day, eighty percent of what I say, isn’t funny.

Pretend I get home from the office, toss my fedora onto the coat rack and switch into an angst-communicating tee-shirt and head out for a comedy set. I don’t bother with a set list, or jokes, or anything preplanned. I just want to express my life onstage, to strangers.

If I take my own likelihood of getting laughs in normal conversation, I can predict that talking about my life onstage will be funny only twenty percent of the time. That set isn’t going to generate much laughter.

What if we could figure out a way to not say the 80% of things that won’t get laughs, and distill the remaining 20% into a comedy act?

That’s the crucial logic that is ignored by comedians who “talk” about ideas onstage as opposed to writing them. When I write jokes, there’s a lot of backspacing and deleting; a luxury a live comedy audience doesn’t allow for. Through comedy writing, you can cobble together all those funny ideas, and have them ready for an audience before the MC ever calls your name.

If you spend two minutes fumbling through an explanation of how modifying a cell in a spreadsheet works, that’s two minutes that the audience has no opportunity to laugh. If you write the idea down ahead of time, you could express the concept within a handful of words, and move on to a punchline that could merit a laugh.

Here I am at my comedy show, nursing a virgin club soda. I have a crumpled bar napkin in my palm with the note “Live inside a taco.” Now I’m going to step onstage, tell the crowd it’s too small, “um” and “ah” for a moment or so, then ask them what it would be like to live inside a taco.

After several shows, many nights, and many disappointed crowds, I will have finally come up with the perfect idea to associate with living inside a taco. I sleep on a sliced tomato, use the lettuce for curtains, et cetera. But, instead of torturing those crowds as I “walk around” an idea, I could have presented the full-fledged bit on the first or second night.

That’s how the magic of writing works. Instead of bouncing an idea off of your new, unwitting comedy partner, you “figure out” the idea on your own, in your own time. This probably sounds crazy, but I actually rehearse, and recite my act over and over before performing.

Then the impossible happens:

The jokes get better.

Now wait, how can jokes improve without a crowd, stage, and spotlight? Because ideas exist in your own mind. Even though I haven’t performed a brand new joke, after hearing it a dozen times, I realize I can take out a word, add a tag, or discard the joke completely.

So instead of being onstage, fumbling through the 80% of my life that isn’t funny, I present the polished, reworked, and potentially funny remainder. That’s what a stand up comedian is, a person who is always getting a laugh. A comedian finds that 20% of their life that’s hilarious, and discusses just that part.

Audiences aren’t looking for flawed, imperfect, or oozing with zeitgest; they want funny. I know what you’re saying, “But, I don’t want it to be rehearsed, I want to present a raw, personal experience, that allows emotional growth.” In that case, try therapy. A therapist loves to hear people take forever to make a point, because they bill by the hour. Then the therapist cashes your check, and goes out to hear a comedian, because your life story is boring.

There is a time and a place for your intimate thoughts, and for you to “just be you” but it’s not on a comedy stage. Audiences don’t want to engage in your public thought process, they want to laugh. Carve thirty minutes out of your day, pull out a pen, and figure out what makes living inside of a taco funny before you torture some unsuspecting crowd.