How to Pursue a Career in Comedy

If you think you’re funny and you like to make people laugh, you are still a long way from earning a living as a comedian. Being funny on demand and predictably is much more measured and requires a lot of work. Having the ability to connect with people through humor is perhaps a gift, and in many ways it’s the result of being able to think on your feet and train your mind to always look for a way to suddenly change the direction of a logical response. The art is to both surprise others and satisfy the innate human desire to be surprised--to fire a synapse that leaps between the brain’s hemispheres, tickling our intellect and broadening our outlook on the world. If this sounds like a promising career, read on to learn more about how to hone the comedy craft.

Instructions

1. Make a conscious decision that you want to be involved in the entertainment industry. You must set a clear and strong goal in order to achieve this highly competitive aspiration. Passion is important, and you must get in touch with what is driving you to go in this direction. Know what you want from this: a job, fame, wealth or satisfaction. Be prepared to travel all the time and to give up any attachments or commitments at home.

2. Watch the Tom Hanks movie, “Punchline” (also with Sally Fields and John Goodman). This movie comes as close to capturing the rise of a comedian as anything you’ll find. It fails to leave out the association with drugs and alcohol, but does portray the seedier side of the entertainment industry that is prevalent in comedy clubs. You should be able to figure out the missing pieces on your own.

3. Visit local comedy clubs and really pay attention to what happens there both in terms of the acts and audience. Notice what makes people laugh. Pay attention to joke delivery as well as material. Learn what timing means for a comedian, in terms of pacing, cadence and inflection.

4. Talk with people who work in the industry. Sometimes there are courses in local community colleges on comedy--not always for credit. Often they are taught by talent agents looking for talent.

5. Start writing jokes everyday. Build up your gag writing output gradually until you’re able to consistently write more than 100 a day. Obviously they won’t all be good, but you need to build up the muscles for writing and telling jokes.

6. Try out your jokes on people in your life, but be careful not to overdo it. Nothing short of selling insurance to your friends will turn them off faster than continuously experimenting with jokes. That is why you have amateur hour.

7. Decide on your persona. This does not always come easily. Maybe you want to dress up in your best suit to tell your jokes. Maybe it’s a completely different character that you will become on stage. Or maybe it’s just being yourself. Your stage presence requires as much deliberate intention as your punch lines.

8. Develop seven minutes of material. This is your warm-up act in a comedy club. When Jay Leno calls, you will be given a seven-minute slot. This material needs to flow nonstop with a punchline every eight seconds for seven straight minutes. That is more than 50 jokes that all have to be funny. Write every day. You’ll have plenty of time.

9. Get an agent. You can’t make it in the comedy business without an agent booking rooms for you. Some comedians do their own booking, but usually only if they already have a name or their significant other is at home taking and making calls all day and answering the mail while they are on the road. Plus an agent will know things that will help your career and help you get fair pay.

10. Expand your seven-minute act to a 12-minute act. Build your material very deliberately and carefully. Make sure all the material you take in front of an audience is spot on.

11. Expand your act to 45 minutes. Same drill as before except you will be a headliner and start to develop a following. This step will probably take two to three years.

12. Continue developing and testing new material all the time. Maybe there is more than one HBO special in you, but there are a lot of convention and show circuits around the country that you can come back to year after year as long as you keep your act fresh and funny.

Tips & Warnings

• The earlier you can start in your life to be a comedian the better. Of course you will lack the painful life experience that is so valuable to older comedians, but it will be much natural and easier to build your career in comedy from the ground up than to attempt to convert from another career.

• Learn your material so that you can deliver it in your sleep. You can never expect to really perform your jokes with flare and expression and start to really look like you know what you’re doing until you can work on your performance instead of your lines.

• Don’t worry about saying the same thing over and over. That’s what actors do, and that’s what comedians do too.

• That Tonight Show appearance you’re looking for where you need seven minutes won’t come until somewhere between your headliner act and the HBO special. Then you’ll need to pull your best seven minutes out of your 45-minute act.

• The more material you have the better. Jay Leno has probably 20 hours of good material that he owns—outside of the Tonight Show gags—that he can use for private appearances. He can perform for the same group every year and never tell the same joke.

• Don’t expect to get rich overnight. A comedian works for a few hundred dollars a week plus expenses (yes, room, board and travel) as an opening act in a comedy room. But you’re working only seven minutes a night. The second act is 12 minutes and you can double your take. The headliner is where you’re headed with 30 to 45 minutes of excellent material. The next step after that is an HBO special--then you’re in the big time and your career is launched.

• If you can’t leave home and everything else in your life behind you to go on the road with abandon and commitment to your career, then you need to find a different job. You might get by with keeping the day job while you work on your style and a short stand-up gig in a local club--or amateur night on Tuesdays. But at some point you will have to choose between a normal life and that of an entertainer. Good luck if you’re a devoted parent.