Stand-up comedy is booming more than ever. Earlier people considered it as a hobby. In recent times, however, people have started considering stand-up comedy as a professional career.
One of the most beautiful elements of stand-up comedy is the uniqueness among comedians. Every stand-up comedian has different kinds of skills. In fact, different stand-up comedians practice different forms of comedy as well.
However, what remains the same is the existence of a good ‘set’. Though crowd work has started to become popular, authentic stand-up comedy requires a set. As a comedian, you have to make a set and know what you are going to perform.
But at the same time, a lot of people face difficulties while writing their first set. In today’s blog, we are going to talk about the steps towards writing the perfect set for your show.
Steps to follow
- Watch and Learn: One of the best ways to learn standup comedy is to learn from the experience of professionals. As a comedian, you must have certain idols whom you look up to. Therefore, you can start watching their videos.
- Watching the content created by your idols will help you in analyzing their style of writing sets. Through this, you can pick up important elements that you can use while writing your sets. Moreover, you can learn from their mistakes as well.
- Collect content from life instances: Throughout your life, you would have come across various situations that you felt were humorous. You can use such instances to create stories for your set.
- One of the best parts about using life instances in your set is the connectivity with the audience. When you narrate real life instances to your audience, they feel a connection towards your set.
- Other than this, you can also write your set on topics that are common and known to people. This could be some current affair as well. Doing this will help you interact with your audience in a better manner. Moreover, you will be able to grab the audience’s attention throughout.
- Keep writing every day: One of the biggest mistakes people do while writing sets is being inconsistent. Writing a joke today and then doing the same after 10 days might not lead you anywhere.
- Instead, you should try writing some joke or the other on a daily basis. Now, it might be difficult in the initial days. Most of your jokes might be lame as well. However, if you follow the process regularly the quality of your jokes would improve eventually.
- Apart from this, you also get a chance to improve your skills and fix the mistakes that you might have made earlier.
- Compile your jokes: Once you have written a good number of jokes, you can create a set out of it. The first step towards doing this is to analyse your jokes. You need to select the ones that are relevant and worth using in your set.
- You also need to ensure that the jokes are not unorganized. The sequence of your jokes should be designed in a manner that does not break the flow of your set. Simply throwing in random jokes would break the structure of your set.
- You should also ensure that you are not using too many jokes in your act. This is because you need to leave some room for the audience to react as well.
- Include an opening and closure: The moment you enter the stage for your act, you need to create an atmosphere that suits your set. The first few minutes of your act are very crucial for grabbing the audience’s attention. Therefore, you should plan your opening properly.
- Other than that, it is highly important to conclude your set on a good note. At the end of your set, you can recapitulate the pivotal points from your set. You can include some jokes as well.
- Practice your set before performing: Before you step up on the stage for performing a new set, you must rehearse it thoroughly. Doing this will help you know about the shortcomings that might have gone unnoticed.
- However, instead of just practicing it alone you should perform it in front of your friends. By doing this, you can also get some reviews using which you can improve your set further.
Online comedy course
So, these were the steps that you can take while writing your first set. However, if you wish to know beyond this, you must check out our online comedy course. We are offering some online comedy classes for those who wish to become the best comedians in the future.
In this unluclass, Johnny Lever, one of the best comedians in Bollywood will be teaching you everything about comedy. The course revolves around various aspects of comedy that will help in grooming your skills.
In simpler words, this is going to be probably the best comedy class that you can take up to learn stand-up comedy online.
