Creative fluids never left my veins. From time to time I attend a good old Performer or Clown workshop. You would be surprised but those usually tend to be less silly than all the marketing conferences I’ve been to and report from.
Of course, clown workshops are silly. But they are as silly as your golden lock trying to dig a hole in a wooden floor in the middle of your living room. Marketing conferences are as silly as a Batman trying to defend wearing a pair of speedos outside your pants as a fashion statement worth following.
One approach is genuine and honest. Makes you laugh with your open heart. The other one is pushy and cringe. Makes you push out a nervous laughter caused by anxiety and a hidden pity for the poor fool.
It is those two types of laughs which differentiate a good stand-up and a bad one for me. Performers sometimes live in a delusional world of statements like “Oh, either they laugh or not.” Not true, my friend. People don’t laugh just from sheer joy. We smile and giggle when we feel personally attacked as well. Showing our sharp teeth to the enemy is like showing our weapons. True story.
How to recognise whether your audience loves you or wants to kill you? It takes lots of practice and empathy. “Just feel the room bro.” That's right. However, compared to a clown performance, in the Stand-up category, we’re lucky enough to have one tool that helps us to create a great show. Always.
That tool is a universal structure of our speech that will secure a good quality of your show. I’m gonna share with you two types of structures today. One Simple. One more complex. I hope it will help your jokes to land smoothly.
Simple Stand-up structure
It has only three steps. So buckle up for a short ride.
1. Premise
Start your speech with a statement. Make it a perfect mix of controversial, personal and emotional. Oh, okay. Let's make it even simpler. ”Just tell me what has bothered you recently, hm?”
Example:
“People always ask me, why I did not become a digital nomad.”
A good premise will divide your audience into two major camps.
Camp one (let’s call them Cheerios)
You can recognise Cheerios according to their… cheering (yep, see what I did there?) reaction to your statement. Those people completely side with you. They cheer because they are happy somebody finally said it out loud! “Digital nomads suck ass.”
Camp two – Side Eyes
In the meantime, these people will quietly cross their hands on their chests. They think you’re absolutely stupid for having the wrong opinion. But they are more than happy to sit there watching you digging your own grave. They are intrigued. You can work with that.
(Honestly turning a proper Side Eye into a Cheerio and hearing their laughter at the end of the Stand-up is the sweetest thing.)
2. Context
Elaborate. That’s your job now. Tell the audience why you think what you think. Show the Side Eyes that you’re aware of their arguments against your statement. That will show them you’re not stupid. That's a good start.
Example:
“I have a remote job I’m grateful for. I love travelling. I enjoy meeting new people and sharing insights about new cultures. So why not?”
Build audience expectations now. Put more wood in the fire. More arguments. More obstacles. Let people get intrigued.
3. Punch line
Here comes the payback for your hard job of developing a joke. You get to say the punch line that hit hard. It has to be something surprising and possibly illogical. Use an unusual point of view. Play with what’s normal. Challenge the rules of the world we live in. Go nuts!
Example:
“Work while travelling usually means working on board a moving vehicle. Busses, trains… a tent during the floods.”
You told your joke. You persuaded Side Eyes in your audience that you were right. People laughed. But how can you tell whether it was the loving giggle or the pitiful one? There’s no recipe for that. Only good suggestions on how to avoid the latter.
One thing I recommend is to take risks. Let your premise be quite controversial or sensitive to you. Put yourself into trouble.
Don’t talk about men having trouble dating these days. Too safe. Too boring.
Talk about your receding hairline. – That’s personal and sensitive.
Don’t talk about cheap flight tickets not being cheap at all. Too obvious. Talk about fat people on the plane. – That’s incredibly offensive. You put yourself way deep in the shit. But if you’re gonna save yourself, it will be a standing ovation.
Also starting at offensive place does not mean you have to finish there as well. In fact. Please don't.
You can save it this way:
Fat people on the plane? That's the worst thing, right? So unfair! Offencive - you're right! Absolutely! If they are called fat people, I wanna be called a slim person. Why is nobody coming after me on the internet and asking whether I want to buy half-ticket since I OBVIOUSLY don't need that much space...
To sum up:
Don’t talk about the weather. Talk about the local storm, bro.
If you put yourself in trouble, not only do you gain the audience’s sympathy. They’ll start rooting for you. Because at least since medieval times – taking risks is honourable. And incredibly silly.
Complex stand-up structure
I already said everything I wanted to. so let me do this one in bullet points.
1. A Story (Premise + context)
Let’s start talking about what’s bothering you again.
2. B Story (Premise + context)
Here comes the change! Before your punch line. You will develop another story. Maybe about somebody else. Maybe your B story is a well-known stereotype. Up to you!
Example:
A story: “People always ask me, why I did not become a digital nomad. I have a remote job I’m grateful for. I love travelling. I enjoy meeting new people and sharing insights about new cultures. So why not?”
B story: “By the way. Have you noticed that so many people are not nomads but they look like one?Take my friend for example. Whenever she’s on holiday, she’s sharing annoying photos of her feet in the sand accompanied by inspirational quotes. It’s so shallow!”
3. A Story + B Story (Punch line)
Now what happened? You talked for a while about the B story only. But when it’s time to finish? You bring A Story back to the game. It’s impressive! People admire how smart your structure is.
Ending on the same note as you began is one of the most popular and effective storytelling tools you could use. It gives the audience a satisfying feeling that you used everything you brought to the stage. Yep, very similar to Chekhov's gun.
Example:
A story: “People always ask me, why I did not become a digital nomad. I have a remote job I’m grateful for. I love travelling. I enjoy meeting new people and sharing insights about new cultures. So why not?”
B story: “By the way. Have you noticed that so many people are not nomads but they look like one? Take my friend for example. Whenever she’s on holiday, she’s sharing annoying photos of her feet in the sand accompanied by inspirational quotes. It’s so shallow!”
A+B story: “That’s why I could never be a digital nomad. I decided to do a real, meaningfull job. I’ll be a full-time traveller writing blogs about how local Tuscan bread touched my soul.”
That is all, folks! Does the structure sound “like way too easy and stupid“? Perfect!
That means that you’ll have no issue putting the structure into practice.
Good luck. And let me know when’s your next performance in the comments.
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