Geoffrey Neill - Hitting Your Funny Bone: Writing Stand-up Comedy, And Other Things That Make You Swear

Stand-up comedy is strange, I mean, REALLY strange. Need proof that it is strange? Tell an acquaintance that you do stand-up; and watch their reaction. Assuming they don't ask you to tell them a joke, you are generally met with a confused look. To civilians, stand up is somewhat of an enigma. It is rather abstract and confusing. Knowing how to start can be even more abstract. For most, starting means going to open mics (the gym for comedians) and building material. A common phrase among comedians is the first five. The first five are, quite simply, your first five minutes. Not just five minutes of failed one-liners though. The first five is a honed, timed, and tight set of jokes that can take a long time to develop. Though open mics are more set up to help hone a first three, having a first five can start to put you in a place where you could conceivability be on shows.

I started my comedy journey almost two years ago. As a comedy fan who had thrown around the idea of trying stand-up since I was very young. It seemed inevitable that I would eventually give it a try. Even after two years, I am relatively low on the local totem pole (though I did once advance in a comedy competition by audience vote.) I've written countless minutes of material since starting, though a lot of it has been retired. Something that I struggled with in the very beginning was allowing my voice to come through. I would write jokes that I thought others would think were funny, and would deliver them poorly. Every once in a while, though, I would get an unintentional laugh. These laughs would come not from punch lines, but set ups. It seemed as though there was something about me that was inherently funny. I know this inherent thing, now, to be my voice. It was only when I began to discover my voice that I was able to utilize it.

I had always talked about standup with Geoff. I knew that he did it, and he knew that I wanted to do it. Our comedy paths would cross in a more significant way about ten months into my comedy journey. I signed up for Geoffs class. Though I had about 6 minutes at that time that I was proud of, I wanted an excuse to write more, and work on comedy in a class environment. Open mics can be tiring for me if I am not supplementing them with some other outlet. I was unsure of how it would work initially. I only knew honing material as a grueling, late night practice. I was pleasantly surprised at how organized and flowing the class material was. I watched three individuals who either had never done comedy, or had only done it a few times in the past, go from a few ideas jotted down, to full blown seven minute sets that were performed in front of what must have been 75 people. There are many ways that one could conceptualize the comedy writing process, and many of those ways would be fruitless, but Geoff's way smoothly takes one from scared to ready to perform in six weeks. I've seen people who were once nervous with few ideas become excited to get on a stage and share the material in front of friends, family, and strangers. How do they do this? They do not do it by simply trying to be funny, they do it by finding, recognizing, and honing their voice. Geoff's material focusses on how to write, hone, and perform stand up, from the ground up and from your own perspective. No one thing makes two people the same kind of funny and it is important to remember that being funny is putting the U in Comudy.

This book does a great job at taking this material, and translating it into a How-to that can be done with others or the comfort of your own home. There could be many countless reasons that you decided to look at this book, and they are all valid. You don't have to be aspiring to work Madison Square Garden, or even be career driven, to try stand up. You just have to want to be funny, and want to be you. That is how you hit your funny bone and put the You in Comudy.

Enjoy!
Christopher Stauffer