How to Assemble a Stand-Up Comedy Act

Every stand-up comedian has a different creative process when it comes to assembling their setlist. For a general rundown on how to put together a great, funny act, see below:

1. 1. Learn from others. Study other standup comics. Start with the big names, like Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld. Watch their early stand-up, followed by more recent shows. How have their comedic voices developed over the years? Go to a comedy club for a live show to see how comedians structure their set. How do they open and close? How many bits are in each set? Sit in the back and observe the audience. How often do they laugh? What do they respond to most?
2. 2. Find your material. A good comic can turn anything into a decent bit. Throughout your daily life, make an extra effort to observe everything happening around you—both to others and yourself—then write down any ideas that make you laugh in a notepad or the notes app on your phone. Some of these observations will become future jokes. When writing ideas for a set, try to think of how you can use your specific perspective to develop your own style. Take inspiration from the world around you, see what makes other people laugh, and use that to fuel your comedy perspective.
3. 3. Write daily. Write every single day. Pick an idea that you wrote down in your notepad and approach it like a story—find the narrative arc and flesh out your setup. Who are the characters? Where’s the setting? What’s the situation or conflict? Write a punchline or two. In joke writing, the punchline is always a plot twist that goes against the logical conclusion. In some cases, the punchline might be the first part of the joke you uncover. In that case, work backward to the setup. If it’s a longer bit, include jab lines—funny moments in the body of the joke—so the audience doesn’t wait too long to laugh.
4. 4. Include a strong opening. The opening of a stand-up set often dictates how the show will go. Start with a great joke to get the audience laughing from the first line. Write a few different variations of your opening and use whichever one feels the strongest to kick off your set.
5. 5. Compile your bits. A bit is a term that refers to an individual joke or multiple jokes about the same topic. Every bit has a setup detailing the characters and situation they’re in and a punchline—the conclusion—which is the funniest part of the joke. The punchline typically subverts the audience’s expectations of what is going to happen. Your joke structure can be in the form of long stories, quick anecdotes, or one-liners. When compiling your bits, look for any bridging elements that link the bits to form a more cohesive set. Study your bits and write down any possible overlapping themes, like traveling, love, or food, then determine the best way to unify these bits in your set.
6. 6. Include transitions. Transitions are short conversational bridges that connect one joke to the next. While there can be humor in random segues, transitions can make it easier to keep the set flowing. For example, jumping from a bit about terrible workplaces to a bit about roommates can be confusing for the audience. Adding a transition about how the only thing worse than working at your terrible job is coming home to your terrible roommate is a good way to launch into your roommate material. You can also use audience work to transition from bit to bit. The key here is to ask the right leading question. For example, if you finish a bit about airplanes and don’t have a transition to your bit about worst dates, choose a couple in the audience and ask them if they’re on a date. Allow them to respond, and then you can transition into your date material.
7. 7. Write a killer closer. Your closer is the final joke in the show. It can be your last story, or it might be a callback—a reference to an earlier joke. Wrap up your set with a solid close that leaves the audience laughing.
8. 8. Practice in the mirror. After you have created a solid set, perform it in its entirety in front of a mirror, while timing yourself. Practicing will help you gain comfort with joke delivery and cadence, and help you identify any potential physical gags or movements you can add to elevate the jokes with a layer of physicality.
9. 9. Revise. After performing your set, write down what did and didn’t work while it is still fresh in your mind. At the beginning of your comedy career, you'll probably have a lot more negative feedback than positive, but that's okay. It takes lots of stage time before you start to kill consistently, and even professional comedians still bomb from time to time. If possible, record your sets so you can watch them later to pinpoint what did and didn’t work in your performance. Edit or replace the jokes that didn't get laughs to fine-tune your set. Depending on your material, you may need to restructure the order of your jokes, try different deliveries of the same bit, or write new jokes altogether.

Before you’re ready to perform an hour-long comedy routine in front of a full audience, you might want to test your material at an open mic or for a 10-minute set in front of a smaller crowd. To test your material in these spaces, you’ll need to condense your set down to your best bits. To shorten your hour-long set, try some of the following tips:

• Pick your strongest jokes. Once you have enough jokes written for an hour-long show, select your best material to include in a five-minute and ten-minute set that you can use to open for other comics, for short sets at comedy clubs, and open mics. Make sure you have a great opening that shows the audience who you are and a strong closer that either ties your act together or ends with your best joke.
• Allow time for the jokes to land. Don’t cram in too many jokes—leave room for laughter. Even five-minute sets allow time for funny jokes to land. Always have backup jokes ready in case you need to switch directions.
• Create a flow. Create an outline to lay out the progression of your routine. Don’t think of your act in terms of progressing from bit to bit, but rather as a unified whole. Write transitions between your jokes to create a flow. Your act, even if it’s only five minutes long, is a composite. Every element matters when you’re performing, from the words you speak to the motions that accompany them.

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