All humor is built off of comedic conflict. Whether the laugh is coming from a comedian, a movie, or even a blooper video… there’s always comedic conflict. Understanding how to create comedic conflict within your material is one of the most important parts of writing.

Without comedic conflict you’ll find that your writing falls flat… no matter how hard you try to write it. Being able to weave comedic conflict into stories is an effective way of creating captivating stories that pack a punch.

The audience is there to see YOU… whether you’re famous or not. The more “real” you are with the audience, the more they respond to you.

One of the most common questions I get from newsletter subscribers is asking why they can be so funny with friends but, when they try to turn it into a comedy routine, their material comes out lifeless and humorless.

Being a great stand-up comedy writer is about understanding principles of comedy… it’s not about applying comedy techniques or formulas.

It’s counter-intuitive, but actually it’s far easier to develop hilarious material without using techniques or formulas.

Simply focusing on understanding core principles of comedy (the most important is Comedic Conflict) lets you’re authentic self (the one that’s funny with friends) come through in your material.

When you try to analyze how funny your writing is while simultaneously trying to write you’ll end up frustrated. This will give comedians writer’s block every time.

Here’s why: In order to judge your idea, you have to break it apart and study it… but the process of CREATING ideas is the exact opposite. Creativity is about COMBINING ideas. It is literally impossible to do both at the same time.

Here’s how to fix it: Break writing down into writing for quantity (getting words, ideas, and joke premises on the page) and writing for quality (revising or tweaking your material until it gets the laugh you want). This separates the two tasks and allows complete focus on achieving your immediate outcome.

Creative flow only happens when you stop constantly checking yourself (this has been shown by various creativity researchers). When you’re in a creative flow, don’t stop it by questioning or overanalyzing your material (trust me, this is easier said than done, but the pay-off is well worth it).

Just let it flow. Write as much down as possible. If you begin analyzing your comedy writing too early you’ll break the flow.

It’s like attempting to run a marathon and turning around every 15 seconds to see how well you’re doing. You can always analyze later, so stay in flow while you have it. Learn more about getting into a creative flow while writing and performing comedy with Tapping Your Comedy Muse.

There are many principles of writing and performing stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy has been around a long time and the comedians that have gone before you have figured a thing or two out. Don’t try to build an entire career by trial-and-error.

Learn what works and what doesn’t early on and then apply those rules (but never be afraid to bend or break a few). It’s crazy how many comedians haven’t taken this part of their career seriously.

When you understand how to apply the principles of comedy, writing and performing don’t just get way easier… but you’ll also be way more effective as a writer.

Don’t just write when you feel like it. Either have a set time to write every day or decide that, whatever happens, you’ll find time to spend at least 10 minutes writing… even if nothing great comes out of it. Writing every day gives you’re ideas time to develop between writing sessions.

When you get back to writing the next day, you’ll have more ideas to work with. It also makes existing material more interesting by allowing you to break free of a single perspective on your material.

Your best material isn’t going to be written the first time through. It’s often said that great comedy isn’t written… it’s “re-written.”

Usually, comedians will write a joke that gets the main idea of the joke across to the audience and test it out. From there, they repeatedly revise and test their joke out until they find the best way of writing and delivering a line. Many comedians do this 20, 30, or 50 times before settling on the final form of the joke.

There’s a lot of comedy teachers that make writing comedy sound simple (i.e. “All you do is step one, two, and three… then repeat).

Problem is, if you use any kind of a system to write material the audience is going to figure it out REAL quick (good luck building a 45 minute set).

Instead, learn the principles behind those systems and ditch the system as quickly as possible.

Using the same strategy as everyone else will get you the same results as everyone else (stuck doing open mics for eternity).

If you had to bet between an amazing comedian using a system or an average comedian who understands the principles and has a strong POV… you should choose the average comedian… every time. (If you’ve read “Born Standing Up” by Steve Martin, you’ll understand how powerful this is).

Each joke within your set doesn’t stand alone. Some jokes work best paired with others or further away from others.

Continually switch around the order of your jokes to find the right sequence. Usually, this means creating “bits.” Think of jokes as paragraphs in a book, bits as chapters, and your set as the whole book. Each bit has a common theme that makes it go well with other jokes. Continually restructure the order to find the best sequence.

MY (NOT) HILARIOUS MISTAKE : I have several closers I love doing, but my favorite “clean” closer is about hitting an elk with a car. By the end of the show, audiences understand I’m very silly and lighthearted, so the audience always goes with me. One night I tried a new closer, so I kicked my “elk closer” into the opener spot. It didn’t seem like an important decision, but the audience took it completely differently. Since they didn’t know I’m lighthearted yet, they weren’t sure if I was trying to use shock humor or not. Instead of getting massive applause breaks, like I was use to for the bit… I got an audience full of people thinking “Oh my God… he likes hitting animals with his car!” It took me several minutes of different material before I finally got the audience back on my side.

Stand-up comedy is spoken, not written. The audience doesn’t care if you didn’t spell a word correctly cause they’ll never know. However, countless times comedians (I’ve been guilty of this as well) will think of a great joke, begin writing the setup line down, see that they didn’t spell something correctly, go back and change the spelling, and then… forget what the hell the joke was. Spelling can wait. A joke that isn’t captured on paper may never be seen again.

I know, this one’s obvious. But the consequences are too severe to leave it out. This will kill any relationships you have in the stand-up comedy community.

What’s scary here is that no comedian is going to come up to you and tell you they know you stole a joke… they’ll either quietly decide to never work with you or they’ll talk behind your back. Either way, you lose. It’s not worth killing on an open mic and burning bridges you’ll need later in your career.

Don’t sit down at your computer and try to “think up jokes.” You’ll be very frustrated when nothing good comes to you. Instead, use your writing time to express yourself. Talk about your frustrations, your ex-girlfriend… whatever. Comedy gets it’s power from the audience’s ability to identify with you and your material. When you don’t express yourself, you’re just saying words on a stage and the audience won’t be able to identify.

If you require perfection when you write comedy, you’ll end up loathing your writing time. Until you get a joke on stage you’ll never know whether it’s funny or not.

Even famous comedians have to test out their material. If you’re doing a joke that’s new then, by its very definition, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Accept that perfection is impossible and instead strive for excellence.