Bombing | Introduce Yourself | Forum

Do you have any suggestions for bombing? Is it bad to have expectations for a joke?

I feel like sometimes my jokes do bad, because I've heard them get such a good laugh so I expect something from it. And when it doesn't go over with the crowd, I'm lost.

Should you find something to say after the joke? Or add more to it?

In my 3 years doing this, I've learned a few things (and maybe they can help)….

1) Never be too proud to drop a joke. A pretty experienced comic once told me after my first showcase 3 years ago (which sucked!) that there's a 3 strike rule for every comic. If the joke bombs 3 times straight (or consistently enough to where it usually doesn't 'get over' with the crowd, drop it. move on and write more).

2) When a joke does work well, keep it! Then write more material to accommodate that joke and create a flow, parlay that into 5 or more minutes of material. There's a reason why you may see some professionals on TV (Lewis Black is a great example, so is Seinfeld, even Zach G!) using the same jokes year after year (albeit with different things mixed in) or the same types of jokes, because if it aint broke, why fix it? The best thing you can do is slowly build your set to a point where you can have at least 20-30 minutes of solid material you can do at any given point.

Some comics take YEARS to get to a point where they have 30 minutes, heck, it took me two years to get to a point where I had a solid 20 minutes worth of funny material (now I've done a few 30 minute sets and I'm getting A LOT of laughs with it, because I kept the jokes that worked and added on to different ideas that were funny then did it with even more topics so I can have 4 or 5 different sets that are each around 20 to 30 minutes worth of material each).

Never be to proud to drop a joke man; we're all in this together, and it's a grind. Just keep at it and push to perfect the jokes that do WORK…