Act 4 — Discover your comedy DNA · Week 32 of 52
Your obsessions
Which five subjects could you talk about forever?
Write only about the things you'd talk about for free.
Writing & work rate
Jimmy Carr
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Comics with a lifelong subject.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
Trace one comic's obsession across three specials.
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
Name your five. Write 10 premises inside each. That's 50.
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Build a set entirely from obsession number one.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Did the energy differ from your usual material? It should.
Watch the tape. Log what the room did, not what you felt.
The Comedy Genome
Tag what made you laugh.
Tag every joke you studied this week. After a few months the pattern stops being an opinion and becomes your comedy DNA.
Your twin asks
Eleven questions, every week.
- What made you laugh this week?
- What did the audience laugh at?
- Where did you lose them?
- Which jokes feel most like you?
- What are you afraid to say?
- What's the funniest version of this?
- What would Pryor do with this?
- What would Carlin attack?
- What would Hedberg remove?
- What would Rock repeat?
- What would Bamford make uncomfortably specific?