Act 5 — Storytelling · Week 35 of 52
Scene building
Are you putting us in the room or reporting from it?
Tell a whole story without narrating it.
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Storytellers who use present tense and dialogue.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
Count reported lines versus performed lines in 5 stories.
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
Rewrite one story entirely in scene, with dialogue.
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Perform it in present tense.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Did you say 'and then' at any point? Cut it.
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?