Act 7 — Become the comedian · Week 51 of 52
Build your 30
What are your themes, and do the callbacks carry meaning?
Make thirty minutes about one thing without saying so.
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Half-hour specials with strong throughlines.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
Name each special's theme in one sentence.
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
Name your theme. Rebuild the thirty around it, with two callbacks.
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Perform the thirty.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Did the audience leave knowing who you are?
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?