How can I perfect the art of comedic timing?
Everyone knows the secret to telling a great joke is timing. An audience will only find a joke funny once, so telling and retelling the same joke to the same audience never works. That means that in order to practice comedic timing, a comedian would have to get a new audience every time they practice. Is there a more streamlined way to do this? Is there a course or technique to practice measuring the beats?
Answers ( 2 )
There are two questions in play here - 1. Do all of the funny things that comedic performers say rely on surprise and timing for their humor?
2. How does a performer improve a piece of material?
Timing
Timing is an important part of overall delivery, but it is a learnable skill like a musician staying in tune, and it is only one skill of many. Timing is essentially cadence, placement of pauses, and speed (changes) in delivery. In addition, vocal inflection, pacing the entire performance, facial expressionss and physical movement/gestures are other crtitical components of delivery. Much harder is writing and rewriting very strong material, the construction of bits and word choice. A lot of comedians will test the basic strength of a new bit by delivering it in a flat intonation. If it gets some kind of laugh even if you deliberately butcher it, the strength of the construction is evident.
You can watch comedians that you enjoy and try to mimic their delivery. When I was younger I aped a lot of comedians who I admired. Since I wanted to do paying shows, over time I gradually stopped jamming myself into the molds of other performers and while took inspiration from them developed my own style. You really do get better by finding new audiences and learning from their reaction.
It would be nice if there were a few sure-fire formulas for timing, but if there were every comedian would sound like Type A, Type B, or Type C. You can hand the same bit to seven different experienced comedians, they'll deliver it with their own timing, and will all get a laugh, although some will get bigger laughs than others.
Finally, no matter how skilled your delivery is, some material fits some people better than others. Plenty of comedians will give away or sell jokes to other performers if it fits them better than the writer. You may never get as big a laugh with a specific joke than your sister gets.
Things Can Be Funny More Than Once
First, novelty and surprise help comedy but they are not always required. Riddles, puns and contrived story jokes (a man walks into a bar...) and one liners rely a fair amount on surprising an audience. They lose much of their comic power if they are repeated. They are much less common forms today than they once were. Many comedians use more involved observation, play characters for part or all of a show, wax philosophically, or comment on politics.
Some jokes you can see from a mile away and the anticipation makes them all the funnier. We especially see this in longer form comedic theater, improv sketches and farces.
Steven Wright tells one jokes that are surrealistic. They are so absurd in nature that I laugh at them repeatedly no many how many times I’ve heard them.
https://youtu.be/Rcn8efJbvXM
Whether his humor is to your taste or not, if you think about there are lines by comedians, &or from TV shows snd movies that you repeat to others over and over that you continue to find funny.
Improving Comedic Material
After a certain amount of experience, you get good at writing material that is usable. There are actual principles of joke construction that can help. Comedy Writing Secrets is just one of a number of excellent books that analyze the elements that make humor work. Ultimately, audiences will tell you what is mediocre, what is good, and what is golden.
Almost worse is the Mystery Laugh, where you perform a bit you’ve done plenty of times and it utterly kills out of nowhere. It normally gets a laugh but tonight people were falling out of their seats and crying, the show just stops dead while people are practically peeing their pants. Later on you go completely nuts trying to figure out exactly why. Did you change a word, pause longer in a different spot, make a face, what the heck did you do so oddly right? If you recorded that show you may be able to analyze it and figure out the difference. If you are any good you’ll have great shows where all the elements were in place, you are on fire and the show goes great. But the huge reaction that strikes out of nowhere can be frustratingly baffling.
Working Hard Versus Figuring It Out On Stage
Comedic performers who take a professional approach usually work new material into their act a little at a time. You intersperse it between solid material so even if a bit or an entire routine is a complete dud, your next piece is a sure fire winner that always gets a crowd response. People usually don’t remember the odd dips in an act if you start strong and finish strong. When working corporate events and large shows, you want to avoid a show that completely bombs, although this can happen even with tried and true material. The environment, the audience, and your performing skills sometimes all go wrong and you simply bomb.
Doing A Lot Of Small Performances
Performers who work in clubs have an easier time of it. If you are a standup comic, you can pop into a club during open mic night and the club will give you a spot if they know you. You can try out material in a low stakes environment. Very well established comedians can pop into clubs and do a few minutes as they choose. No club owner is going to blink twice if Chris Rock wants to drop by unannounced and do five or ten minutes. As a comedy magician I can work out material when table hopping, although I can’t drag a really big stage prop around a restaurant.
Not Doing Your Homework
There are plenty of comedians who just stumble through improving their act night after night while on stage, wondering why they are still Openers or why it has taken them a decade to become a local Middler. They perform a lot of mediocre shows, have a lot of bad nights, blame it in the crowd, and they progress slowly. They will likely never be a Closer. I’ve listened to Seinfeld talk about how he would socialize a little after a set then go home to rewrite his material while other comics would just screw around all night partying. He’d get up the next day and work on his act, and the goof offs would wonder how he was rising past them. Some of these performers are road dogs, driving constantly throughout a fairly wide area to play a lot of small dates and eke out a living. Most quit after struggling long enough, and a very few extremely talented comics succeed despite having no work ethic towards writing. They tend to still play a lot of unpaid gigs hammering material into shape.
You certainly can rehearse in front of a mirror or a video camera, but you need to work a lot to get feedback, which entails chasing work which sometimes pays little or nothing.
Bravely Performing All New Material
There are those brave souls like Seinfeld who after enough time has passed will throw away their entire act after touring it enough and start over from scratch. Seinfeld will write new material and test it out on small crowds, then tour with an act full of newish material and shaky developing material, honing it as he goes. At any moment he can deliver material from his previous and completely turn a show around, but he refuses to do it and just suffers through the performances. He will work and work and squeeze in spots everywhere thst he can. Audiences at those early gigs will walk away thinking, “That guy is usually hilarious, what the heck was that?” At the time of this writing, the 2002 film Jerry Seinfeld - Comedian is on Netflix. The documentary chronicles him doing exactly this while the less experienced Orny Adams travels with him and struggles to grow and succeed.
as usual i refer to my former profession go to a library most good library systems can even get u books that aren't on their shelves thru interlibrary loans from other members thru discuss and the like... get it from the source... a walth of knowledge awaits.. and it's free! use it support it and love it... god bless amerca... hope that helps.