Question: How does a stand up comedian come up with material?

Answer: When I first started stand up I used the free-write form. I found out about this technique in the Comedy Bible by Judy Carter. The free write form for stand up is the same free write form for any other method of writing. You just write. Pick a subject and write about it, and do not stop. Just keep going and never let the pen leave the pad of paper. Give yourself a time limit, such as five or ten minutes per subject. When you are done you go back and read what you have written. What ever seems funny to you, underline and use as jokes later on stage. This is a difficult method, however the free write method allows you to be really creative. The next method of writing is my current favorite. When I began stand up, an unknown comic at the time, Ralphie May gave me the advice of writing ten jokes a day. Then he asked me if I was going to finish my sandwich. He told me to look at the top ten headlines of the USA Today and write a joke about each one. Chances are only one of the ten will be good, but if done everyday, by the end of the week you’ll have seven, if not more good jokes. Of course I blew the advice off. Then I read an article about Drew Carey. Carey also suggested writing ten jokes a day. He said by the end of the year he usually came up with about 60 new minutes of material. Which is a ton for a comic. Neither Mae’s or Carey’s act are among my favorites, however about a year a go I decided to give it a try. I am amazed on how much material I have come up with. Most of the jokes suck, but it’s simply a numbers game. Write enough jokes and you are bound to get some good ones.

Question: What can I do if I get heckled?

Answer: If you get heckled. . . You will get heckled! There is nothing like writing jokes all week, going over them in your head a couple hundred times, just to have a drunk yell out, “You suck!” during your dick joke punch line. The key is to never let them see you sweat. Don’t crumble, even though you probably will the first couple of times. If you hear a heckler, but it is not really distracting to the show, ignore them and they will probably stop. In most cases the lone drunk heckler is with a more sober group of people, and once he makes an ass of himself, his friends tell him to shut up, because it is embarrassing. A good solution is to have a couple of stock lines that are ready at all time. A good exercise is to write twenty comebacks to an imaginary heckler. Probably only two or three of them will be good, but you will have them in you arsenal when you need them. When you are finally heckled you can whip those comebacks out, and shut them the hell up! No matter what you say, it will probably get an applause break from the crowd because they think you are improvising. Little do they know you had that heckle comeback line hidden in your belt, like a concealed weapon. I witnessed a good example of this recently on the Dave Attell/ Lewis Black Tour. Attell was heckled. After ignoring the heckler a couple of times Attell exploded, “It’s guys like you, who make girls like her, fuck guys like me.” The crowd erupted with applause. People said to one another, “What a genius!” Attell had that line just waiting to pop on someone who yelled out something during his act. The guy felt like such an ass he shut up for the rest of the show. If the stock lines do not work, and the bouncers do not bounce out the heckler, then you are on your own. If you talk to heckler, repeat what the heckler says into the microphone so that the rest of the crowd knows what you are responding to. It took me awhile to realize that. If you do not repeat back what the heckler says then you just look like you are ripping on someone in the crowd. In other words, you just look like a dick! However, when you do repeat what the heckler says into the microphone then crowd can follow along and applaud when you say something clever. Hopefully you will win. Finally what ever you do, do not say hack comebacks like, “Hey, I don’t go down to your work and tell you how to flip burgers” or “I don’t go to your job and knock dicks out your mouth.” These lines are hack and you will never get you in the Legends section the Cringe Humor.

Jason Downs is willing to take your questions! Have anything good you'd like to know concerning the world of standup comedy? Send them to Jason, and he will choose the best ones to post on the site.

askjasondowns@hotmail.com

Jason will be performing at The Punchline in San Francisco January 6th-11th, and also at The Red Lion Hotel in Modesto, CA January 16th