Photo: Joseph Seddon / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Glee Comedy Club, Cardiff Bay.
You can write five minutes in an afternoon. A tight five is something else. It is the same five minutes, in the same order, under five on the clock, that you could do if the host pointed at you while you were in the bathroom.
Bookers ask for a tight five. Festival apps ask for a tight five. The club that might give you a guest spot asks for a tight five. They do not want your notebook. They want a product.
If you do not have jokes yet, start with How to Start Stand-Up Comedy. This is the next job.
Writing is the draft. Developing is the work.
Writing is premises and tags on a phone. Developing is saying them out loud in a room that did not ask for them, then changing one thing because of what you heard.
A first draft of a five is usually 7:20 of throat-clearing, two jokes you love that nobody else does, and a closer you keep moving because you are scared of it. That is normal. The tight five is what is left after you have done that draft enough times to get bored of your own voice.
Twenty to forty stage reps is a real number. Not twenty rewrites on the couch. Twenty times through the same material, in front of people, with a timer.
Record every set. Listen the next day.
Phone on the table, audio only is fine. You are not making content. You are making a tape you will hate in the morning, which is the point.
Do not listen in the parking lot. You will defend every pause. The next morning you will hear the “anyway,” the extra sentence after the laugh, the setup that already told the punch, the tag you stepped on.
Mark three things: where they laughed, where they did not, and where you talked after they were done. That third one is how fives get fat.
One change a night
New comics rewrite the whole five every week and then wonder why nothing gets good. You cannot tell if a joke works if it is a different joke every time.
Pick one: a new tag, a cut, or a new order. Take that to the mic. Leave the rest alone. If the new tag dies, you still have a five. If you blow the whole set up, you have a first draft again.
Mark Normand’s Page to Stage episode is this process with cameras on. He keeps the direction when tags die. He kills the version that makes the setup sad. He does not throw out the premise because Tuesday was sleepy.
Order is half of it
Your opener is not your best joke. It is a short one that sounds like you and gets a laugh so you can hear the room. If you burn the closer first, you have four minutes of downhill.
Second or third is the first real bit. The one with a premise, a turn, a tag. That is where people decide if they are with you.
The closer is the one that gets you off. Applause, not just a laugh. While you are on that last joke, start sliding the stand back in front of you and seat the mic. The host needs to see you closing. We wrote that out in the starter guide because comics skip it and then eat the next person’s time.
If two jokes are about the same thing, they live next to each other or one of them goes. A tight five is not a playlist on shuffle.
Five minutes means 4:30
You will add air onstage. A 5:00 rehearsal is a 5:40 mic. Time the tape, not the kitchen.
If you are at 6:20, you do not have a tight five. You have a loose six. Cut the extra sentence after the laugh. Cut the premise they already got. Cut the joke that only you like. Do not talk faster. Faster is how you sound nervous and still go long.
A tight five is usually three bits, or two bits and a couple of short ones. It is not nine one-liners you have not finished, and it is not one story you refuse to trim.
Kill the one the room already killed
If the setup does not land, the punch is already dead. Adding a tag will not save a premise nobody is in on.
Three different rooms, same silence: rewrite the premise or drop it. Comics keep jokes because they were hard to write. The room does not care.
Hard to write is not a reason. Hard to say without the paper is a reason to keep working it. Those are different tests.
Same five. Different rooms.
A workshop room will let you find the tag. A bar will tell you if the joke is a joke. You need both. Doing the same five at the same mic for six months teaches you that mic.
In Fort Myers that is Wednesday at Stet’s and Monday at Coastal Dayz. Two rooms, two crowds, one five. If you are not here, find the workshop and the bar. Drive if you have to.
Do not debut a brand-new five at a showcase or a guest spot. That is how you waste the room you wanted.
When it is actually tight
You stop looking at the note. You can drop a joke if you are going long and the set still stands. A comic you respect laughs at the same spot twice. You are sick of saying it, which is usually when it starts working for everyone else.
Then film it. One camera, audio that does not sound like a pocket. That tape is the tight five. The live version will move a little. The tape is what you send.
Until then, keep the same five in your mouth. Write new jokes in the notebook. Develop the five onstage.
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