I thought about using anecdotal stand-up writing for a first-person fictional story to make it a captivating humor story. I listen to a lot of stand-ups from my favorite comedians, but I am having a hard time trying to figure out how to make my story funny with this type of method. Does anyone have examples and advice? How would you use this method to make your story funny for any genre?
I think a lot of what makes stand-up funny is the delivery. I forget who it was, but I recently watch a special on netflix by someone whose material, I thought, was pretty amusing, but he had such an underplayed, dry delivery (usually something that I like!) that it sucked almost all of the humor out of it for me. By the same token, something that's not super funny can be made funny by how you say it. So I'm not sure you can really translate it one-to-one - just transcribing a stand-up act wouldn't get you the same effect as listening to it. But you can probably make up the difference by really working on your character voice, so I'd recommend that.
Delivery is crucial, I'd say yes. You could pass the same material around to be played out by different comedians. Some of deliveries of it you may find hilarious, whilst others—well just silence (and tumbleweed). The funniness is more than the script; timing, expression and an ability to read, adapt to and engage an audience all play their part. < You'd need to build, then weave in, that appropriate human element to your anecdotal storytelling in order to get your reader (target audience) on side. No mean feat. I noticed you mentioned captivation and doing the piece in first person—your intuition's spot on there so you'd be off to a good start. I'd also say that if in life you're widely considered to be a funny person, you'd have another (big) advantage.
I'm not sure I have a good picture of what you're trying to do... would the whole piece be a transcript of a standup routine? Or is it that there would be some standup scenes as part of the story? Just so I can understand better... how would it be different than any other humourous first person narrative?
A prose novel, not a transcript. The narrator talks as if he or she is doing a stand-up while telling the story.
OK, I picture it as a standard monologue, which will work just fine. I think the properties that distinguish a monologue from standup are not really available in prose, so I think we just end up with a monologue. Timing in prose is tough. Comic book artists try to do it with page turns, for example. I try to get away with it by breaking a gag across chapters, but it's pretty limited. As part of exploring writing types, I have helped some friends with standup routines when they felt they had lost their funny. I do some amateur bits as part of improv, as well. We really lose a lot when transposing speech to text. Actually, we already lose a lot when the comedian is not interacting with the audience visually. Radio standup is a bit weaker than video for this reason. Some performance styles would translate better than others. I guess anything that will translate from video to audo has a better chance of succeeding as text.
Just to clarify, the standup material in your story would be 100% by you, and not a re-telling of other comedians' material in your own way, correct? Comedians' material is intellectual property, just as your writing is yours, so you wouldn't be able to do that. If the material is all yours, and you set the scene properly, yes, I think it could fly.
I think you can be funny in writing. However, I hate monologues. I much rather read a story than any sort of rambling. I'm slap not sure you want to start with an anecdote. I mean you could. You can do anything. But it sounds like the anecdote is detached from the story you want to write. Is is a story? I think it's always best to start with the story.
I'm an aspiring standup comedian (as a hobby), and often use my premises in my stories. Usually this is in the form of asides. Here's a quick example of one I'll use somewhere in the story, but haven't quite fleshed out where, though (and also haven't edited it to read/punch better, yet): Golf, a treasured pastime of wealthy persons and very wealthy persons alike, was a game that was won by achieving the lowest score. Since Bill had quite the penchant for never scoring, he was sure to be a natural.
1. Stand up comedy is very much art of rhythm. Timing is everything. Just right amount of pause, distraction, reaction time... You can't do that in text. You can't control timing. Written stand up does not stand up. It lays low & flat. Advice: In textual comedy timing goes in different ways. Try to learn both and choose & develop your style after that. 2. I wouldn't use that method if I wanted to write funny & enjoyable text. I would pick styles & techniques which work in text.
I have some anecdotal mini-story's in my memoir and I'm considering removing them. Sure, they are funny to ME, but on the written page I don't think the humour comes across. This is probably just my bad writing, but i think its a difficult skill.
