![]() ![]() The writers for the humor publication the Onion, known for its hilarious headlines, propose roughly six hundred possibilities for eighteen headlines each week, a 3 percent success rate. This is true for every stand-up comedian, including the top performers we tend to perceive as creative geniuses, like Rock or Jerry Seinfeld. With that level of complexity, it’s understandable that even a comedian as successful as Chris Rock wouldn’t be able to know which joke elements and which combinations will work. A successful joke often has six or seven parts. My sense is that he starts with these bolts and then writes around them.”įor a full routine, Rock tries hundreds (if not thousands) of preliminary ideas, out of which only a handful will make the final cut. According to fellow comedian Matt Ruby, “There are five to ten lines during the night that are just ridiculously good. Other times, a joke he thought would be a dud will bring the house down. ![]() He may think he has come up with the best joke ever, but if it keeps missing with audiences, that becomes his reality. Often Rock will pause and say, “This needs to be fleshed out more if it’s gonna make it,” before scribbling some notes. the audience will laugh about his flops-laughing at him, not with him. Jokes will ramble, he’ll lose his train of thought and need to refer to his notes, and some audience members sit with their arms folded, noticeably unimpressed. His early performances can be painful to watch. In sets that run around forty-five minutes, most of the jokes fall flat. He watches the audience intently, noticing heads nodding, shifting body language, or attentive pauses, all clues as to where good ideas might reside. instead, he will talk with the audience in an informal, conversational style with his notepad on a stool beside him. He won’t launch into the familiar performance mode his fans describe as “the full preacher effect,” when he uses animated body language, pitchy and sassy vocal intonations, and erupting facial expressions. As the waitstaff and other comedians find places to stand at the sides or back, the room quickly fills with anticipation. When people in the audience spot him, they start whispering to one another. “it’s like boxing training camp,” Rock told the Orange County Register. in front of audiences of, say, fifty people, he will show up unannounced, carrying a yellow legal note pad with ideas scribbled on it. in gearing up for his latest global tour, he made between forty and fifty appearances at a small comedy club, called stress Factory, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, not far from where he lives. When beginning to work on a new show, Rock picks venues where he can experiment with new material in very rough fashion. the routines he rolls out on his global tours are the output of what he has learned from thousands of little bets, nearly all of which fail. (Nice company, eh?)Ĭhris Rock has become one of the most popular comedians in the world and, while there is no doubt he has great talent, his brilliance also comes from his approach to developing his ideas. The Argument – Show an argument from the outside, without taking either participant’s perspective or side.Here's the part of his intro discussing about Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and me. ![]() The Reluctant “I” – Write a first-person scene only using a first-person pronoun twice.ĥ. ![]() Phone Tag – Write one half of a conversation, and help the reader fill in the rest.Ĥ. Body Language – Write a scene between two characters with no dialogue.ģ. Déjà Vu – Write a scene from a present and past perspective at the same time.Ģ. It was one of the most helpful things I ever did in my writing career.ġ. I wrote them from prompts, focusing on one specific detail, and was limited to a severely small number of words. Body Language – Write a scene between two characters with Contained herein are a series of scene sketches. Déjà Vu – Write a scene from a present and past perspective at the same time. It was one of the most helpful things I ever did in my writing career. Contained herein are a series of scene sketches. ![]()
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