Twitter Patter, Let’s Get At ‘Er

Tags: amateur comedians, Saskatoon, stand-up comedy, The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor dean

It’s been since the end of May/2013 since I did my last comedic set.  In the meantime interest has grown as I currently have 102 likes on my Facebook comedy page (Trevor Dean comedian).  There will be opportunities to perform in Regina but that isn’t for a few weeks yet at the very least.  Some comics just post about their multiple sets they do every week while I wait for my chance to get back into the game.

One suggestion I have been given by a few comics was to get onto Twitter.  Not because I can sum up my weekly life in less than 140 characters, but to use it as a barometer to see which jokes are funny by the responses they receive.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I view Twitter as another form of bullying through social media, and considering everything I’ve gone through thus far with my comedy career on Facebook, it’s something I am not interested in repeating.  But I choose to avoid Twitter for another reason, for one that some comics may not believe.  It’s because I know what’s funny.

One of the biggest reasons I required the help of a comedy coach was because I wanted to know how to become funny.  I knew my material wasn’t as sharp as it could be, but I wasn’t sure why that was so.  When I tried to solicit advice from some comics they couldn’t tell me why I wasn’t funny.  I’ve always been the type of person that needs to know the why.  Regardless of the information you seek, somebody is able to tell you the why.  If people refuse, you need to dig a little bit deeper to find someone who can tell you. Those who refuse to tell you the why do so because they are ignorant, a bully or because they are scared that you might succeed and be successful.

I don’t know how I found my why but I can tell you that things just sort of lined themselves up to the point where I needed to seek my why.  If I was not asked to take a break from comedy for a while I would not have decided to find my comedy coach.

When I found my why then I could begin the process of getting better, which I eventually started to do.  It’s interesting to note that some people were very supportive of me finding out my why, then when they saw how much better I got, they felt threatened and immediately said they liked me better when I wasn’t as funny, before the coaching.  You know why that was?  So they could hold power over me and become a lazy comic making jokes at my expense.

I have started to understand how jokes are supposed to be funny, and I have now started to write material that I know is funny, maybe even better than what was included in my comeback video.  It’s like anything else in life, when you understand the fundamentals and start to apply them, good things will follow.  Right now I’m not ready to perform as this month will be crazy at work, and that is where my focus needs to be for the moment.  Once the month passes, then I can sit down and organize the pages I’ve written thus far and turn it into something good.

I am confident that these jokes will work because I am following a simple comedy formula when writing.  It’s a formula that has worked in the past, and when something works you tend to remember how you got there.  Most comics get on stage hoping something works.  I am confident my material will work when I hit the stage.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I’m better than the next guy.  I just happen to know the basic fundamentals of comedy writing that are effective and that work.