Shadowex3

Full disclosure: I'm not "officially" a comedian but what skill I do have is known enough to people around me that sometimes I get asked to put it to use, usually stalling for someone. Now I'm not naturally a very intuitive person. In fact I still regularly get in the shit for missing extremely obvious nonverbal cues, to the point where I have been bluntly asked if I was disabled by professors before.

I'm still able to stand up randomly in front of a room full of jocks and preppies and get them falling over laughing about videogames and the internet as readily as I can trucks and grilling mishaps.

The hardest part of learning to be good at standup, for me at least, was actually learning to be funny. Funny is not mysterious and unknowable, it's not love, and it's not enlightenment. In fact a huge portion of humor is quite readily quantifiable in a very objective way. You can dissect even Ron White's material and point out sections and their functions in humor, you can label it and say "this is the setup, this builds tension, and this is part of the punch line". Learning to deliver well in front of a crowd... that's simple public speaking that you can learn anywhere and then practice on a street corner until you're not so rusty. Take a speech class or debate publically and you'll probably be as prepared as taking a standup class, except for one thing...

If it sounds like I'm saying that learning to be funny is more important than learning to deliver the funny on stage... it's because I am. Now I'm not insulting you and saying your not funny, but if you want to be really good at anything other than reading off a list of jokes you've got to learn to actually make some laughs on your own. There's nothing wrong with delivering prewritten material mind you, it's basically necessary if you're going to be working for any real length of time, but relying on pretty much reading a memorized script instead of dynamically "Being Funny" as necessary based around pre-decided talking points is a lot more wooden.

I know this whole post sort of reeks of needing a "well that's just your opinion" but consider what I'm actually trying, probably somewhat clumsily, to get across: There's nothing inherently wrong about doing things one way, but being familiar enough with the basic tenets of humor in general and as it applies to your local area's common cultures to go off the rails if you need to is inherently superior to "merely performing" as it were.

How you learn THAT is very individual though, aside from two things: Watch and learn from the comedians you like and work on putting your own spin on things, and try to be funny as much as possible wherever it's not inappropriate. Make people laugh in line, at the bus stop, at your home, when you're with your friends... anywhere you're stuck with a group of people for a while try to make them laugh.

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