Writing Stand Up Vs Writing Fiction

I’ve got a comedy show coming up next month. I’ve burned through most of my old material so I have to start from scratch to create a new ten minute set. I belong to a comedy group in Nagoya, Japan called Nagoya Comedy. We do shows about once a month. Since the English speaking population that likes stand up comedy is fairly small all of us comedians have to come up with new material for each show otherwise the audience gets disappointed. When I sat down the other day to begin creating my new set I started thinking about the differences between writing stand up routines and writing flash fiction and short stories.

I’ve been doing stand up for a little over two years now. My background as a writer has mainly been in fiction (short stories and novels). When I first tried to write my sets I initially approached it like a very short story with a punchline as an ending. This wasn’t a bad strategy as far as writing something humorous goes, but a written funny story is a much different creation than a joke that is going to be told on stage. Even a funny story told on stage is not the same in timing and delivery as a joke or a set.

When I first started out I had problems with my material. When it got laughs, the next joke or tag often got swallowed up in the noise as I tried to move on to the next topic. I didn’t realize it, but my pacing for stand up was way off. I…