Watched open mic stand-up recently and wrote down some of the jokes.
They seemed less funny on paper.
How do you know when you have written a good joke or sketch

Difficult to tell. One man's zinger is another man's flop. I test out my jokes on Twitter, Sickipedia, and the critique section here.

An audience will go for jokes that aren't great on paper
Because the enjoyment of a performance & other factors can easily override quality of material

Quote: Jerf Roberwitz @ 19th December 2014, 4:39 PM GMT

Watched open mic stand-up recently and wrote down some of the jokes.
They seemed less funny on paper.

View original

Like what they said but also, I'd guess that most of the jokes you heard were the first time you'd come across that joke, so they were new.
Then you wrote them down.
Then you read them again and decided they didn't seem as funny.

No joke is as funny the 3rd time (heard, written then read).

Was hoping for some jokes to be posted. I'm doing another gig soon and need better material. Last time the hecklers got more laughs than me.
I'm also thinking of changing my stage name to the more show-bizzy
Dook Edenberg. What do you think?

Quote: Jerf Roberwitz @ 22nd December 2014, 10:12 AM GMT

Was hoping for some jokes to be posted. I'm doing another gig soon and need better material. Last time the hecklers got more laughs than me.
I'm also thinking of changing my stage name to the more show-bizzy
Dook Edenberg. What do you think?

View original

You do realise that (if you're doing stand up) you're supposed to write your own jokes not get them off of the internet?

As to how do you know what's a good joke and what's a bad joke, well you tell the jokes you think are good in front of an audience and then their reaction will tell you if you were correct or not.

Last time the hecklers seem to have the best jokes, is it OK to steal those.

Make sure you get them to speak up!

I've decided to take Tony Cowards advice and try to write my own jokes.
Judge Sir Nobby Clark; Son of a cockney barrow boy. Today sentenced a murderer to be hanged by the Gregory Peck until brown bread.

What do you think?

Quote: Jerf Roberwitz @ 24th December 2014, 11:13 AM GMT

I've decided to take Tony Cowards advice and try to write my own jokes.
Judge Sir Nobby Clark; Son of a cockney barrow boy. Today sentenced a murderer to be hanged by the Gregory Peck until brown bread.

What do you think?

View original

Pony

Nobbet.

That is not critique. Please make proper comment or not at all.

I think that is critique, Jerf. And who is Nobbet?

Nobbet a lad. He's very big in stand up circles.

You could make a sketch about rhyming slang in a courtroom, but just saying it in stand up doesn't work. If you know the slang then it doesn't really sound that wrong, and if you don't it doesn't make sense. In a sketch you could have one person who's clueless about it while everybody else is in the know.

It's a no from the Berkshire judge.

Agree with Tiggy that you cannot just read it out like that.
However as you are doing stand up I presume you cannot do it as a sketch with a partner so maybe you could invent a situation to help the audience relate to it and come on strong with the accent. Depends on your audience and your persona. For example if you were posh you could be moaning about how cockneys have taken over the judicial system.