Hey guys I am new to this, I hope I have posted it in the right area but if not then please forgive me.

I am aspiring stand up currently working religously to try and get my first act together. I am generally happy with what I am producing, just not the quantity of it.

Basically I am interested to know if anyone has jokes that they are looking to sell that I could then incorporate and write around to help me get a strong 10 mins together.

Let me know if you have, and if not then sorry for wasting your time.

Hi Paul, there are a lot of talented gagsmiths on here, but let me at least try to put you off!

You seem eager to start, and get a good 10 minute set, which is great. But let me let you in on a little secret... New acts gig for months and months before having a solid, bankable 10 minute set. The beginning of your standup career should be about learning the trade, and that includes learning how to construct a set and cycle and improve your material. There is a chance that you may harm your own learning experience by missing these stages out. No one expects a first timer to blow the roof off.

I've been gigging for about 6 months, and I've got a good 8 minutes! 10 minutes? Gimme a couple of months.

My advice would be to know that 'jk' means 'joke' when people on this site offer to sell you their material. It might sound obvious but in case you don't know the latest youth slang you've just saved yourself a great deal of heartache.

Really I thought it stood for JK Rowling, no wonder I was getting the impression she was cheap!

Ok Ipspaul write your own jokes. I'd love to write jokes for you because I love writing jokes and I love money. But it wouldn't be fair.

As a new standup you're finding your voice. And you'll only do that by owning your own joke and that only by writing them. There's loads of guides on this site on joke writing follow them and share with us what you come up with.

Ipspaul, I sell jokes but what it sounds like you really need is someone to go through the material you already have and help you to organize it into a coherent stand up set (if it's of any interest to you I've done this for several other stand ups and also written them some extra material to fit in around what they've already got).

In general when you are starting out in stand up, the material is some what secondary to the performance skills. I would suggest that once you've got a serviceable 5-10 minutes you mainly concentrate on your stage craft and learn to "sell" the material, then you can start to worry a bit more about the quality of the material (this is not to say that you shouldn't try to have decent material to begin with).

Once you've got a bit more experience you'll start to understand what audiences like and what suits your comic personae, then you can really hone your material.

Thanks very much for your replies guys. I am humbled to see people come out with honest and constructive criticism rather than jumping on a chance to take advantage of a newbie.

It made me do a little bit of self reflection and I guess I am trying to be a little lazy and running before I can walk. My biggest issue is that most of my material so far is anecdotal and involves long rambling set ups.

My priority now must be to really knuckle down and create some punchy gags to keep the audiences attention through the rambling bits.

And yes I would certainly be interested in some critical reviewing of me set so once I have worked on it a bit more I will maybe have a word about running it by you.

Anecdotes are good, but you're right, you generally need a few laughs along the way. Unless you've got a MASSIVE payoff at the end of it. My set is pretty much all anecdotes, so I've got to be careful to keep the laugh rate up!

A helpful technique is the highlighter trick. Highlight all of your predicted big laughs in one colour, and little ones in another. If you've got any sections that are mainly unhighlighted, you know you need to rejiggle it.

There is a good thread on here called "standup up help: constructing your first five". You should have a look at that because there was some great advice in there.

Also, good luck!

nb most decent annecdobtes are made up don't assume you're life is funny enough

May I recommend Logan Murray's 'Teach Yourself stand-Up' - plenty of ways to kickstart your creativity and hone it into a set.

How about suggesting a theme?

Zoo animals with drug addictions?

High Enas you mean?

I hope you charged for that one Steve?