Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Stand-Up Comedy (Teach Yourself: Arts & Crafts)

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The majority of stand-up comedy guides are like the bad stand-up comics who write them: repetitive, self-conscious, and vague. Not so with Logan Murray, who quickly and clearly explains the structure of effective jokes and how to link a series of them into a workable routine. The bulk of this book (about 120 pages of it) is devoted solely to joke writing and idea-generating exercises. The remaining sections cover performance advice, comedy history, and the business side. Read the entirety of this book and skim one of Judy Carter's books for additional information on structure and you should be able to write an act.

Logan Murray loves stand-up comedy, he loves the whole concept of it, he's made his living at it for over 20 years and he loves teaching it. All this comes across in this inspiring book. It's packed with advice for the new comic that is a complete guide to becoming a stand-up. It has loads of impro exercises that are particularly good for groups but there's quite a few writing exercises you can do on your own. These really get your creative juices flowing. I teach comedy myself in the UK and this is the book my student's like best.

This is a great book. Don't judge it by the cover photo.

Written by a working comic in London, it's understandable to Americans. The principles hold true even if I haven't heard of all the British comics.

He explains how jokes work. His key insight is the punchline comes as an afterthought.

Logan has lots of exercises for generating jokes. It's also good as therapy. Turning positives to negatives and vice versa.

I'm rereading it for the 3rd time. I learn something each time.