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If You Can Make People Laugh You Can Do Anything

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Oscar Shepherd

You can develop a quick connection and put people at ease with a genuine laugh. But, do you think that’s easy? Well, not as easy as it sounds. In the world of comedy, it is said that if you can make people laugh, you can do anything. So, it is a hard nut to crack for sure, but definitely not something impossible. There is only one thing harder than making an audience laugh. Can you take a guess? Making a comedian laugh. There isn’t any mystery to establishing yourself as a comic actually. When you stand on the stage, promising yourself to invoke such emotions in a crowd that they laugh uncontrollably, deep down you know that it is nothing less than a challenge, even if you are a professional and have been doing stand-up comedy for ages.

When you speak and the audience is quiet, you know that they are listening to you but that’s never how you want them to reach when you deliver your punch line. As a comedian, you wouldn’t want to face that at any point. As a beginner, you’ll definitely have to face your inner obstacles, but as you start spending more time dealing with them, there’s no reason why you can’t overcome them. This is the point when you feel alive while teetering on the stage.

Now let’s take a look at how you can make a crowd holler just by entering a room:

Acting Spontaneous

You might think, while performing stand-up you must be able to make it all up without any planning. No, that is not the case! There are countless number of practice hours behind a great performance. Don’t forget that this is one of the secrets of succeeding at the stage game. Making audiences laugh requires the same level of practice as football. That might sound shocking to you until you think of your answer to someone who asks you to go up on the stage and make a crowd laugh for an hour. You are most likely turn down the offer. Right? You never know if the comedian performing before you is actually a serious person in life, who has been training to be funny. It is hard to imagine Russell Peters rehearsing in the room!

“Because Henry made someone laugh, henry knows everything about being funny.” Similarly, people believe that they already know everything that is there to know about comedy, speaking and writing. Pros might seem spontaneous on the stage, but they are actually acting being spontaneous, when all this appearing-all-natural comes after a lot of practice. These professionals are always open to learning, practicing and growing. They have developed this level of domination through continuous practice. Tony Robbins says, “It’s what you practice in private that you will be rewarded for in public.”

The thing about public speaking and stand-up comedy is that it has to appear unplanned, as if you are discovering the content with people. That, it is fresh and new, and just coming on the fly while you are performing live with that particular audience.

Practice Crafting Content

Reading more doesn’t mean that you will have more material to write or speak about. Some people think that they have to experience in order to write about something. Nothing works as perfectly as getting better at spawning streams of words. Professional comedians practice producing chains of words and keep improving on it. To be an expert, there is one thing that you should make a habit, writing and speaking. Do it every day, a lot. More reading or more experiences is not what you need to excel at making people laugh. It is writing, jotting down content and rehearsing what you will be delivering to the audience while appearing spontaneous. You already know enough to speak about but you won’t be able to tickle your audience to the point to get what you want, unless you’ve trained yourself for it by writing, practicing, evaluating and improving. After all, they say content is king for a reason.

You can learn how to write, develop and refine your stand-up comedy routine through information products by sources like killerstandup.com. It is an education site for comedians and public speakers; education that revolves around talking. They have structured courses that help comedians with creating content, verbal expression, body language and voice tone variations and all that is needed to help generate a greater laughter.

Fine-Tune Delivery

Professionals are people who keep telling themselves that they have much more to learn. They don’t consider themselves the best in their own eyes, though they might be to their audiences. They have this thing of unconsciously feeling inadequate. This leaves room for enhancement in every aspect. Once they are done with writing quality content, they work on the delivery. Doesn’t matter for how many years you have performed on the stage, you can always improve on the tone, timing and inflection. You can work on your body language, you can tweak the way you make eye contact with the audience while throwing that punchline, you can try slowing down if you feel that you are quick while speaking and much more.

Consider people who pay to attend a stand-up comedy show like junkies stopping for a dopamine injection. Basically, comedy is all about having a command on creating a tension in the audience and then releasing it. You wouldn’t eat unless you’re hungry. People are always in search of something fresh, creative and funny and that’s what you can give them as long as you practice!

 

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