a younger comedian asks for advice and an older comedian offers it, on the subject of writing standup compared to jokes for social media

the opposite of a tweet-seeking missive

dear friends,

i’m glad you’re here!
thank you for being!

and now, here’s an exchange i had with a young comedian whose tweets i like a lot who asked me some questions! i thought the back and forth was meaningful and i thought it would be useful to share before twitter stopped existing and our back and forth became meaningless!

*it starts with me telling him that i like his tweets, and then...*

HIM:

I have become a little too obsessed with twitter. It's so different from stand up.

And I feel like my brain is now on the lookout for tweets rather than stand up ideas. do you have any thoughts/advice?

ME:

good question. i DO have some ideas.

first, some questions for you:

1) how do you normally write standup? do you write on your phone? your computer? paper? on stage? combo?

2) how do you write tweets? in your head? on your phone? paper? otherwise?

one suggestion i have is this: separate the processes you have for writing standup from writing tweets

like, if you write tweets on the phone, start using a notebook and writing longhand for your standup

OR