Handling Bombs
When it goes wrong and how to cope
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Become a memberHow long do you leave a joke alone after it dies twice?
I’m trying not to turn two bad outings into a funeral, but I also don’t want to drag the same broken bit around for six weeks out of principle. If something gets nothing twice in different rooms, do you park it for a while and come back with fresher eyes, or rewrite one clear thing and test it again straight away? I think my current system is either panic-edit immediately or become emotionally committed to proving the audience wrong, neither of which feels especially scientific.
What do you write down after a bad set before your brain rewrites the whole night?
I’m trying to stop a rough five minutes becoming “everything was terrible” by the time I get home. Straight after a set, do you write down only things you can actually observe — where laughs happened, where you lost your place, whether you rushed — and leave the big verdict until later? I feel like “bit two got nothing” is useful. “I have no business doing comedy” is technically a note, but perhaps not one with much editing value.
After a bit bombs, do you test the exact same version again?
I’m trying to get better at not panic-editing material after one bad outing. If a bit has properly died, is there value in taking the exact same version to a different room once more so you know whether the problem repeats? Or do you always make at least one small change before the next spot? I can see how changing three things at once makes the result useless, but doing absolutely nothing after a bad set feels weirdly stubborn.
How do you tell the difference between a bad set and a bad room for that set?
I’m trying not to use “weird room” as an excuse every time something dies, but I also don’t want to rewrite decent material because one audience wasn’t into it. If a bit has worked before and then gets nothing, what makes you treat that as useful evidence rather than just one rough night? Do you wait for a pattern across a few gigs, look at whether the same exact section keeps dropping, or change something small and test it again?
Do you acknowledge a joke dying, or just move on?
I’m never sure whether acknowledging a dead joke makes the room relax or just announces that I’m rattled. My instinct is usually to leave it alone and get to the next thing, but sometimes the silence is so obvious that pretending nothing happened feels stranger. Do you have a rule for when you comment on a miss versus just carrying on?
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Rehearse until its locked in
Six memory modes — audio, cue cards, first letters, colour-coding, storyboards and more — so you walk on knowing your set.
What do you do when the first joke dies but the rest of the set still has to happen?
I’m getting better at accepting that one joke can die without the whole set being bad, but an opener getting nothing still scrambles my brain more than anything else. Do you have a deliberate reset — slow down, take a breath, go straight into the next bit — or is the goal basically to train yourself not to treat the first silence like an emergency?
How long do you give yourself before watching back a bomb?
I’m trying to get better at learning from bad sets without turning the whole thing into self-punishment. Straight after a rough five I’m usually too annoyed to hear anything objectively, but if I leave the recording for days I’ve already rewritten the night in my head. Do you review a bad set that night, the next morning, or only once you’ve stopped caring quite so much?
What do you actually write down after a bad set?
I’m trying to get better at not turning one rough set into a full personality review. If a set goes badly, what do you actually note afterwards while it’s still fresh? I’m thinking things like where I lost them, whether I rushed, which bits still worked — but I don’t want to end up doing a ten-page post-mortem every time five minutes goes weird.
How do you handle bombing without losing confidence?
Bombed hard last night for the first time. Like, genuine silence. How do you experienced comics shake it off and get back up?