Hitting Your Funny Bone

Writing Stand-Up Comedy, and Other Things That Make You Swear

By: Geoffrey Neill

Narrated by: Geoffrey Neill

Length: 2 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

This step-by-step comedy writer's guide is for the budding stand-up comedian to develop fresh original material and craft it into great performance. Become clear on what your comedy special powers are. Edit and secretly test your material. Craft your set into a streamlined performance, and become a better comic out of the gate! Now you can get rid of your writer's block!

How can your elbow's anatomy can help you grow your funny?

Learn to write to your own sense of humor, perform, and assess yourself. Now you have an edge in entering the comedy world! Hitting Your Funny Bone was created to get you over mimicking others and lead you to hilarity. It's about finding your own unique humor, and making it a whole lot bigger! If you don't have a lot of time, that's okay! This book gives you exercises at the end of each chapter that are easy and you can accomplish at your own pace. A novice will get over seven minutes of edited, vetted, hilarious material in six weeks.

©2015 Geoffrey Neill (P)2015 Geoffrey Neill

outstanding

I have been looking for this book for years. I did not know it existed but I knew someone had encapsulated the wisdom that I was searching for. thanks for all the hard work Geoffrey Neill I don't know why you spell your name like an 18th century psychopath but you've been great!

One of the best of the 6 books on stand up

I have recently listened to 6 books on stand up. while this book may not be as detailed as some of the others it gets straight to what matters and doesn't waste your time. All of the books have been good in their own way. This one may be the best to listen to first. If you want to go further then consider some of the other books. non of them are completely redundant.

Don't crap yourself on stage, read on the toilet!

What at a thoufhful, and helpful guide; particularly if you've been afraid to use a public toilet. Get prepared, bring a sanitized wipe or two, invest in wet one's and fabreeze. After you've read this book people will have no idea your poo stinks like the rest of us. Enjoy!

Audio levels

The only problem is technical. The audio level dips and raises. This isn’t to say it ruined the experience, but just so that it’s on the radar for the next book! :-)

Good book

Very informative the narrator got quiet a few times but still worth a read. Just don't work with power tools when you do.

A very natural approach

This books provides a very natural approach to attain a mode(funny) that brings the best out of you.

if you're looking to hone your comedy skills

loved this book. great info on how to hit your funny bone. it's quick and straight to the point

Good 2 Kmow

I found this book informative, easy to follow and full of good ideas. I am a story teller who would like to do more stand up and have taken a couple courses and read considerably and although there was not a lot of new secret information his advice was solid and memorable. Thanks.

The information is good. But the reading... meh.

I am studying to become a stand up comedian and have listened to 4 or 5 books on comedy so far. This book, though it has good info, is rather difficult to listen to. The author/narrator struggles through reading the text clearly and has edited his reading together very tightly in an unnatural way that makes it feel almost robotic or auto-tuned at times. As a radio DJ with dyslexia, I can completely understand the challenge of reading for tape, and I recognize this style of editing in new djs that I teach that are just starting in the craft. But in this case it does dampen the experience and usually can be fixed properly with time invested and editing experience. Secondly, the premise of the book revolves around the humorous. AKA, the nerve in your elbow. The story and main concept used through the majority of the book continually comes back to using that analogy, much like an over used joke, and continues to tie in parts of the learning to the anatomy of the nerve. For some that may assist in the memorization of the book, for me unfortunately, it felt very repetitive. There is a lot of great information in this book on the other hand and I walk away with additional knowledge that will help me on stage.

Decent information on stand up comedy

I thought that the information given here, by Geoffrey Neill was decent and well expressed. The exercises were ones I hadn't thought of before and are ones I will certainly use in my writing. And for less than five dollars, I thought it was a good purchase.

There were only a couple of things that took me out of the audiobook though. And I might be nitpicky, but you can tell that this wasn't a professionally produced audiobook. I don't want to give you the wrong impression. There isn't any audio hiss or anything. But while wearing headphones I could hear, what sounded like, him playing with the mic chord while narrating. And there were times when the levels don't exactly match up; where it will sound like he's not close to the microphone for a moment. And I'm not sure if it was because they were trying to trim the time down, but there are some cuts that seem too close to the previous sentence. Or on the exercise, he says, "Now pause the audiobook to such-and-such". And not a beat goes by before he says, "Alright, how'd you do?"

Like I said, the information given is well done. And even though the production of the audio had its flaws, my overall takeaway was good.