How Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld write new material

Lessons from two comedy greats: Read what you write aloud, seek honest criticism, keep tweaking, and the red X approach.

Years ago, I watched Chris Rock work out new material and wrote about it here and here. Peter Sims, author of a book on leadership, stumbled on it and wrote about it at the Harvard Business School blog: Innovate Like Chris Rock.

Experimental innovators don’t overanalyze or put all of their hopes into one big bet – they quickly, creatively, and inexpensively use experiments to learn, gather insights, and identify unique opportunities – they then rapidly iterate, relearn, and refine to achieve success.

Sims called me up a few months later and interviewed me about how Rock and other comics work on new bits and included me in the intro to Sims' book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.

Here's the part of his intro discussing about Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and me. (Nice company, eh?)

Chris Rock has become one of the most popular comedians in the world and, while there is no doubt he has great talent, his brilliance also comes from his approach to developing his ideas. the routines he rolls out on his global tours are the output of what he has learned from thousands of little bets, nearly all of which fail.

When beginning to work on a new show, Rock picks venues where he can experiment with new material in very rough fashion. in gearing up for his latest global tour, he made between forty and fifty appearances at a small comedy club, called stress Factory, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, not far from where he lives. in front of audiences of, say, fifty people, he will show up unannounced, carrying a yellow legal note pad with ideas scribbled on it. “it’s like boxing training camp,” Rock told the Orange County Register.

When people in the audience spot him, they start whispering to one another. As the waitstaff and other comedians find places to stand at the sides or back, the room quickly fills with anticipation. He won’t launch into the familiar performance mode his fans describe as “the full preacher effect,” when he uses animated body language, pitchy and sassy vocal intonations, and erupting facial expressions. instead, he will talk with the audience in an informal, conversational style with his notepad on a stool beside him. He watches the audience intently, noticing heads nodding, shifting body language, or attentive pauses, all clues as to where good ideas might reside.

In sets that run around forty-five minutes, most of the jokes fall flat. His early performances can be painful to watch. Jokes will ramble, he’ll lose his train of thought and need to refer to his notes, and some audience members sit with their arms folded, noticeably unimpressed. the audience will laugh about his flops—laughing at him, not with him. Often Rock will pause and say, “This needs to be fleshed out more if it’s gonna make it,” before scribbling some notes. He may think he has come up with the best joke ever, but if it keeps missing with audiences, that becomes his reality. Other times, a joke he thought would be a dud will bring the house down. According to fellow comedian Matt Ruby, “There are five to ten lines during the night that are just ridiculously good. Like lightning bolts. My sense is that he starts with these bolts and then writes around them.”

For a full routine, Rock tries hundreds (if not thousands) of preliminary ideas, out of which only a handful will make the final cut. A successful joke often has six or seven parts. With that level of complexity, it’s understandable that even a comedian as successful as Chris Rock wouldn’t be able to know which joke elements and which combinations will work. This is true for every stand-up comedian, including the top performers we tend to perceive as creative geniuses, like Rock or Jerry Seinfeld. it’s also true for comedy writers. The writers for the humor publication the Onion, known for its hilarious headlines, propose roughly six hundred possibilities for eighteen headlines each week, a 3 percent success rate. “You can sit down and spend hours crafting some joke that you think is perfect, but a lot of the time, that’s just a waste of time,” Ruby explains. this may seem like an obvious problem, but it’s a mistake that rookie comedians make all the time.

By the time Rock reaches a big show — say an HBO special or an appearance on David Letterman — his jokes, opening, transitions, and closing have all been tested and retested rigorously. Developing an hour-long act takes even top comedians from six months to a year. If comedians are serious about success, they get on stage every night they can, especially when developing new material. they typically do so at least five nights per week, sometimes up to seven, and sweat over every element and word. And the cycle repeats, day in, day out.

Most people are surprised that someone who has reached Chris Rock’s level of success still puts himself out there in this way, willing to fail night after night, but Rock deeply understands that ingenious ideas almost never spring into people’s minds fully formed; they emerge through a rigorous experimental discovery process. As Matt Ruby says of Rock’s performances, “I’m not sure there’s any better comedy class than watching someone that good work on material at that stage. More than anything, you see how much hard work it is. He’s grinding out this material.”

Here's the full introduction (PDF) to the book.

English teacher Jeff Mann read the book and offered lessons Rock can teach students about writing.

Even successful writers don’t write perfect first drafts. Many of my struggling writers have a fixed mindset that people are either good at writing or not. Sharing stories about successful comedians or popular musicians struggling to make something better offers a motivational boost and can let students know that writing is truly a process, one that can be difficult.
 
Students need to grind out their material. Teachers need to allow time for and encourage multiple revisions. If a teacher graded Rock on his first performances, he’d be rated a subpar comedian. Our students’ first attempts will be subpar and fall flat too. Students, like Rock, have to work hard and grind out their writing.
 
Drafting takes time. We need to push students to revise. Rock throws things out, moves items around, changes words—the exact process that we need students to complete.
 
Audience is key. Sims describes how closely Rock watches his audience. He listens for laughter, obviously, but he also notes when people smile, frown, cross their arms, or give any other sign that some of his writing isn’t perfect. Our students can emulate Rock’s focus by reading drafts aloud, accepting honest and constructive peer criticism, and looking at their pieces as performances that constantly need tweaking.

That piece also offers this guidance from Jerry Seinfeld:

A famous story involves a young comedian running into Seinfeld and asking for career advice. Seinfeld told him to buy a wall calendar where all 12 months could be seen at once and to write jokes every single day. Every day that he wrote, he was to scrawl a red X over that date on the calendar.

So what can Seinfeld teach students about writing?
 
Visual reminders are powerful. It would be easy to just remind students to write every day. But unstructured goals get pushed aside. Things crop up, and “more important” activities often crowd out daily writing. Seeing a calendar that shows progress can be motivating. Students can keep their own calendar, or a teacher can create a classroom calendar.
 
Write every class period. Set this as a goal for students. Copy Seinfeld’s process to see how many red X’s you can put on your classroom streak calendar to help create a writing habit in your class.