Stand-Up Comedy Editing and Proofreading Services

The same twenty minutes goes brilliantly on Thursday and dies on Friday. The room was different, the order was different because of a heckle, and the tag that saved the closer on Thursday got used early on Friday and was gone. What is in the notebook is a list of bit names — which is why the comic cannot say what actually changed.

We edit what stand-up comedians and comedy producers write — set lists and working documents, submission material for festivals, clubs and competitions, taped-set and special documentation, bios and press material, tour and show descriptions for programmers, funding and development applications, and the writing that supports a hour being built over eighteen months. Our editors work on the documents a comic uses on themselves.

The set list is the comic's working instrument, and its failure is a list of names for bits that records the order and nothing else. A set is a structure, and the notebook has to hold the structure rather than the running order. We work through these so each bit carries its running time, since a comic who does not know that the airport bit is four and a half minutes cannot build a tight ten or a clean hour; so the tags are written separately from the bit with a note on which ones can be dropped, because the difference between a good set and a great one is usually the tag that was still there at the end; so the callbacks are marked at both ends — where the setup lives and where it pays — given that a callback whose setup got cut is the most common self-inflicted wound in a set; so the outs are listed, as a comic needs a way out of a bit that is not working and choosing one live is how a set collapses; so the material's dependencies are noted — a bit that only works after a particular premise has landed, or that cannot follow anything about family; so alternative orders are written for the rooms the comic actually plays, since a late Friday crowd and a preview audience need different opening minutes; so the version and date are on it, because material changes weekly and last month's list will be picked up by accident; and so what was cut is kept rather than deleted. Set lists written this way turn eighteen months of gigs into an hour.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including unperformed material, working documents and recordings. We are editors rather than comedians, and we offer no view on material, delivery or what will get a laugh. What we can do is make the working document hold the structure.