Tips and Tricks for Your First Tight 5
by Steph Dalwin
So, you’re building your first five minutes of material, otherwise known as your tight 5. Or maybe you’ve already got a solid tight 5 that you want to shop around to book more shows. This set is one of the most difficult to write, but it’s also one of the most important (no pressure). Everyone’s tight 5 will look a little different: some focus on a variety of jokes in one set, others stick to a common theme, and still others may commit to one or two bits only. Regardless of where you are, here’s some advice that helped me when I wrote my first tight 5:
It’s actually a tight 4:30. Five minutes is a lot shorter than you think. When you practice, make sure your set is coming in about 30 seconds early. You never quite know how show night is going to shake out. The room may be tough and laughs may be sparse, which could mean you go shorter on time. Or, ideally, the room is lively, and you end up having to pause for longer than you thought for laughs. Building in a 30-second buffer ensures that you’ll come in right around the five-minute mark, no matter how the room is. And no booker will ever complain if you end a little early.
Practice it as many times as you need to. I often hear newer comics over-apologize for running their tight 5 again and again. Never, ever apologize! Your first five minutes of material is crucial for booking those initial shows and getting your sea legs onstage. Practice your tight 5 as many times as you need to feel comfortable. After some time, it will feel like every other comic in your peer group knows your material, and your tight 5 may even become mundane for you to perform. This is completely normal. Most comics in a local scene can recite each other’s sets by heart. Don’t let the repetitive nature of standup scare you away from performing your tight 5; keep going until it’s where you want it.
When you practice alone, pause for laughs, and factor that into your time. It will 100% feel awkward to say “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” in your head as you pause for a laugh while you’re alone in your living room practicing. Yet it’s important to pause for two reasons: (1) this gets you used to pausing for laughs and letting the audience know where to laugh and (2) it will give you a realistic sense of how long your set actually is.
Punchlines, punchlines, punchlines. While five minutes may seem like a long time to talk onstage (and it is!), it goes by very quickly. That being said, you want to make sure your tight 5 makes an impression, and is, well, tight. You don’t need to generate a laugh every 10 seconds per se, and you don’t need to do five straight minutes of one-liners. But you do want to make sure that this initial set of material has a solid density of laughs. Focus on writing punchlines, as trite as it sounds. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but you probably don’t want to go more than 30-45 seconds without a punchline planned.
Avoid crowd work. Your tight 5 should be a showcase of your best and funniest material, and you want to make sure you have time to get through all of it. Throwing in crowd work is a risky bet in such a short period of time. Building in a line or so of crowd work is absolutely fine, but make sure it’s controllable. If I’m planning on crowd work in a five-minute set, I usually confine it to yes/no answers. Crowd work can be unpredictable, and what may seem like a benign question or two can quickly turn into three or four minutes. Within a five-minute set, you don’t have that kind of time to spare; deviating away from your material for even 10 seconds can be a liability.
Your tight 5 is one the most important sets you’ll write, no matter how experienced you are as a standup. In the beginning, your tight 5 will get you noticed; it’s like a gateway drug for netting those first few gigs. As you progress throughout your career, you’ll develop many more tight 5 sets, which you can use to apply to festivals and give bookers a sense of your style if they don’t know you. Your tight 5 is one of the best arrows to have in your quiver, and a building block to longer sets. It may seem intimidating now, but don’t be afraid to work on those first five minutes until it’s where you think it needs to be.
