Group jokes by type rather than topic?

[Phil]

When building my set list, I've been grouping my jokes together by topic as is the norm. But as I've only been performing for a year, a lot of my jokes have different feels to them.

Honestly, I bet I could label 90% of my jokes with the names of my fav comics. (ie "that's a Regan joke", "that's a Oswalt joke"...). It's a reality that I guess I'll have to deal with until I find my own voice.

I noticed that some of my jokes will fail if put after a joke of a different type -like the audience gets confused if I were to place a Hedberg-style stoner one-liner after a longer Oswalt-style bit. But then again, sometimes keeping the audience on their toes with a quick change of styles is refreshing.

I dunno wtf I'm trying to say here, but - Have any of you tried to group jokes together by type rather than topic?

[nixonjames]

I've done both. I'm only 6 months in and in a similar 'finding my voice' arena.
I think there's a nuance to it that I don't have quite down yet but it seems like if you're going to do a bunch of jokes with major exaggeration it sometimes pops to put something in that's just straight deadpan reality (e.g.'You know what happens when you get kneed in the junk? Your balls hurt!) you get the idea.

I've been sort of following a system of starting with simple ideas and then unpacking them with an eye for my perspective and my victim (if there is one, which there usually is) and how to better setup that victim for my attack, etc.

I feel where you're coming from sorry if this isn't more than agreement.

[Phil]

I've been sort of following a system of starting with simple ideas and then unpacking them with an eye for my perspective and my victim (if there is one, which there usually is) and how to better setup that victim for my attack, etc.

Wow, what you mean by that?

[crlygrl]

Why wouldn't you do the jokes alphabetically? Sorted by the first letter of the first word in the joke??

[nixonjames]

To explain. I love take offs and one-liners. But I usually pack too much crap into them.

So I would take a 1 liner and try to figure out what I was getting at.
Basically my 1liners had too much in them. So I started looking at ways I could get my point, and point of view across without just saying it, and making a take off joke after. It helped me to create jokes based on the descriptive words I was using in my setup to get to a more complete and engaging, and funny setup with takeoffs there in before building to a better joke on the end. If this isn't clear I can PM you an example but I just got off work and am too tired to give an exact example now.

The first couple of chapters of 'Comic Insights' helped me better focus on where I was coming from and what I wanted to say so if you're library has it in check it out.

[RoyalDutchOfDukes]

Arrange them using the Dewey Decimal System!