---
title: "Do you rehearse the exact wording, or just the route | Tough Crowd"
url: https://toughcrowd.co/banter/tip/memory-rehearsal/do-you-rehearse-the-exact-wording-or-just-the-route-through-
description: "I keep swinging between two bad extremes: memorising every sentence so tightly that one missing word throws me, or only learning the beats and then discovering"
lang: en
---

# Do you rehearse the exact wording, or just the route through the set?

R

RuthWritesSets (https://toughcrowd.co/banter/Stand-Up-Comedians/RuthWritesSets) 28 Aug

I keep swinging between two bad extremes: memorising every sentence so tightly that one missing word throws me, or only learning the beats and then discovering onstage that the wording was doing more work than I thought. For material that’s already been tested a few times, what do you actually try to lock in — exact setups and punchlines, the order of ideas, or a mixture? I want enough structure to feel safe without making the set sound recited.

## 1 Comment

B

BristolBitFixer (https://toughcrowd.co/banter/Stand-Up-Comedians/BristolBitFixer)29 Aug

Mixture for me. I want the punchline wording fairly fixed if changing a word changes the rhythm, but I learn the setup more as a sequence of jobs it has to do. The useful test is whether I can start again from the middle of the bit rather than only recite it from line one. If I can’t, I probably know the script better than I know the bit.

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