Study the arrangement of the points in this great monologue and you will see that each really big point is dependent on several minor points that precede it to get its own big laugh.  For instance, take the following point: 

  And if meat goes any higher, it will be worth more than money.

  Then there won’t be any money.

  Instead of carrying money in your pocket, you’ll carry meat
  around.

  A sirloin steak will be worth a thousand dollar bill.

  When you go down to the bank to make a deposit, instead of giving
  the cashier a thousand dollar bill, you’ll slip him a sirloin
  steak.

  If you ask him for change, he’ll give you a hunk of bologny.

The first line blends this point with the preceding one about the high cost of eggs.  The second line awakens interest and prepares for the next, “Instead of carrying money in your pocket, you’ll carry meat around,” which is good for a grin.  The next line states the premise necessary for the first point-ending “—­you’ll slip him a sirloin steak,” which is always good for a laugh.  Then the last line, “If you ask him for change, he’ll give you a hunk of bologny,” tops the preceding laugh.

From this example you see what is meant by monologic laughs coming in threes and nines.  The introduction of each new story—­the line after the blend-line—­should awaken a grin, its development cause a chuckle, and the point-line itself raise a laugh.

Each new point should top the preceding point until with the end of that particular angle or situation, should come a roar of honest laughter.  Then back to the grin, the chuckle, and on to the laugh again, building up to the next big roar.

With the end of the monologue should come complete satisfaction in one great burst of laughter.  This, of course, is the ideal.

3.  How and Where to End

A monologue should run anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes.  The monologist can vary his playing time at will by leaving out points and gags here and there, as necessity demands, so the writer should supply at least a full fifteen minutes of material in his manuscript.

“How shall I time my manuscript?” is the puzzling problem the new writer asks himself.  The answer is that it is very difficult to time a monologue exactly, because different performers work at different speeds and laughs delay the delivery and, therefore, make the monologue run longer.  But here is a very rough counting scale that may be given, with the warning that it is far from exact: 

For every one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and forty words count one minute for delivery.  This is so inexact, depending as it does on the number of laughs and the monologist’s speed of delivery, that it is like a rubber ruler.  At one performance it may be too long, at another too short.

Having given a full fifteen minutes of material, filled, let us hope, with good points made up of grins, chuckles and laughs, now choose your very biggest laugh-point for the last.  When you wrote the monologue and arranged it into the first routine, that biggest laugh may have been the tenth, or the ninth, or the fifteenth, but you have spotted it unerringly as the very biggest laugh you possess, so you blend it in as the final laugh of the completed monologue.