Simple Joke-writing 101

Not to give away any of my trade secrets or anything but, as a teacher, this is how I used to spend most of my school day – writing jokes (or at least, researching material for writing jokes). Since, it was so much fun (way better than actually teaching or going to meetings and listening to department heads and administrators drone on for hours about exam week policies and evacuation procedures), I thought I would pass on to you, the real secrets of LIFE and “STAND-UP”.

During my 32-year teaching career I have, from time to time, presented entire lessons using an Irish accent or in the form of a stand-up comedy routine. It is a lot of work to write that sort of lesson or to practice the routine so that it actually relates to the course content to be taught, but the rewards are amazing. There is nothing better than to see a group of students laughing uncontrollably for an hour as you teach the finer points surrounding the workings of the digestive system or the thoughts and motivations of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation. I would usually start one of my classroom stand-up routines with Grade 10 Math Student jokes – you know – caricatures about how lethargic, inept, lazy and generally dull they are. But I stopped doing that because the Grade 10s didn’t think the jokes were funny and the rest of the grade levels I taught, didn’t realize that I was actually joking.

To illustrate the technique of writing jokes for, and telling jokes to, a real live audience, I have included in this present simple joke-writing course, templates for the fabrication and delivery of five general types of jokes in an effort to allow for variety in one's own personal routines. The five types I have used with some success are as follows:

1. “Three people walk into a bar . . .” type. ( # of __ walk into a __)

2. “How many does it take . . .” type. (How many __ does it take to __)

3. “What’s the difference . . .” type. (what’s the difference between _ & _)

4. Top Ten type. (top ten reasons to ___)

5. Set-up, unexpected Punch-line type.

When presenting to an audience for 10 minutes or less, it really doesn’t matter which type or the number of jokes in a specific type that you use. However, if your routine goes longer than that or especially if it approaches an hour in length, it is advisable to use the “Set-up, unexpected Punch-line” type most often, as it lends itself to the filling of time, the telling of stories and the addressing of content. A full hour of 15-second one-liners will drive your audience crazy after a while. Remember Henny Youngman? Besides, there are only so many BAR-jokes you can tell, relating to the eight parts of speech in the English language or the sub-atomic particles associated with the world of theoretical physics.

1.“Three people walk into a bar . . .” type.

“Three people (places or things) of different nationalities, occupations, genders, ages, etc. walk into a location of some sort.

Two of them do or say something smart, and the third one makes a mockery of his fellow group members by speaking or acting predictively and / or stereotypically."

Examples:

Three male High-School students walk into a Stripper bar. A senior, a sophomore and a freshman. Well, the senior never got around to actually walking in, and the sophomore kid fell asleep moments after sitting down but the freshman sure had a good time in the washroom.

OR

Three of the “Smoke Pit” gang walk into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.

OR

A vampire walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “Hey, sucks to be you, eh?”

2.“How many people does it take . . .” type

"How many members of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a specified task?"

"A finite number: one to perform the task and the remainder to act in a manner stereotypical of the group in question."

Examples:

How many P.E. students does it take to play a game of floor hockey?

Usually, three. The rest wouldn’t have gym strip of course.

OR

How many Grade-10 Math students does it take to study for an exam?

Just 2 – one to actually study and one to text-message the rest - to think of excuses why they shouldn’t study.

3. “What’s the difference . . .” type (riddle)

“What’s the difference between one person, place, thing, action, event, etc. and some other person, place, thing, action, event, etc.?”

• The answer to this question, which will be the joke, can be written in one of two ways. The first way is to explain or describe a quality or characteristic of the first item and then explain or describe a quality or characteristic of the second item. This format, is not only more difficult to write but it is ONLY SORT OF FUNNY.

Example:

What’s the difference between an experimental lab rat and Donald Trump? Rats are ugly and disgusting and smelly. Donald Trump isn’t always smelly.

• The second way to answer the lead up question is to describe a quality or characteristic of only one of the items. This method forces the audience to “fill in the blanks” for the second item, which is always funnier because it leaves something to the listener’s imagination. Audiences like to be treated as if they are intelligent enough to get the joke themselves, without it being explained.

Example:

What’s the difference between an experimental lab rat and Donald Trump? There are certain things that even a rat won’t do.

Which, of course, leaves the audience thinking that Donald Trump will sink to the level of doing anything. Not super funny, but this joke will likely get a chuckle just by the way it is set up.

4. Top-Ten type

It can be very funny to make a list of factors or reasons that are advantageous or contribute to or benefit from something else.

Statement or Set-up Pick some aspect of your life and make a list of 10 or 5 or 3 reasons why this aspect is a good idea or a bad idea or why it causes something else to happen.

List When writing this kind of joke, it is always good to write out the full list of answers first and THEN rank them later for the final version of the Top-Ten list. In the final version, you will always want to get funnier as the list goes along. It is definitely not a good idea to knock the audience on the floor with the first item and then put them to sleep by the time you hit item number 10. Sometimes there will be items on your list that should naturally follow one another. You will see what I mean in the examples.

Example:

Here are the top-ten reasons why it is a good idea to have a dog.

10. It’s not always possible to wash your face before bed time.

9. After a heavy meal you can blame your farts on the dog.

8. Dog hair on your furniture will dissuade unwanted guests from sitting down and over-staying their welcome.

7. Nothing says “I love you” like a wet muzzle in the crotch.

6. Well maybe some good “leg humping” says “I love you” more . . .

5. Dogs are “babe” magnets

4. What better way to gross people out than by scooping up dog turds with your bare hand instead of using a plastic bag.

3. It is a great conversation starter to have your dog sniff your new girlfriend's butt from time to time.

2. Your grandmother will be keen on watching your dog lick his balls.

1. And, the number one reason why it is good to have a dog is . . . it gives you a chance to contemplate becoming the kind of person your dog thinks you are.

Again, once you have your list, you can arrange and rearrange to your little heart’s content, until you get the ‘OK’ items first and the ‘killer’ items at the end. You will probably note in my example, that items #7 and #6 should probably stay together and in the given order to get the best comedic affect. There are, of course, a million other reasons why anyone should have a dog. Some reasons are funny, some are cute and some are just . . . well . . . er . . . not really joke material. You will ultimately be the judge of what you decide to include.

5. Set-up, unexpected Punch-Line type

Statement or Set-Up Using some commonly known idea that would allow the audience to automatically predict what would happen or what would be said next. To repeat – this naturally implies that the vast majority of the audience be familiar with the idea you are incorporating into your joke / story.

Punch Line Which takes the audience to some unexpected place and thus takes them by surprise. Remember that punch lines should be as brief and powerful as possible (like a quick left jab, not like a sweeping, roundhouse, haymaker right), and with key words placed at the very end of the line in order to accentuate the surprise.

Example:

Set-up : I went to the zoo the other day and I saw three Impalas, some Cougars, a Rabbit, an Eagle, a Jaguar and a Barracuda and even a Gremlin.

Punch Line: Yeh, and I wasn’t even out of the parking lot.

Note: the punch line only contains 10 short words with the key words (parking lot) right at the end of the line.

The templates for the set-up / punch-line jokes are a little more complicated. Initially you have to pick a topic or situation that 95% of your audience can relate to. Choosing the topic of clinical psychology only works with groups in attendance at International Psychiatry Conventions. Once you have selected a topic or situation, pick out a common occurrence and present it to the audience with the presumed intention of finishing the story with the usual predictable conclusion. This is the SET-UP. Because of everyone’s innate familiarity with Gestalt principles, they will automatically fill in the ending of your story before you get to it. So, when you hit them with something totally unexpected, they will fall off their chairs, laughing. That’s the PUNCH-LINE part.

Example:

Don’t you hate it when you are in the mall and you really have to take a shit and you know you are going to have to use the public toilets and you know that the stalls are probably going to have no doors and that there is going to be piss on the seats and someone else’s shit in the bowl and there won’t be any toilet paper left. I mean what could be worse?

(so now the audience is right there with you – they know what you are talking about, because they’ve been there themselves, so you have set them up)

Anyway, this one time, I really had to go so I finally found the public washrooms and I walk in and sure enough . . .

(so, what is the audience expecting you to tell them at this point? – something about how bad the bathroom is, right? So, what you say next is totally off the wall and unexpected) .

. . . right there in front of me, on the floor, is exactly what I didn’t want to see . . .

(that line just stretches out the set up a little more and gives the audience some extra time to build their anticipation and expectation of you seeing some shit or puke or whatever in front of you but then you hit them with:)

– my 90-year-old landlady getting humped by the guy handing out towels. (pause)

(At this point you can add some more cringiness to the picture . . .)

. . . and, she was naked . . . (pause)

(You can continue to stretch out the scene with bullets to further horrify your audience)

. . . and kind of wrinkled and saggy . . . (pause)

. . . and she stretches her witchy-looking arm out toward me in sort of a plea and says . . . (pause)

. . . “Hey, where’s my rent money?”

(OR You can end it there with a final line and move on.)

In Summary . . .

Whatever kind of joke you want to use, find (or design) a template that works for you. While experts and comedy professionals can write jokes freeform, others need to have a simple template to work off of – at least in the beginning, to get started in joke-writing. For example, “Knock-knock” jokes all use the same template, which is why they're easy to write. However, you have to be careful about the number of “knock-knock” jokes you tell in one sitting. Any more than five at a time and you could find yourself eating with the bad kids and toddlers at the card table in the other room during Thanksgiving dinner. If it’s a bar joke template you need, one can be easily gotten by finding two jokes you like that have the same format, then removing the key words and replacing them with mathematical variables. This is also how Scientific formulas were invented. Copernicus and Newton and Einstein were really all stand-up guys before they got into stars and gravity and relativity and all that shit.

Before writing your own jokes, test the template models you have selected by telling the original time-tested jokes to your friends. If nobody laughs at the original jokes that have survived for decades, then your imitation and copying of that template model may be doomed to failure.

A working template with two examples: "A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says, 'Why the long face?'" "A bear walks into a bar, and says, 'I'd like... ... ... a beer.' The bartender says, 'Why the big pause?'"

Reduce the template to variables. "An X walks into a bar, and the bartender says Y." Pick something to plug in for X, like a hamburger. "A hamburger walks into a bar, and the bartender says Y."

Plug in something for Y that relates to X. This will usually be a play on words. "A hamburger walks into a bar, and the bartender says 'Sorry, we don't serve food here.'"

Test out your new joke by telling it to some friends. If they don't laugh, return to a previous step and try again.

Anyway, I hope all of you have a good life and that you get to have a laugh or two while you are living it. Sometimes it helps to tell a joke. There are millions of jokes out there that you can use to start with, but eventually, life becomes way more fun when you start looking for funny things and making up your own jokes. Like Gilda Radner once said in her portrayal of Rosanne Rosanna Danna, “Which just goes to show you – it’s always something. If it’s not one thing then it’s another . . .” If it’s not your 90-year-old landlady turning tricks in the men’s washroom in the mall, then it’s your neighbour’s dog humping your leg. You just can’t get away from that stuff.