Category Archives: Joke Writing Workshop

Joe shows how the writing techniques in his book apply to some jokes about current events.

Joke About the Sexiest Man Alive

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The joke:

Today People magazine named actor Michael B. Jordan the Sexiest Man Alive for 2020. Or as Rudy Giuliani put it, “Today People magazine named President Donald J. Trump the Sexiest Man Alive for 2020.”

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because I thought “the Sexiest Man Alive” had a lot of associations that could lead to punch lines.

I tried my Punch Line Maker #2–Link the topic to pop culture. “Sexiest Man Alive” (SMA) is such a grandiose title that I immediately thought of linking it to a person in pop culture well-known for self-aggrandizement, Donald Trump. That is, I decided it would be funny to base a punch line on the idea that Trump claimed he was the SMA.

To set up that punch line, I needed an angle that provided a logical reason why Trump would make that claim. He was claiming at that time that he had won the presidential election, so I tried angles based on the idea that there had been voting irregularities in the SMA election.

But ending the joke with something like “President Trump immediately demanded a recount” seemed too on-the-nose. Plus, as soon as the audience heard “President Trump” I thought they might be able to predict the punch line.

Finally it occurred to me to have someone other than Trump declare that Trump was the SMA. The logical candidate for that role was Rudy Giuliani, who had been making outlandish claims about the outcome of the presidential election.

To arrive at the final version of the joke I used my Joke Maximizer #6: “Make the punch line parallel.” I did that by giving Giuliani’s quote the same structure and wording as the topic sentence, down to the inclusion of Trump’s occupation and middle initial.

Joke About a Hundred Mummies

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The joke:

Today Egypt unearthed more than 100 mummies, including priests and high-ranking officials dating back more than 2,500 years. Archaeologists identified the mummies by asking Joe Biden if he recognized anybody.

How I wrote it:

As soon as I read this news item I thought “there has to be a joke in here about some famous person being really old.” That is, I gravitated toward my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture.

To use that Punch Line Maker, you start by identifying a handle of the topic, like “mummies.” Then you brainstorm a list of associations of that handle and think of entities in pop culture that those associations also relate to.

In this case, I linked “mummies” to the association “really old,” then linked that association to “Joe Biden,” who became the basis of my punch line.

But I didn’t want my punch line to be something too direct, like “Archaeologists said the mummies were as old as Joe Biden.” That would have violated my Joke Maximizer #11: Don’t be too on-the-nose.

Instead, I implied that Biden was 2,500 years old by stating that he knew personally some of the people who were mummified.

Although the joke doesn’t strictly need it, I left in the detail about “priests and high-ranking officials” because those seemed like the sorts of people Biden would have schmoozed with back then. So that detail made the connection between the topic and the punch line even smoother and more logical.

I obeyed my Joke Maximizer #3–Backload the topic–by ending the topic on “2,500 years.” That’s information that my old-age punch line depends on.

Is a joke about Joe Biden’s advanced age too hacky? Not yet, I decided. But I look forward to him accumulating even more generally-accepted associations that I can use for making jokes.

Joke About Ballot Counting

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The joke:

BALLOT COUNTING UPDATE: Minutes ago there was a problem in Pennsylvania. A ballot counter got that song “867-5309” stuck in his head and had to start all over.

How I wrote it:

The results of the presidential election hadn’t been determined yet. So the counting of ballots was the focus of a lot of media attention, and therefore promising fodder for a joke.

Rather than get into the details of the multi-state counting operation, I wrote a general topic sentence about ballot counting and applied my Punch Line Maker #3 to that. I asked myself the question, “What could go wrong with the ballot counting in one of the states?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed associations of “counting,” one of which is “losing your place because you’re distracted by other numbers.” That seemed like a promising basis for a punch line.

But my Joke Maximizer #9 is “Get specific,” so I needed a simple, surprising, specific way that numbers could distract a ballot counter. Did Trump or Biden supporters burst into the counting room and start shouting random numbers? That idea seemed pretty vague. And why would they want to slow down the counting?

I decided it made more sense that a song with numbers in it would get stuck in a counter’s head, as songs sometimes do. I immediately thought of the song “867-5309,” but wasn’t sure that enough of my audience would know it.

An online search of “songs with numbers in their titles” produced other candidates, but none that sported as nice a string of random digits as “867-5309.” So I went with that.

Starting the joke with that important-looking, all-caps headline made the silly punch line more surprising in contrast and, therefore, made the joke a little funnier.

Joke About 3 Musketeers Candy

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The joke:

This year Halloween trick-or-treating is a little different with the coronavirus. For example, Mars Candy just announced the 3 Musketeers bar is down to 2 Musketeers because D’Artagnan is in quarantine.

How I wrote it:

I had seen a lot of news stories advising people how to celebrate Halloween safely during the pandemic. So I thought I’d distill them into a generic news item and write a joke about it.

The topic promised to be fertile because both of its handles, “Halloween” and “coronavirus,” have many associations that I could use in my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

One of my most prominent associations of “Halloween” is candy, so I brainstormed the names of candies.

And strong associations of “coronavirus” are “social distancing” and “quarantine.” So I sought out candy brands that were names of people to whom I could attribute those pandemic activities.

That thinking led me to the Three Musketeers candy bar. I thought about maybe having its maker (which my research confirmed is Mars) issue a special coronavirus edition of the candy consisting of three individual One Musketeer bars, so the Musketeers could socially distance. But I decided that it was tidier to link the two topics handles with a punch line that put one of the Musketeers in quarantine.

More research told me that the original Three Musketeers were Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. But I felt that not enough of my audience would immediately recognize those names and I wanted to obey my Joke Maximizer #4: Make everything clear.

So instead I quarantined another, more familiar, swashbuckler from the tale, D’Artagnan. In doing that I took advantage of the fact that a punch line doesn’t have to be factually true. The audience only has to accept that the punch line is true long enough for it to make them laugh.

Joke About Murder Hornets

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The joke:

Bug hunters in Washington state found the first ever Asian giant “murder hornets” nest in the U.S. They said the nest used to have bees living in it. It was an Air-bee-n-bee.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because “murder hornets” just sound weird.

To create the joke I started with my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. The two most obvious topic handles were “murder” and “hornets.” And as I thought about hornets, the association “bees” occurred to me.

But instead of somehow linking “bees” with “murder,” my mind went to another possible handle, “nest.” That’s because “Airbnb” popped into my head, thanks to some wordplay with “bee.” And “Airbnb” is linked to “nest” through the association “place to live.” So I ended up basing a punch line on different topic handles than I started with.

My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear.” So I needed an angle that would ensure that the audience got my potentially confusing punch line.

My angle does that in two ways. First, it includes the word “bees,” so when the audience hears the punch line “Airbnb” the double meaning of “bee” is obvious.

And second, my angle says that other insects lived in the nest previously. This plants the idea of temporary housing in the audience’s minds, getting them ready to hear “Airbnb.”

I wrote “Air-bee-n-bee” for the text version of the punch line because I think someone who read “Airbnb” would have immediately thought that the nest was in somebody’s horrible insect-infested apartment and not gotten the joke.

Joke About a 2,350-Pound Pumpkin

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The joke:

This week a 2,350-pound pumpkin won a pumpkin-growing contest in California. Spectators were amazed. It’s orange, it weighs a ton, and nobody made a joke about President Trump.

How I wrote it:

When I read this news item I immediately thought of my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. The topic handle “pumpkin,” and its association “orange,” immediately called to mind the often-commented-on skin tone of our president, Donald Trump.

But I had a problem. Jokes about Trump’s orangey hue have been hacky for a long time, and I try not to be hacky.

Still, the other topic handle, “2350-pound,” also suggested Trump, who is known for being overweight. The fact that I could link that prize-winning pumpkin to Trump in two ways made a Trump/pumpkin punch line impossible to resist.

To minimize the hackiness of the joke, I decided to write a punch line where the surprise was that none of the spectators made a hacky Trump/pumpkin joke. That way I could do the hacky joke without actually doing it, thus preserving some of my self-respect.

The angle beginning “Spectators were amazed” smoothly leads the audience from the topic, which describes an amazing pumpkin, to a punch line which is surprising but also makes sense: the spectators were amazed by a phenomenon entirely different from what the audience for the joke expected. “Surprising but also makes sense” describes all well-written punch lines.

I got lucky that the pumpkin weighed 2,350 pounds. It meant that I could write “weighs a ton” and be both factually accurate about the pumpkin and colloquially accurate about Trump.

Joke About Sexual Onions

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The joke:

Facebook removed an ad for onions for being “overtly sexual.” Then they restored the ad and fired an ad censor for being “overtly lonely.”

How I wrote it:

This news item got my attention because it raised the question in my mind “Who would think onions are sexual?” That is, the news item suggested that I consider using my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic.

To answer that question, I thought about the topic handle “onions” and its associations like “round,” “smooth,” and “inanimate.” And based on those, I decided that the surprising answer to my question, and the basis of my punch line, would be “someone who’s really, really lonely.” 

To make the joke as funny as possible, I used my Joke Maximizer #6–Make the punch line parallel. That is, I worded the punch line as “fired an ad censor for being “overtly lonely,” in order to echo as much as possible the wording in the topic “removed an ad for onions for being “overtly sexual.”

I also included in my angle the words “Then they restored the ad,” to make the joke easier to understand; my Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear.” Unless Facebook did an about-face and restored the ad, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to the audience that whoever had removed the ad had committed a fireable offense.

Did a human ad censor, in fact, remove that onion ad? No, the news item says that “automated technology” did. But I decided that my audience wouldn’t know or care about that detail. Plus I needed a fireable human to make the joke work.

Joke About Trump and Covid-19

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The joke:

President Trump is still in the hospital for Covid-19. Doctors say the good news is the virus isn’t making any progress because Trump’s immune system keeps interrupting it.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about Trump contracting Covid-19 because it was a huge news story. But, as always, I also wanted to write a joke that could be enjoyed by as many people as possible. That’s a tricky task, because Trump is so polarizing.

So when I used my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–I only considered associations that I thought most people would have, not just Trump haters and not just Trump supporters.

That meant when I came up with associations of the topic handle “Trump,” I rejected associations like “he deserves to be infected,” because plenty of people might disagree with that.

Instead, I went with an association that I thought everyone would be willing to accept, that in the first Presidential Debate, Trump had interrupted Biden constantly.

Associations of the other topic handle, “Covid-19,” include “immune system fights virus.” So I was able to create a punch line by substituting the idea of interrupting for the idea of fighting.

Because the news about Trump’s condition was so fast-moving at the time I wrote the joke, I crafted a topic that describes his status in general terms, so the joke would have a little longer shelf life.

I worded the angle as “the virus isn’t making any progress” so it would suggest something that someone in a debate might do. A wording like “the virus is being neutralized” wouldn’t have guided the audience from the topic to the punch line quite as smoothly.

Joke About Voting and Footlocker

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The joke:

Starting tomorrow you can register to vote at Footlocker shoe stores. Then after you get your new voter registration they suggest you walk around the store with it a little to see how it feels.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because both topic handles, “register to vote” and “Footlocker,” seemed to have enough associations to build a punch line on without too much difficulty.

When I read the item a question formed in my mind like “What would voting at Footlocker be like?” So using my Punch Line Maker #3–Ask a question about the topic–I brainstormed how to answer that question using an association of “Footlocker.”

After considering for a moment that metal contraption they use to measure your foot– Did you know it’s called a Brannock Device?–I recalled how customers often walk around in shoes to test the fit before they buy them. That’s how I came up with the basis of my punch line.

But shoes are physical objects and when you register to vote I don’t think you get anything comparably physical. So to smoothly bridge between the topic and my punch line I wrote an angle including the phrase “after you get your new voter registration.” It may not be true that you get a physical voter registration, but it’s plausible enough that the audience isn’t distracted on their way to the punch line.

I also massaged my topic to streamline the joke. Wikipedia describes Footlocker as a “sportswear and footwear retailer,” but I called them a “shoe store.” That way my topic would still be true but would tie more clearly to my punch line about customers trying on shoes.

Joke About Joe Biden’s Endorsement

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The joke:

Scientific American magazine endorsed Joe Biden, the first time they’ve endorsed a presidential candidate in their 175-year history. Biden said he was thrilled, especially because he’s been a loyal subscriber since the first issue.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because it was widely reported in the media and because the topic handles “Scientific American” and “Joe Biden” seemed to have enough associations to produce a joke.

But then another handle of the topic caught my eye: “175-year history.” I decided to use my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–when I realized that I could link “175-year history” to the handle “Joe Biden” with a punch line based on their shared association “old.”

But my Joke Maximizer #11 is “Don’t be too on-the-nose,” and a punch line like this would have been too direct: “They endorsed him because he’s as old as they are.” So instead I wrote a punch line that makes the same point in a more indirect way.

To ensure that the punch line would be clear, I put “magazine” in the topic. That way when the audience hears “the first issue” they’re not confused, because I’ve mentioned that Scientific American is a magazine, instead of a TV show or something.

I also adhered to my Joke Maximizer #3, “Backload the topic,” by putting “175-year history” at the end of my topic sentence. That way the phrase would be fresh in the minds of the audience when the punch line requires them to realize what “the first issue” implies about Biden’s age.

This is an example of a political joke that’s unlikely to split a general audience because it hinges on an indisputable fact–Biden is old for a presidential candidate– instead of an opinion.