Category Archives: Joke Writing Workshop

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

Joke About Jeff Bezos’s Space Flight

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The joke:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrived safely back on earth in his space capsule this morning. And an email from Amazon said the other three passengers will arrive later in a separate shipment at no additional charge.

How I wrote it:

I chose this news item to base a joke on because it was a big story. It also seemed to offer enough associations for me to use in my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

A typical version of the news item began like this: “Riding his own rocket, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos streaked into space Tuesday on a thrilling 10-minute up-and-down flight.” That version has a lot of possible topic handles, but I had to choose only two of them to use in creating a punch line.

“Amazon” seemed like a promising choice for a handle because it has a lot of potentially useful associations. To help decide on a second handle, I thought of what associations of Amazon I had already used to create other jokes; I didn’t want to repeat myself.

I realized I hadn’t yet written a joke referring to how Amazon sometimes makes partial shipments. Delivering items in a shipment seemed similar to delivering passengers in a space capsule, so I decided my punch line would blend those two concepts.

I relied on my memory of past Amazon emails to come up with the detailed wording “will arrive later in a separate shipment at no additional charge.” I needed that detailed wording to make it completely clear that the punch line refers to an Amazon partial shipment.

Finally, I edited the topic to focus on only those elements of the news story that I needed for my punch line: “Amazon,” plus the concept of a container arriving that contains only one item.

Joke About the Air and Space Museum

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The joke:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is donating $200 million to the Smithsonian for its Air and Space Museum. He says he can relate to the Air and Space Museum because those huge boxes that Amazon uses to mail tiny items are mostly full of air and space.

How I wrote it:

I thought I could turn this news item into a joke using my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. That’s because the news item offered two topic handles, “Amazon” and “Air and Space Museum,” each of which seemed to have enough associations that I could link.

The handle “Air and Space Museum” has the association “air and space.” As I brainstormed possible connections between “air and space” and “Amazon,” the mental image of a box shipped by Amazon came to mind. I visualized opening the box and seeing one small item surrounded by lots of those air-filled packing pillows. And I had the idea for my punch line.

But before I went ahead with that punch line, I did some research online and reassured myself that I’m not the only person who thinks that Amazon often ships boxes mostly filled with air.

My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear,” and I used it in two ways. The first way involved my punch line, which starts at “those huge boxes.” It’s fairly long. So I repeated in my angle the topic handle “Amazon” and the name of the museum. That way my audience would have those important words in their head when they heard the punch line that relies on their remembering them.

Another way I made the joke clearer was to write an angle that gives Bezos a logical reason for his donation: he relates to the museum. An angle that doesn’t spell out a specific reason, like the angle “He says he made the donation because,” wouldn’t have connected the topic as smoothly to the punch line about the air-filled boxes.

Joke About the Tokyo Olympics

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The joke:

Today the Prime Minister of Japan confirmed that spectators will be banned from all Olympics events in Tokyo. He also introduced a new Olympics mascot: Hello Kitty’s antisocial cousin, Goodbye Kitty.

How I wrote it:

This news item got my attention because it was a pretty big story. It also seemed to offer topic handles that had enough associations to use in my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

One topic handle is “Tokyo Olympics,” which has the association “mascot.” Another topic handle is “spectators banned,” which has the association “unwelcome.”

So I decided to devise a punch line by linking those associations to create an unwelcoming mascot for the Tokyo Olympics.

Tokyo, for me, has the association “Hello Kitty.” An unwelcoming version of Hello Kitty would be a mascot named Goodbye Kitty. And I had the basis of my punch line.

But I wanted to use my Joke Maximizer #4: “Make everything clear.” Specifically, I didn’t want a wording for the joke something like, “He also introduced a new Olympics mascot, Goodbye Kitty.” That’s because I thought that wording would make it too hard for the audience to make the mental connections from the punch line back to the topic handles. And if the audience doesn’t make those connections, they’ll be puzzled and they won’t laugh.

So I added a mention of Hello Kitty to the punch line, to make the connection between Goodbye Kitty and Tokyo clearer.

I also added “antisocial,” to clarify the connection between Goodbye Kitty and “spectators banned.”

And I made sure to use a version of the topic that includes the word “banned.” Other versions of the news headline that I read, like “Tokyo Olympic venues won’t have spectators,” didn’t convey the antisocial aspect that I needed to clarify my “Goodbye Kitty” punch line.

Joke About the Yale School of Drama

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The joke:

After receiving a $150 million donation, the Yale School of Drama is eliminating tuition for all students. The students jumped for joy, then asked if that was too much and tried another reaction where they just clapped.

How I wrote it:

When I read this news item, the topic handle “the Yale School of Drama” immediately made me think I could use my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic.

The question I asked myself was, “How did the students react to the news?” The reason that question occurred to me was probably because “the Yale School of Drama” is strongly associated with “acting.” So I thought I might base a punch line on the idea that the drama students expressed their joy in a very actorish way.

I tried a few versions of the punch line before I settled on the exact wording. One version was something like “The students expressed their joy by remembering a time when they were really happy.”

But I wasn’t sure that my audience would associate the wording of that punch line with the acting technique known as Method Acting. I wasn’t even sure what Method Acting is.

So instead I thought more about what actors do when they perform and came up with the version of the angle and punch line you see here.

Then I edited my topic. To make it as short as possible–per my Joke Maximizer #1–I shortened the “current and future students” referred to in the original news story down to just “students.”

I also omitted the name of the generous donor of the $150 million–David Geffen–because the joke didn’t need that information.

Finally I used my Joke Maximizer #3–Backload the topic–by moving to the beginning of the joke the least important information remaining in the topic.

Joke About Gunplay at Burger King

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The joke:

In Tennessee, two people were arrested for reportedly shooting up a Burger King after a dispute over a chicken sandwich. Apparently for them, “Have It Your Way” included wearing handcuffs.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my attention because the crime it describes is so dumb. Plus the news item includes several topic handles that I thought I could turn into a punch line by using my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

But which two topic handles should I focus on? Put another way, which two words or phrases in the topic are most responsible for attracting my, and my audience’s, attention? The topic handles need to grab the audience’s attention because the audience has to remember them in order to understand the punch line.

One possible pair of topic handles is “shooting” and “chicken sandwich.” The idea that somebody sprayed bullets because of a mere chicken sandwich does grab one’s attention.

But years ago I had used similar handles taken from a news story about another fast food shooting to write the punch line “bun control,” which merges “bun” and “gun control.” And I didn’t want to repeat myself here.

So instead I considered the pair of topic handles “Burger King” and “arrested.” Appearing together in a news story, those words also grab one’s attention: who wouldn’t be interested in an arrest in a familiar restaurant like Burger King?

One association of “Burger King” is its longstanding slogan, “Have It Your Way.” And one association of “arrested” is “wearing handcuffs.” The punch line that I wrote connects those two associations.

As that process shows, sometimes a topic offers more than two possible candidates for topic handles. To pick which ones to use, just try them in the Punch Line Makers one or two at a time and see which ones lead to the funniest joke.

Joke About a Naked Skydiver

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The joke:

A Nebraska man set a new world record by making 60 skydiving jumps in 24 hours while naked. He also set a new world record for most seagulls lodged in a human rectum.

How I wrote it:

This news item attracted my interest because it described such a weird achievement. It also summoned up a vivid image in my mind, pointing me toward my Punch Line Maker #5: Visualize the topic.

Having formed a mental image of the topic–a naked guy repeatedly plummeting through the sky–I took that mental image to an extreme: I envisioned the guy hitting birds on his way down.

Then I made the image even more extreme by visualizing the birds slamming into his naked butt. And that warped image became the basis of my punch line.

To make my punch line as funny as possible, I used my Joke Maximizer #9: Get specific. Instead of “birds” I wrote the more-specific “seagulls.” And I changed “butt” to the more-specific “human rectum.”

“Rectum” also takes advantage of my Joke Maximizer #7: Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance. The word has the stop consonant sounds K and T.

Adding the word “human” also makes it immediately clear that the punch line refers to the naked guy’s own rectum, as opposed to…oh, I don’t know…a seagull’s rectum.

Finally I added an angle that uses my Joke Maximizer #6: Make the punch line parallel. “He also set a new world record for” copies as closely as possible the structure of the phrase “A Nebraska man set a new world record by” which is at the beginning of the topic.

Joke About Explosive Diarrhea

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The joke:

Reports say that production of the upcoming NBC series “Ultimate Slip ‘N Slide” was halted after an outbreak of “explosive diarrhea” on the set. But why? Isn’t a show called “Ultimate Slip ‘N Slide” the perfect place for explosive diarrhea?

How I wrote it:

This story caught my attention because a number of news outlets covered it. Plus it’s really disgusting.

The phrase “explosive diarrhea” called to my mind a vivid mental picture. So I decided to use my Punch Line Maker #5: Visualize the topic.

My next step was to form a different, exaggerated perspective on that vivid mental picture. I did so by considering the title of that NBC series and imagining people slipping ‘n’ sliding on all that diarrhea.

To turn that exaggerated perspective into a punch line, I took the advice of my Punch Line Maker #6–State the obvious about the topic. If people were slipping ‘n’ sliding around on diarrhea, wouldn’t they obviously fit right into a show called “Ultimate Slip ‘N Slide?” And I had my punch line.

Before sending my joke out into the world, I asked myself whether it was so disgusting that my audience wouldn’t accept it and wouldn’t laugh.

But I figured that if multiple news outlets had decided that their audience would accept a story about “explosive diarrhea,” then most of my audience would probably accept a not-particularly-graphic joke about the story.

And I remembered this advice about doing edgy comedy that writer/director Mel Brooks said he once received from John Calley, then head of production at Warner Bros.: “If you’re going to go up to the bell, ring it.”

I had decided to go up to the bell, which was the news story about diarrhea. So I rang that bell by doing the sort of disgusting joke that the diarrhea story was made for.

Joke About Eating Cicadas

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The joke:

Today the FDA said to avoid eating cicadas if you’re allergic to seafood. Was that really necessary? Was anybody really looking for a reason not to eat cicadas?

How I wrote it:

When I read the news item about eating cicadas I had the reaction “That’s disgusting.” Having an emotional reaction to a news story is a sign that the story grabbed your interest and therefore could be a good topic for a joke that a mass audience would enjoy.

Soon after I had that emotional reaction, a related question popped into my head: “Who wants to eat cicadas anyway?” Asking oneself an obvious question suggested by the topic is the first step in my Punch Line Maker #6: State the obvious about the topic.

Punch Line Maker #6 isn’t used very often but it seemed like it would work here. So I continued with it and wrote a punch line based on the obvious answer to my obvious question. The obvious answer was “Nobody wants to eat cicadas.”

But wording the joke this way would have been too direct: “Why did they need to say that? Nobody wants to eat cicadas.” So I used my Joke Maximizer #11–Don’t be too on-the-nose–and instead came up with a more indirect way of expressing the same idea in the punch line.

Note that I could have used my Joke Maximizer #6–Make the punch line parallel–and worded the punch line something like “Was anybody really looking for a reason to avoid eating cicadas?” But my Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear,” and that wording didn’t seem quite as clear as the final version I went with.

Finally, I added the angle “Was that really necessary?” to get the audience into the frame of mind to immediately understand the punch line.

Joke About Covid-19 Escaping

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The joke:

Scientists now think that Covid-19 may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. As evidence, they point to a cell in the lab where there’s a blanket almost covering a dummy coronavirus head made of papier-mache and hair clippings.

How I wrote it:

I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. “Covid-19” was an obvious choice for one topic handle because it’s responsible for a lot of the topic’s newsworthiness.

But the choice of the second topic handle wasn’t so obvious. “China” was a possibility but, in connection with “Covid-19,” it doesn’t add much to the newsworthiness. A word that adds more is “escaped.” So I chose “escaped” as my second topic handle.

The verb “escaped” is an unusual choice because topic handles are almost always nouns or noun phrases. Still, the word seemed to have a lot of potentially useful associations, so I went with it.

Brainstorming associations of “escaped,” I visualized an escaping prison inmate placing a handmade dummy head of himself in his bed to fool the guards. Grafting a coronavirus into that scenario, I had my punch line.

To describe the escape scenario and make my punch line completely clear I needed a lot of words. But I wanted to adhere to my Joke Maximizer #5–“Don’t telegraph the punch line.” And the longer the punch line was, the more likely the audience would be to get ahead of it. If the audience predicts a punch line, they won’t be surprised by it and they won’t laugh.

I minimized the potential problem of telegraphing by moving the most revealing details of the image I was painting as close to the end of the joke as possible.

I also prolonged my misdirection of the audience by using the phrase “a cell in the lab,” which could also refer to a biological cell.

Joke About Amazon Buying MGM

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The joke:

Amazon is in talks to buy Hollywood studio MGM, home of the James Bond movies. In fact, Amazon is already planning to remake one of them and call it “From Russia with Free Shipping.”

How I wrote it:

The original news headline was something like “Amazon in talks to buy Hollywood studio MGM for $9 billion.” I decided to base a joke on it because its two handles, “Amazon” and “MGM,” each have a lot of associations, particularly the latter. My Punch Line Maker #1 is “Link two associations of the topic,” so the more associations a topic has, the more possible punch lines it can spawn.

The first sentence of the news story mentioned that MGM is the studio behind the James Bond and Rocky franchises. But I thought the Bond association would have more sub-associations that I could use, so I reworded the topic to focus on that.

I also took out the unnecessary mention of the $9 billion because my Joke Maximizer #1 is “Shorten as much as possible.”

Movie titles are often useful in creating punch lines, so I explored the sub-association “James Bond movie titles.” To do that, I looked up a list of Bond movies online. I wanted to somehow link the name of a well-known Bond movie with an association of the other topic handle, “Amazon.”

“Amazon” is associated with “Prime” and “two-day shipping,” but I couldn’t find any Bond titles to link those associations to.

However, transplanting the association “free shipping” into “From Russia with Love” worked well, particularly because Amazon might conceivably ship products from Russia.

Finally, I added the angle “Amazon is already planning to remake one of them.” That’s because I wanted the audience to hear the punch line and immediately connect it to a real Bond movie title. That is, I wrote an angle consistent with my Joke Maximizer #4, “Make everything clear.”