Joke Writing Workshop

Joke About the House Report on Trump

Posted on December 9, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

Next week Random House is publishing the House Intelligence Committee’s report on President Trump. They’ll even have a children’s edition entitled “James and the Giant Impeachment.”

How I wrote it:

The House Intelligence Committee’s report was a top story so I wanted to write a joke about it. And this particular news item about its publication promised to have enough associations that writing a joke wouldn’t be too hard.

I turned to my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One handle of the topic, “House Intelligence Committee’s report,” has the association “impeachment.” Another topic handle, “publishing,” has the association “book.”

To link those two associations in a surprising way and come up with a punch line, I brainstormed titles of books that sound like “impeachment.” “Impeachment” sounds kind of like the last word in the title of the children’s book “James and the Giant Peach.” So performing the word substitution gave me my laugh trigger.

Finally, to set up my punch line by getting the audience thinking in the right direction, I wrote an angle that mentioned children’s books.

After I posted this joke on Facebook and Twitter, a friend of mine mentioned that late-night TV’s Stephen Colbert does a comedy segment entitled “Don and the Giant Impeach.” But I’ve never seen it.

Writers of topical jokes often come up with the same or similar jokes independent of one another. Here’s an article I wrote about that phenomenon.

Seth Meyers Did Not Steal My Joke

Joke About a Naked Man

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

In NC, police at a shopping center arrested a man on Black Friday who was sitting in a car naked. Police said the naked man reminded them of Small Business Saturday.

How I wrote it:

When I read this fertile news item I thought, “There has to be a joke in there somewhere.” The reason I thought that is because the handles “Black Friday” and “naked man” each have a lot of associations.

To write the joke I started with Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. The handle “Black Friday” has as one association “Small Business Saturday.”

As I brainstormed associations of the other handle, “naked man,” I borrowed a technique from my Punch Line Maker #5 and visualized the topic. I formed a mental picture of a naked man sitting in a car, noticed his penis, and imagined it as exaggeratedly, humorously, small.

I got lucky that not only “small,” but also “business” could refer to the man’s penis. So “Small Business Saturday” made a strong laugh trigger to link the two topic handles.

To make the joke as funny as possible, I used my Joke Maximizer #3: Backload the topic. Specifically, I worded the topic so that the elements that the punch line depends on the most–“Black Friday” and “naked”–came as close to the end of the topic as possible.

I also used my Joke Maximizer #11: Don’t be too on-the-nose. An on-the-nose version of the joke would have ended something like, “Police said the man’s penis reminded them of Small Business Saturday”; not as funny.

Joke About an Unsafe Toy

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

Today a watchdog group released its 2019 list of the toys deemed most unsafe for children. At the top of the list: Tickle Me Epstein.

How I wrote it:

This news item grabbed my interest because it reminded me of the prop pieces we used to do on Dave Letterman’s late-night shows. Writers would write jokes for a segment like “Dave’s Toy Shoppe” and then the prop department would actually build the “wacky props” and Dave would display them as he delivered the jokes. Prop pieces always got big laughs.

To write this joke I turned to my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. The handle of the topic is “unsafe toys,” so my first task was to think of someone or something in pop culture that would be unsafe in toy form.

Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had resurfaced in the news, because of his association with Prince Andrew. And Epstein was known for sexually abusing underage girls. So a Jeffrey Epstein toy would definitely qualify as unsafe.

To create a snappy name for the toy I thought of lots of real-life toys while keeping in mind what Epstein did, including his massages. Tickle Me Elmo came to mind.

Luckily for me, “Elmo” and “Epstein” both have two syllables and begin with “E.” So substituting one for the other to create the name of the toy results in wordplay that is tighter than it could be and therefore more surprising and funnier.

Of course, there’s nothing funny about sex abuse. But the joke works for most people because it doesn’t call to mind any graphic details of Epstein’s crimes.

Plus the joke is really about how some stupid company thinks it can convince people to buy an obviously bad product. And stupid companies make great targets for jokes.

Joke About Apple’s Credit Card

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

Apple’s credit card is being investigated for discriminating against women. Unbelievable. Apple even changed the name from Mastercard. It’s a Mistercard.

How I wrote it:

This news item got my interest because it raised a question: How could a credit card, especially one from Apple, discriminate against women?

But the two most-promising handles of the topic–“credit card” and “discriminating against women”–didn’t have a lot of obvious associations, a fact that normally prompts me to skip over the news item.

Still, I thought about the handles for a moment and realized that one association of “credit card,” “Mastercard,” has wordplay with “Mistercard.” And “Mistercard” could be a link to the second handle, “discriminating against women.” That’s how I backed into using my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

Now I knew I wanted the joke to end on the laugh trigger “Mistercard.” But I thought that wording the joke like this wouldn’t be clear enough: “Apple’s credit card is being investigated for discriminating against women. They’re calling it a Mistercard.” I thought that some of the audience might not get the play on words.

So, for additional clarity, I wrote an angle that logically connects the topic to the punch line and includes “Mastercard.”

I also added “Unbelievable” so the audience would be expecting to hear how the credit card discriminates against women and therefore get the implication of “Mistercard” a little quicker.

Joke About Halloween Costumes

Posted on November 4, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

It’s almost Halloween. Lots of people are rushing out to buy the new costumes. In fact, sales of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi costumes are really blowing up.

How I wrote it:

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had just killed himself by detonating a suicide vest. Usually if a news story is about somebody dying, that rules the story out as the topic for a joke. Most people would feel too guilty to laugh.

But in this case, the deceased was a truly heinous terrorist, murderer, and serial rapist. Still, I thought that some people in our politically fractured country might be reluctant to laugh at a joke celebrating his death.

So I decided to write an al-Baghdadi joke that relies on facts, not on opinions. As I brainstormed about the facts of his death, the phrase “blow up” popped into my head. Because that phrase can have different meanings, I decided to use my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

I didn’t have a topic yet, so I had to devise one. I thought about other current events and came up with the topic “It’s almost Halloween. Lots of people are rushing out to buy the new costumes.” With that topic, my handle could be “buy the new costumes,” which has the association “sales” and the sub-association “blow up.” And I had the play on words I was after.

Usually you start with a topic when you write a joke, but this time I backed into a topic from my desired punch line.

Joke About Henry Thomas’s DUI

Posted on October 28, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

The actor who played the young boy in “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” Henry Thomas, was arrested for DUI. H.T. phoned home…for bail money.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” has the familiar association “E.T. phone home.” And I thought I could probably use my Punch Line Maker #1 to link that catchphrase with a second association of the topic.

For the second association, I might have found an association of “DUI” that I could use to construct a punch line. But the “phone” part of “E.T. phone home” raised the question of why Henry Thomas might make a phone call. That’s how I ended up using an association of “arrested,” which is “phoning somebody from jail.”

I got lucky that Henry Thomas’s initials are close to “E.T.” That let me do a clean substitution of “H.T” for “E.T” in the famous catchphrase.

Then I added “for bail money” at the very end, to make it clear why H.T. would be phoning home. My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear,” and that includes the logic of the joke.

In the original news item, “Henry Thomas” came at the beginning. But I used my Joke Maximizer #3–Backload the topic–when I moved the name toward the end of the topic sentence, where it could better remind the audience what “H.T.” stands for.

Joke About a Ouija Board

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

A New Jersey man broke a Guinness World Record for the largest Ouija board. When he heard about the board, Hunter Biden was like, “How much do they pay and can I be on it?

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because “Guinness World Record” and “Ouija board” each seemed to have many associations that might spark a punch line.

At the time, a bigger news story involved Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Hunter got paid a lot of money to serve as a board member for a Ukrainian gas company, even though his qualifications were, apparently, minimal.

So when I read “Ouija board,” the association “board” reminded me of Hunter Biden and I decided to use my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. I wrote a punch line based on Hunter’s mercenary reaction to hearing about the board.

I also used my Joke Maximizer #4–Make everything clear–in two ways. I repeated the word “board,” saying it again right before “Hunter Biden.” That way the audience would be sure to have in their minds the word that the punch line depends on.

And I had Hunter ask two questions about the board, to be sure the audience would know that he’s referring to a corporate board. If the punch line had ended with only one question from Hunter–“Can I be on it?”–the audience might have thought he wanted to physically stand on the Ouija board. And, confused, they wouldn’t have laughed.

Joke About a 101-Year-Old Greeter

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

A woman working as a greeter at the Texas State Fair is 101 years old. Isn’t that great? She’s so old, the Democrats just invited her to run for president.

How I wrote it:

The news item attracted my attention because it involves old age, which has lots of associations that can be used to create a joke.

The most obvious handle in the topic is “101 years old,” which has the association “really old person.” Another possible handle is “Texas State Fair,” which doesn’t have many associations for me other than maybe “weird fried food.”

So I could have linked the associations “really old person” and “weird fried food” to come up with some laugh trigger like “deep-fried Centrum Silver.” But instead I opened up the joke by turning to Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture.

To do that, I tried to think of something in pop culture suggested by “really old person.” Bernie Sanders had just had a heart attack, which gave me the idea of basing a punch line on the fact that the three leading Democratic candidates for president are 70 or older.

I didn’t strictly need the sentence “Isn’t that great?” But I thought it helped the joke by misleading the audience into expecting that the joke would end on a positive aspect of old age instead of a negative.

This is a political joke, which can be tricky. But I thought a mass audience might enjoy it because the punch line is based on a recognized fact, not an opinion. And I make plenty of jokes about the Republicans, too.

Joke About Expensive Beer

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

A vendor was arrested at Sunday’s Miami Dolphins game after he charged a fan $724 for two beers. That’s outrageous. $724 is the price for three beers.

How I wrote it:

I gravitated toward this news item because it has two handles–“$724” and “two beers”–that seemed to have a lot of associations that could be used to create a punch line.

Also, I thought my audience would appreciate a joke about how expensive food is at a pro football stadium.

I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. The topic handle “two beers” has as one association “three beers.” My punch line links “three beers” to the other topic handle, “$724,” by stating that $724 is the price for three beers.

The idea of the punch line is obviously that stadium food is really expensive, an idea that most people would agree with. That makes the punch line “true,” which is an important characteristic of any good punch line.

Once I had my punch line, I added the angle “That’s outrageous.” By doing so I mislead the audience about where the joke is going, maximizing the surprise, and funniness, of the punch line.

By contrast, here’s a different angle/punch line combination that also states that stadium food is really expensive but is so on-the-nose that it isn’t funny: “That fan is lucky he wasn’t charged $7,024 for two beers.”

The final version of my joke also takes advantage of my Joke Maximizer #8: Wildly exaggerate. $724 is a ridiculously high price to charge for three beers, even at a sports stadium.