Category Archives: Joke Writing Workshop

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

Joke About Dunkin’ Donuts

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The joke:

In NJ, some Dunkin’ Donuts customers may have been exposed to hepatitis A. It’s all part of the company’s new slogan, “America Runs a Fever on Dunkin’.”

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because both of its handles, “Dunkin’ Donuts” and “hepatitis A,” seemed to have a lot of associations. That meant it should be relatively easy to find a surprising link between two associations from which I could construct a punch line. It turned out to be harder than I expected.

First I thought of all the types of donuts and tried to blend a donut name with “hepatitis A” or with one of its associations, like “vaccine.”

Then I thought about what donut-related thing the “A” in “hepatitis A” might stand for. Could a Dunkin’ Donuts customer also get hepatitis C, the chocolate kind of hepatitis?

Finally, to help in brainstorming, I researched hepatitis A online. Among the possible symptoms is “fever.” The phrase “run a fever” popped into my head. Wasn’t “run” also a word in Dunkin’ Donuts’ slogan?

I confirmed that the company’s real slogan is “America Runs on Dunkin’.” Adding “a fever” to the middle of that phrase gave me the surprising linkage of associations for my punch line.

The last step was to add the angle “It’s all part of the company’s new slogan,” which smoothly provides a logical, if crazy, reason why the company would expose its customers to a virus.

Joke About the Godzilla Movie

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The joke:

Now in theaters, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” It’s very exciting. Mothra, Rodan, and the three-headed King Ghidorah decide the only way to stop Godzilla is to impeach him.

How I wrote it:

Newly released movies tend to make good joke topics, especially on slow news days. People are usually interested in movies and their titles often lend themselves to surprising interpretations.

The new Godzilla movie seemed especially promising because Godzilla is a huge monster who causes a lot of chaos and conflict and I thought people would associate it with President Trump. That is, the topic led me quickly to my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture.

But this wording of the joke, for example, would have been way too direct: “Now in theaters, ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters.’ In this movie, Godzilla is scarier than ever. He behaves like Trump.” My Joke Maximizer #11 is “Don’t be too on-the-nose,” because on-the-nose jokes aren’t as surprising and therefore aren’t as funny.

So I decided not to mention Trump explicitly in the punch line. I also decided not to rely on the associations “Godzilla” = “monster” = “Trump,” because I thought that equation might split my audience unnecessarily.

Instead I based the punch line on how the monster Godzilla is attacked by his monster adversaries. The surprise is that they use the same technique that some of Trump’s adversaries are considering using on him.

The result is a political joke that’s unlikely to divide a mass audience because it’s based on a fact‑‑impeachment talk‑‑instead of an opinion that may not be universally held.

Joke About Trump and Wine Day

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The joke:

Today is National Wine Day. To mark the occasion, congressional Democrats sent over to President Trump a Subpoena Grigio.

How I wrote it:

The topic caught my eye because the handle “wine” has a lot of associations that can be used to create punch lines.

The other possible handle in the topic is something like “holiday.” But my instincts told me that it might be more fun to link the topic to pop culture, the technique that I call Punch Line Maker #2. Because President Trump seems to dominate the news, I tried to write a political joke.

The handle “wine” is associated with all the various types of wines. I ran through the types in my head and landed on “pinot grigio.” The Democrats have been issuing a lot of subpoenas to the Trump administration, so I decided to construct a wordplay punch line connecting “subpoena” and “pinot grigio.”

How to make the joke clear in print form was little tricky. “Subpinot grigio” and “subpoenot grigio” seemed potentially confusing to readers. But I thought “subpoena grigio” would work well because “grigio” makes the connection to wine obvious all by itself without having to explicitly include any part of “pinot.”

I try to write political jokes that are unlikely to split a mass audience, like this joke. Whatever you think of the Democrats and their subpoenas, everybody can agree that they’ve been issuing a lot of them, of all different types.

Joke About Goodwill’s Hand Grenade

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The joke:

In Florida yesterday, workers at a Goodwill store emptied a donation bin and found a hand grenade. That’s weird. Wouldn’t you donate a hand grenade to The Salvation Army?

How I wrote it:

To construct the punch line I used my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

The first handle of the topic is “Goodwill store,” which is associated with its rival, “The Salvation Army.” The second handle is “hand grenade,” which is associated with “army.” The punch line uses the two different meanings of “army” to link the two topic handles in a surprising way.

I knew that “The Salvation Army” had to come at the end of the joke because my Joke Maximizer #2 is “End on the laugh trigger.” But to set up that laugh trigger properly I needed an angle to smoothly connect it to the topic.

My first attempt at an angle resulted in this: “Apparently competition is really heating up with The Salvation Army.” But any ruthless store competing with another store might conceivably leave a hand grenade at the rival store. So stating that The Salvation Army did so wouldn’t be very surprising. I felt that a bigger surprise for the audience would arise from their making the connection between “army” and “hand grenade.”

So I came up with a more effective angle that eliminates the competition aspect entirely. The angle “That’s weird. Wouldn’t you donate a hand grenade to…” directs the audience’s undivided attention to the wordplay in “The Salvation Army” and gets a bigger laugh.

Joke About Trump and Mother’s Day

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The joke:

It’s Mother’s Day. But President Trump told Melania he couldn’t give her a card because the IRS is auditing it.

How I wrote it:

The topic of Mother’s Day drew my focus because holidays tend to have lots of associations that can be used to create punch lines.

To write this joke I used my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. The handle “Mother’s Day” is associated with, among other things, “giving a greeting card,” which has the sub-association of “giving a document.”

So I turned to pop culture and brainstormed situations where a celebrity is involved in giving a document. President Trump is much in the news for refusing to hand over his tax returns to Congress, so I decided to base my punch line on that.

But writing the joke like this wouldn’t have made sense: “It’s Mother’s Day. But President Trump is refusing to hand over his Mother’s Day card to Congress.” Trump would give his Mother’s Day card to Melania, not to Congress. And the logic of the joke requires Trump to not give Melania the card.

So I added a reason, based on Trump’s statements about his tax returns, why he might not give Melania a card, arriving at the final version: “But President Trump told Melania he couldn’t give her a card because the IRS is auditing it.”

My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear.” This joke shows how to put that into practice as you compose the wording of your angle and punch line.

Joke About Woody Allen’s Memoir

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The joke:

A New York Times report says that multiple publishers rejected Woody Allen’s memoir. Woody Allen defended the book, calling it “a touching children’s story.”

How I wrote it:

I went with my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic. This punch line uses wordplay to link an association of “Woody Allen”–child molestation–with a sub-association of “memoir”–children’s story.

A few readers expressed reservations about the joke, feeling that it’s unfair. Here’s why I think the joke is fair and therefore okay to laugh at:

The punch line is true. By “true,” I don’t mean factually, provably true; the punch line just has to be accepted as true by the audience for them to laugh.

I judged that most of my readers would accept as true that Woody Allen molested a child because most people in the business and entertainment worlds seem to accept it.

The news article that I based the joke on (link) details how Allen’s career has cratered as a result of the allegations. Even actors like Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, and Michael Caine have said that they regret having worked with him.

The joke “punches up.” Allen has been a world-famous celebrity for decades and he’s won four Oscars. Until recently he occupied a position of considerable power compared to almost everyone. That means he’s fair game.

The target of the joke is not a victim of circumstance. Unlike some celebrities, Allen doesn’t suffer openly from mental or physical health problems or some other condition that he can’t help. If he did, he’d be off-limits for jokes. Instead, Allen allegedly made a deliberate choice to do something very bad. So again, he’s fair game.

Humor is subjective, of course, and not everybody will enjoy any given joke. But this joke got more than three times the favorable response that my jokes usually get on Twitter and Facebook. So apparently most people agreed that it’s fair.

Joke About Russia and N. Korea

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The joke:

For the first time ever, Vladimir Putin will be meeting Kim Jong Un. It’s pretty cool. They’re meeting at a fancy hotel so the reservation will read “Putin Un, the Ritz.”

How I wrote it:

I gravitated toward this news item because the handles “Vladimir Putin” and “Kim Jong Un” both have a good number of associations that might be used to devise a punch line. Plus both of the names seem to lend themselves to wordplay.

I remembered this hilarious wordplay joke that Conan O’Brien once delivered in a monologue: “It’s been reported that in high school, Kim Jong Un starred in a production of the musical ‘Grease.’ That’s also where Kim met his first wife, Olivia Newton Jong.” So I first considered writing my own Kim Jong Un wordplay joke.

But then I noticed that “Putin” sounds like “puttin’,” which I associated with the song title “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Then I got lucky, realizing that “on” sounds like “Un.”

Linking those two wordplays into a surprising new song title gave me my punch line, thanks to Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

My last task was to construct an angle that logically connects the topic to “Putin Un the Ritz.” The Ritz is a fancy hotel, and these summits often seem to take place at fancy hotels, so claiming that the punch line is a reservation for the summit seemed to do the job.

Joke About a Spaceplane

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The joke:

Now there’s a ‘spaceplane’ that flies 25 times faster than the speed of sound. Fantastic! So if a baby is crying in the seat behind you, you won’t be able to hear it.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because both of its handles–“spaceplane” and “flies 25 times faster than the speed of sound”–seemed to have lots of associations that could be linked to create punch lines.

But I didn’t use Punch Line Maker #1, “Link two associations of the topic.” Instead, the vivid image that the topic called to mind pointed me to Punch Line Maker #5–Visualize the topic.

I started by visualizing the interior of a futuristic spaceplane flying 25 times faster than the speed of sound: passengers sleeping, passengers reading, flight attendants walking the aisles, a crying baby…

Then I exaggerated an aspect of that mental picture. Because crying babies make sounds, I imagined that the plane was flying so much faster than the speed of sound that it left behind the noise of that baby I envisioned crying in a neighboring seat. And I had the idea for my punch line.

My last step was to add an angle to guide the audience smoothly from the topic to the punch line. “Fantastic!” leads the audience to expect some benefit of flying in that super-fast plane.

And “So if a baby is crying in the seat behind you” makes the logic of the joke clear; if the crying baby were sitting in front of you instead, you’d be able to hear it. As my Joke Maximizer #4 recommends, “Make everything clear.”

Joke About the Bezos Divorce

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The joke:

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has finalized his divorce. And this is interesting…Amazon says that customers who liked the Bezos divorce also liked Nicolas Cage’s divorce.

How I wrote it:

The original news item attracted my attention because it had several possible handles with lots of associations, like “Amazon,” “divorce,” “$150 billion,” and “the richest person in the world.”

After I settled on “Amazon” and “divorce” as the handles to base a punch line on, I trimmed away all excess verbiage in the news item to get my topic sentence; that’s because my Joke Maximizer #1 is “Shorten as much as possible.”

The handle “Amazon” is associated with, among many other things, its feature “Customers who bought this item also bought…”

The handle “divorce” is associated with other well-known people who got divorced recently, one of whom is Nicolas Cage (as I was reminded when I googled recent celebrity divorces).

To get my punch line, I blended “Customers who bought this item also bought…” with “Nicolas Cage’s divorce,” modifying as few words as possible so the association with Amazon’s recommendation feature would be clear.

Then I reinforced that association by adding the angle “And this is interesting…Amazon says that…”

I was pleased that “Nicolas Cage,” besides being an amusingly offbeat celebrity, also happens to have two “K” sounds in his name. That let me employ my Joke Maximizer #7, which is “Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance.”