Category Archives: Joke Writing Workshop

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

Joke About Biden’s Spending Plan

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The joke:

President Biden is building support for his $4 trillion spending plan. For example, he’s telling Americans that he’ll charge it to a credit card and share the 4 trillion reward miles.

How I wrote it:

I chose to write a joke about this topic because Biden’s spending plans were the subject of a lot of news coverage. But deciding how to phrase the topic took some thinking.

The original news item had a headline like “Biden turns to Georgia to begin pitch for huge spending plan.” On that news item I intended to use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

One topic handle, “huge spending plan,” I associated with “charge it to credit card,” which I associated with “reward miles.”

Another topic handle, “turns to Georgia,” I associated with “flies to Georgia,” which I associated with “get free plane ticket using reward miles.”

So I tried linking the association “reward miles” to the association “get free plane ticket using reward miles” with a punch line something like “But at least he didn’t spend more money to fly to Georgia because he used a free plane ticket that he got with all the reward miles he earned by charging the spending plan to his credit card.” Which, of course, is way too long and complicated.

Plus that punch line isn’t logical: With Air Force One at his disposal, why would Biden need a free plane ticket?

But I did like the idea of a punch line ending with “4 trillion reward miles.” So I simplified the topic to what you see in the finished joke, adding the dollar amount of the spending plan.

Then I wrote an angle that smoothly connects the topic to the punch line using the idea that Biden is building support by sharing all those reward miles.

Joke About Earth Day

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The joke:

It’s Earth Day 2021, and President Biden is taking deforestation very seriously. This morning he looked in the mirror and made a solemn pledge to plant 100 new hair plugs.

How I wrote it:

I chose Earth Day as a joke topic because holidays tend to have a lot of associations that can be used to assemble a punch line.

To help in brainstorming associations, I Googled “how to celebrate Earth Day.” I planned to use my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. So I asked myself whether one of the associations of the topic handle “Earth Day” suggested a celebrity in some unexpected way.

“Picking up trash” didn’t suggest anybody. For example, I couldn’t think of a celebrity who had started dating anybody who might be described as “trash.”

“Reducing use of plastic” suggested some celebrity refraining from having more cosmetic surgery. But I couldn’t think of the right celebrity; singer Cher seemed overused as a plastic surgery punch line.

Then I saw Earth Day references to deforestation and planting trees. I associated those in an unexpected way with thinning hair and hair plugs, which I then linked to President Biden.

Although I’ve seen hundreds of jokes about Trump’s hair, I can’t remember seeing any about Biden’s hair. So I did another Google search and confirmed that Biden had, in fact, had hair plugs implanted. I wanted to be sure that most of my audience would accept that association as true.

Now that I had a punch line about Biden planting new hair plugs, I edited my topic and my angle to guide my audience smoothly toward it. I added “President Biden” and “deforestation” to the topic.

I also added “This morning he looked in the mirror” to the angle, to make it clear that Biden pledged to plant the hair plugs in his own scalp and not in somebody else’s.

Joke About Disney’s New Dress Code

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The joke:

This week Disney announced that its theme park employees will have a more flexible dress code. And it’s about time. Finally, animation fans can go Donald Duck-style: no pants.

How I wrote it:

I gravitate toward news stories about Disney for joke writing because the topic has so many well-known associations that can be used to create a punch line.

Here I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. The first topic handle, “Disney,” is associated with all the Disney characters. The other topic handle, “more flexible dress code,” is associated with unusual wardrobe choices.

To link the two associations, I brainstormed Disney characters who have made unusual wardrobe choices. Donald Duck, who wears no pants, seemed funny. So I decided to base my punch line on him and end the joke with “Donald Duck-style: no pants.”

But following the topic with something like this seemed a little weak: “Is that a good idea? What if animation fans want to go Donald Duck-style: no pants?”

Instead, I thought the joke would be stronger with an angle that leads the audience to expect that the new dress code will result in something good. That way the final image of human employees walking around pantsless would be more surprising, and therefore funnier. So I came up with the angle “And it’s about time. Finally…”

I ended the joke on “no pants” because my Joke Maximizer #2 advises, “End on the laugh trigger.” “Pants” is a funny word because of two characteristics: It’s short, with only one syllable. And it has two stop consonants, “P” and “T.” The humor potential of “pants” was undoubtedly a factor leading Dave Letterman to include it in the name of his production company, Worldwide Pants.

Joke About Vladimir Putin

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The joke:

Today Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing him to run for president two more times. The law also extended absentee voting: whoever votes against Putin goes mysteriously absent.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because I felt like, for a change, writing a joke about a politician who isn’t American. Plus this story made the national news in the U.S., so I thought my audience might have some interest in it.

First I distilled the news item into a topic sentence that contained only the elements I thought I’d need to write a joke. Some versions of the item had a headline like “Putin signs law that could keep him in Kremlin until 2036.” Other versions had a headline like “Putin signs law allowing him to run for two more terms as Russian President.” I adapted the latter headline into my topic sentence because it referred more directly to elections, and I sensed that I’d be writing a punch line about the election process.

Once I had a topic sentence, I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One topic handle, “run for president,” has the association “voting,” which has the sub-association “absentee voter.”

The other topic handle, “Vladimir Putin,” is associated in most people’s minds with “does terrible things to political opponents.” So I realized I could link the two topic handles with a punch line featuring some wordplay on “absentee voter.”

But working out the exact wording was a little tricky. I wanted to use my Joke Maximizer #6: Make the punch line parallel. But making the angle and punch line both refer to “absentee voter” would result in a punch line something like “whoever votes against Putin mysteriously becomes an absentee voter,” which doesn’t clearly communicate the idea that Putin is making them disappear. The wording that I settled on trades parallelism for clarity.

Joke About Marshmallow Peeps

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The joke:

It’s almost Easter, and for a lot of people that means Marshmallow Peeps. There are marshmallow bunnies, marshmallow chicks, and new this year for Covid–marshmallow bats.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about Easter because the holiday, two days away, was in a lot of people’s minds. Plus the topic of Easter is only relevant once a year, so I try to take advantage of it when I can.

To write this joke I used my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. I started by brainstorming associations of the topic handle “Easter,” landing on “Marshmallow Peeps.”

That candy has sub-associations which are the animal shapes it comes in, like bunny and chick. And those animal shapes called to mind something that is not mentioned in the topic but which is also associated with animals–the coronavirus.

So I created a punch line that links Easter with another cultural phenomenon, Covid-19, by means of a Peep shaped like an animal linked to the coronavirus–a bat.

To be sure the audience would quickly grasp the significance of the bat in the punch line, I made sure to also mention Covid.

I also made the punch line more effective with my Joke Maximizer #10: Use the Rule of Three; “marshmallow bats” is the third in a list of Peep varieties.

After I posted this joke online, somebody informed me that actual bat-shaped Peeps used to be available for purchase. Anybody in my audience who had known that probably would have found the punch line less surprising and, therefore, less funny.

If I had heard beforehand about the real bat Peeps I might have also used my Joke Maximizer #9–Get specific–and added to the surprise with a more detailed punch line like “marshmallow horseshoe bats.”

Joke About Free Doughnuts

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The joke:

Krispy Kreme will give you a free glazed doughnut every day this year if you’ve received a Covid-19 vaccination. It’s all part of their new Covid promotion: “Fattening the Curve.”

How I wrote it:

This news item drew my attention because it has two topic handles, “doughnut” and “Covid-19 vaccination,” with plenty of associations that I could feed into my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

Also, the news item gave me the opportunity to write a joke about a huge and ongoing news story–the pandemic–without highlighting any of its ugly details.

One of the associations of “doughnut” is “fattening.” One of the associations of “Covid-19 vaccination” is “flattening the curve.” To create the punch line, I linked those two associations by substituting “fattening” for “flattening,” taking advantage of the wordplay between the two words.

To make sure the audience immediately got the connection between “fattening the curve” and the doughnut promotion, I made sure to include details in the topic that emphasize how potentially fattening the promotion is, details like “glazed” and “every day this year.”

Some people don’t like puns and other wordplay. But wordplay can be funny as long as it’s part of a joke that’s well-constructed, like this one. I expand on that point in this article, “Why Do People Not Like Puns.”

I call the type of wordplay punch line in this joke a substitution punch line. If you’re teaching computers how to crack jokes, as I am, jokes with substitution punch lines are some of the low-hanging fruit.

For details on my computational humor invention, which centers on wordplay jokes, read my patent here.

Joke About a Sexual Consent App

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The joke:

Today an Australian police official suggested developing a phone app that would document sexual consent. He said it would be like the website “Go Fund Me” but with two different consonants.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because the two topic handles, “phone app” and “sexual consent,” promised to have enough associations for me to use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

I thought I might link two associations using wordplay, so I brainstormed phone apps to see if a word or syllable in one of their names could be replaced with a word related to “sexual consent.”

I started with the word that’s probably most commonly associated with sex, namely the F-word. Then, for an association of “phone apps,” I thought of the website “Go Fund Me,” which includes a word that half-overlaps the F-word.

But my punch line couldn’t be something as on-the-nose as “He’s calling the app Go [F-word] Me.” That’s because I try to keep my jokes PG-13 rated, and that punch line wouldn’t qualify.

Another problem with that punch line is that I wasn’t sure the audience would connect it with “Go Fund Me.” So that punch line wouldn’t lead to that moment of sudden discovery that helps make a joke funny.

While I was thinking about how to solve those punch line problems, I remembered a (probably apocryphal) anecdote told about actor Jack Nicholson. Supposedly an attractive young woman walked up to Nicholson at a party and asked him if he wanted to dance. Nicholson replied, “Wrong verb.”

That anecdote gave me the idea to write a punch line in which the F-word isn’t stated but instead is just hinted at by a description of one of its features.

I also made sure that the audience would make the connection to “Go Fund Me” by mentioning that website in my angle.

Joke About the Bridgestone Tire Vaccine

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The joke:

Today the Bridgestone tire company said it will offer its employees $100 to get a Covid vaccine shot. Apparently some employees are worried that the puncture might give them a flat arm.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because both topic handles–“tire” and “vaccine”–seemed to have useful associations for joke writing.

But one of the first things I did was to reword the topic sentence to include the word “shot.” That’s because I was aiming to use my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic. And I thought I could link “tire” more easily with “shot” than with “vaccine,” because a shot requires a needle that can puncture a tire.

My first attempt at writing a punch line based on the idea of a shot puncturing ones arm arose from the hypothetical question “What else did the tire company offer its employees?”

That led to a punch line something like “They’re also offering a free rubber patch in case the puncture makes your arm leak.” But that seemed too long and complicated.

To simplify it, I dropped the idea of a patch and asked myself the question, “Why would you have to patch a puncture in a tire?” The answer, “because otherwise you’d get a flat tire,” gave me a simpler way to link “tire” and “shot”: a punch line ending on “flat arm.”

Finally I added an angle that logically ties the topic to that punch line by leading the audience to expect an explanation of why the company has to pay its employees to get the vaccine; the punch line provides the (silly) explanation.

Joke About Gov. Cuomo’s Powers

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The joke:

Today New York legislators decided to take away the pandemic emergency powers of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The weird part is, Gov. Cuomo suggested that they do it during a game of strip poker.

How I wrote it:

The original news item had a headline something like “New York lawmakers strip Gov. Cuomo of emergency powers.” The topic handle “strip” jumped out at me because I realized that I could link it to a vivid association of “Gov. Cuomo,” namely the allegation that he proposed a game of strip poker to a staffer.

That is, I spotted an opportunity to use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

The problem was that if I used “strip” in the topic of my joke, the audience might guess how the Gov. Cuomo joke was going to end. And my Joke Maximizer #5 is “Don’t telegraph the punch line.”

Plus basing a punch line on a word that a headline writer just conveniently happened to use felt to me like cheating.

So I substituted “take away” for “strip” in the topic of my joke. Luckily, visualizing the legislators taking something away from Cuomo also suggested a game of strip poker, with Cuomo handing over his powers instead of his undershirt. So I got to keep my strip poker punch line.

I wrote the angle to have Cuomo suggesting the game, instead of the legislators, because that’s what he allegedly did in real life. That way the internal logic of the joke would be clear.

And I added “The weird part is” to more smoothly and naturally bridge the topic and punch line.

Joke About Hillary Clinton’s Novel

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The joke:

Hillary Clinton is co-writing a mystery novel. She loves mysteries and this one sounds amazing. It’s called, “How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me?”

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because I hadn’t written a Hillary Clinton joke in a while. Plus the other topic handle, “mystery novel,” seemed to have a lot of associations that I might link her to. That is, I thought I could use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

Most associations that Clinton used to have–her pantsuits, her emails, her philandering husband–are now too stale to hang a joke on. But one association is still fresh, years after the presidential election: how she can’t understand why she lost to Trump. So I created a punch line that links that association to an association of “mystery novel,” namely “mystery.”

But writing the joke this way wouldn’t quite work: “Hillary Clinton is co-writing a mystery novel. It’s called, ‘How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me?'” The problem is that the title “How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me” describes a mystery but not the plot of a mystery novel.

To smooth out that bump, I wrote an angle that includes the word “mysteries,” to focus the audience on just the mystery aspect before they arrived at the punch line. But I also added “this one sounds amazing,” to subtly mislead the audience into thinking that I was still describing her novel.

This joke is an example of how to write a political joke that’s unlikely to divide a mass audience. Whether you’re a Clinton fan or not, you’d probably agree that she’s still wondering what went wrong in 2016.