Category Archives: Joke Writing Workshop

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

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.”

Joke About Jussie Smollett

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The joke:

Jussie Smollett did not win Best Supporting Actor at the NAACP Image Awards. On the plus side, the story about his attack did win an Imaginary Award.

How I wrote it:

I picked this topic to write a joke about because the mass media are still covering the Jussie Smollett controversy enthusiastically. That’s a good indication that a mass audience would enjoy a joke on the topic; if a topic is uninteresting, people are less likely to pay attention to a joke about it and therefore less likely to laugh.

Once I had the topic, I identified two handles in it: “Jussie Smollett” and “NAACP.” Interesting associations of Jussie Smollett that I thought most people would agree with were things like “hoax” and “scam.”

So I wanted to use Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–by coming up with an alternate meaning for the initials NAACP that says “hoax.” That way I could finish the joke something like this: “But he did win a big award from that other NAACP, the [INSERT HOAXY MEANING HERE].” But after thinking about it for a minute or so I couldn’t come up with a good way to fill in the blank.

Then I turned my attention to a different topic handle, “Image Awards.” It occurred to me that “image” sounds kind of like “imaginary,” which is associated with “hoax.” That insight allowed me to use Punch Line Maker #4–“Find a play on words in the topic”–to link Jussie Smollett to the Image Awards in a surprising way and, I hoped, get a laugh.

Joke About Deadly Soft Drinks

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The joke:

A new study says drinking sugar-sweetened beverages increases the risk of death. That’s why they’re renaming those soft drinks Coca-Coma, Mountain Doom, and Dr. Reaper.

How I wrote it:

That news item caught my eye because it has two handles with lots of associations, “sugar-sweetened beverages” and “death.”

To write the rest of the joke I used my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

I started by brainstorming a list of associations for “sugar-sweetened beverages.” What I mean is, in pre-internet days I would have brainstormed those associations. Instead, what I actually did was google “soft drink brands” and run my eyes down the list.

As I did, I simultaneously ran through a mental list of words associated with the other topic handle, “death.” I cross-referenced both lists until I found a pair of associations that I could link with wordplay: “Dr. Pepper” and “Reaper.” Then I substituted “Reaper” for “Pepper” to get one of my laugh triggers.

Both “soft drinks” and “death” are so rich in associations that I felt I could make two more wordplay linkages; I wanted a total of three–no more, no less–because my Joke Maximizer #10 says to “Use the Rule of Three.” And I was able to link “Coca-Cola” to “coma” and “Mountain Dew” to “doom” to fill out my punch line.

Finally, I added the angle “That’s why they’re renaming those soft drinks…” to clearly and logically connect the topic sentence to my punch line.

Seventeenth-century poet and playwright John Dryden called the pun the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” But in the context of a well-structured joke, wordplay like a pun can work as well as any laugh trigger.

Joke About Pi Day

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The joke:
It’s March 14, Pi Day. To celebrate, a USC athletic coach took a bribe of 3.14 million dollars.

How I wrote it:
The topic of Pi Day caught my eye because it promised to be a fertile topic for joke writing. That’s because pi, the number 3.14…, has a lot of associations that can be used to generate punch lines.

But the topic of Pi Day has only one obvious handle–pi–so I turned to Punch Line Maker #2 for a second handle. That’s the technique where you link the topic to pop culture.

One of the big news stories was the college admissions bribery scandal, and USC was at the center of that, so I decided to write a punch line about a USC coach taking a bribe.

My next task was to somehow link the handle “USC bribe” to “pi.”  Both of those handles are associated with numbers, so my laugh trigger became “a bribe of 3.14 million dollars.”

I finished the joke by adding the angle “to celebrate,” which tends to be a useful angle for jokes about holidays.

$3.14 million was a good size for the bribe in my joke. It’s much bigger than the alleged USC bribes apparently were, and Joke Maximizer #8 advises, “Wildly exaggerate.” But it’s not so big that it’s distractingly huge, the way $3.14 billion would have been.