Category Archives: Joke Writing Workshop

Four-time Emmy winner Joe Toplyn shows how the writing techniques in his book apply to some jokes about current events.

Joke About Statehood for Washington DC

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The joke:

Today the House voted to grant statehood to Washington DC. They also picked a Washington DC state bird. It has a blue left wing, a red right wing, and it just flies around in circles.

How I wrote it:

I gravitated to this news item because the handle “Washington DC” promised me the opportunity to make fun of politicians, which I and many others enjoy. Plus the other handle, “statehood,” has lots of associations that can be used to write punch lines.

For my first attempt I used my Punch Line Maker #3, asking the question, “What would be the state bird of Washington DC?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed names of birds that I could link to an association of Washington DC like “do-nothing politicians” or “crooked windbags.”

To help myself brainstorm, I did what I often do in these situations and consulted lists online, in this case lists of birds. But other than hacky jokes like “yellow-bellied booby,” I couldn’t come up with any names I could use to link birds and politicians.

So next I tried to think of names of state flowers that I could link to some mocking association of politicians, or the name of a state food. But I had no luck.

Finally I considered other characteristics of a bird that I could link to politicians. I had the elements of my punch line once I realized that birds and politicians could be linked via the associations “wings,” “red and blue,” and “go around in circles.”

My punch line has three elements because I employed my Joke Maximizer #10–Use the Rule of Three.

Joke About a Bear Attack

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The joke:

A woman in California was attacked by a bear but fought it off with her laptop computer. She said the bear ran away terrified when she showed it President Trump’s Twitter feed.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because it’s easy to understand and has a couple of promising handles.

To write the joke, I used my Punch Line Maker #3, asking this question about the topic: “How did she use her laptop computer to fight off the bear?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed associations of the handle “laptop computer,” one of which is “things on a computer.” That has the sub-association “scary things on a computer,” one of which I thought my audience would agree is President Trump’s Twitter feed. That sub-association was surprising and funny enough that I made it my punch line.

To minimize the chance that I’d divide my audience, I left it vague why most people would think that President Trump’s tweets are scary.  I just assumed that most people would accept that there’s something terrifying about them.

I left out of the topic the fact that the woman actually hit the bear with her laptop. “Fought it off” allows my topic to be true while also being logically consistent with my punch line.

I included the word “terrified” in the angle, instead of just writing something like, “She said the bear ran away when she showed it President Trump’s Twitter feed.” My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear,” and that joke wouldn’t clearly state why the tweets made the bear run away.

Joke About Coronavirus TV Shows

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The joke:

The governor of California said TV production can start up again with proper safety measures. So along with “The Masked Singer” you’ll see “The Masked Bachelor,” “The Walking and Hand-Washing Dead,” and “Last Man Standing Six Feet Away.”

How I wrote it:

This news item drew my attention because it has two handles with lots of associations, “TV” and “safety measures” (with the coronavirus part understood).

“TV” in particular has so many associations that I thought I could use my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–to write a joke with multiple laugh triggers.

The most promising associations of “TV” would be the names of TV shows, so I went online and consulted a list of currently popular TV shows. I wanted to use popular shows so it would be immediately clear to the audience what shows I was referring to.

The other topic handle, “(coronavirus) safety measures,” has associations like “face mask,” “wash hands,” and “keep six feet away.”

To get my three laugh triggers, I just grafted the safety measures onto the names of TV shows with which they seemed to smoothly fit: “The Bachelor,” “The Walking Dead,” and “Last Man Standing.”

I used “The Masked Bachelor” as the first laugh trigger because it’s the least surprising, so putting it first lets the joke build in surprise, and funniness, to the end.

With illustrations, and a half-dozen or so additional fake TV shows, “Coronavirus TV Shows” could have been an art card desk piece on a late-night TV show. For example, a fake print ad for “The Walking and Hand-Washing Dead” might depict a zombie lathering up her hands at a sink, her disemboweled victim at her feet.

Joke About a Ring in Green Beans

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The joke:

An Australian woman found a gold ring in a package of green beans. “I thought he’d never ask,” said the woman, the future Mrs. Jolly Green Giant.

How I wrote it:

This is the first line of the story I saw on the UPI website: “A gold ring found in a package of beans was returned to its grocery store worker owner after taking a journey of nearly 125 miles.”

I thought I could turn this “Odd News” story into a joke because it has some obvious handles, maybe too many. To keep the joke short and clear, I edited the topic down to what you see.

One handle seemed to be “gold ring.” But what got my attention even more was the idea of finding a gold ring in an unexpected place. And I associated that idea with stories I had read of men proposing to women with rings hidden in food items, glasses of champagne, and so on.

But who would propose by hiding a ring in a package of green beans? The answer I chose is an association of “package of green beans,” namely the mascot of the Green Giant vegetable company. So the Jolly Green Giant became the basis of my punch line.

But adding something like this to the topic would have resulted in a joke that was too on-the-nose: “Apparently she had just been proposed to by the Jolly Green Giant.”

To make the joke less direct and more surprising, I conveyed the information that somebody had asked her an important question using the subtler line “I thought he’d never ask.”

And I supplied the remaining key information–what the question had been and who had asked it‑‑with the economical phrase “the future Mrs. Jolly Green Giant.”

Joke About That Ozarks Pool Party

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The joke:

Missouri health officials told the people at that crowded Ozarks pool party to self-quarantine for 14 days. Partiers responded by socially isolating the middle finger of one hand from their other fingers.

How I wrote it:

This news story was covered widely so I thought it would be a good topic for a joke.

Often people don’t like to be told what to do, so I thought I’d try to write a joke using my Punch Line Maker #3, asking this question about the topic: “How did those partiers respond to those health officials?

I answered that question using associations of the topic. One handle of the topic is the partiers, who I associated with concepts like “defiant ” and “contemptuous.”

Another topic handle, “self-quarantine,” has associations like “social distancing” and “isolation.”

To create a punch line, one often finds a verbal link between two topic associations and bases a punch line on that verbal link. But in this case I found a link between the associations that’s a combination of verbal and visual: I formed a mental image of a defiant, contemptuous person giving someone the finger and realized that the finger, stuck up there all by itself, was isolated from its neighboring fingers.

So I described that mental image using language that called to mind the self-quarantine mentioned in the topic, thereby creating the surprising link expressed by my punch line.

The news story usually referred to the “Lake of the Ozarks” pool party but I changed that to just “Ozarks” because it was shorter while also being clear and still technically true.

Joke About Hertz Going Bankrupt

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The joke:

As a result of too much debt and the coronavirus, Hertz filed for bankruptcy. Plus Hertz officials owe an extra billion dollars because they didn’t return the company with a full tank of gas.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this business story because the big news outlets were covering it, which indicated that a mass audience would probably be interested in a joke on the topic.

To create the joke, I started with my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One handle of the topic, “Hertz,” has associations like “make a reservation,” “return with a full tank,” and “decline the insurance.”

Another handle of the topic, “bankruptcy,” has associations like “Chapter 11,” “owe money,” and “falling sales.”

After mentally trying out many possible combinations of associations, I decided that the funniest punch line would link “owe money” and “return with a full tank.”

To make that punch line work logically, I had to figure out who would owe the money for not returning the company with a full tank. The company couldn’t logically owe the money to itself, so the angle I wrote said that unspecified “Hertz officials” owed it.

I set the money they owed for the gas at a billion dollars, in line with my Joke Maximizer #8: Wildly exaggerate. A tank of gas doesn’t cost anywhere near that much, even at rental car company prices.

And I mentioned “too much debt” in the topic, to more smoothly connect “bankruptcy” in the topic to the idea of owing lots of money in the angle and punch line.

Joke About a Gym on Lockdown

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The joke:

A Pennsylvania gym reopened during the state’s lockdown and received four citations. Actually the gym received a high-intensity set of two citations, then had a one-minute cool down, then received another set of two citations.

How I wrote it:

This news item drew my attention because it’s about a huge story, the coronavirus pandemic, but only incidentally. It also has a handle, “gym,” with a lot of associations that might be used to create a punch line.

For a second topic handle, “citations” didn’t seem promising because it doesn’t call to mind any strong associations. So I considered “four” for a handle, and quickly realized that I could link it to “gym” by treating it as a number in a workout routine.

But I faced a wording challenge because in a gym you would perform four reps, say, of an exercise; you wouldn’t receive them. And the topic says that the gym received four citations.

I dealt with that challenge by using my Joke Maximizer #6–Make the punch line parallel–and repeating the word “received” that appears in the topic.

But that meant I had to carefully word the rest of the joke so it would be clear that I was referring to a workout routine. For clarity, I repeated the word “gym” at the start of my angle. I also added gym jargon like “high-intensity” and “cool down” that I harvested from Google. Those added details also exploited my Joke Maximizer #9: Get specific.

Listing all those details of the citation workout routine does telegraph the punch line a little bit, which I normally try to avoid. But I thought the details were necessary to make the joke completely clear.

Joke About Concrete Made With Urine

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The joke:

The European Space Agency says that to make concrete on the Moon, one useful ingredient could be human urine. They’re calling the project “One giant leak for mankind.”

How I wrote it:

This was one of those news items that makes you think, “There has to be a joke in there somewhere.” The item has several topic handles, like “concrete” and “urine,” with multiple associations that might be used to create a punch line.

But it took me a few tries to find an approach that worked well. First I used my Punch Line Maker #3 and asked the question “What might you make out of concrete that smells like urine?” Maybe a lunar base that smells like a New York City subway station?

I also asked the question “And what might they make on the Moon out of human excrement?” But that didn’t get me anywhere either.

Then I moved away from “concrete” and focused on the topic handles “Moon” and “urine.” I thought I might link the two by changing the well-known tagline for the movie “Alien” into something like, “In space, no one can smell your urine.”

Thinking of taglines associated with space must have reminded me of Neil Armstrong’s famous words as he first set foot on the Moon, which ended “One giant leap for mankind.” And I realized I could use wordplay, and my Punch Line Maker #1, to link that quotation to an association of “urine”–“leak”–and create my punch line.

So keep trying possible topic handles and Punch Line Makers until you find a combination that unlocks a solid punch line.

Joke About Madonna and the Coronavirus

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The joke:

Singer Madonna revealed that she has coronavirus antibodies. She says she has no idea how she caught the coronavirus, and neither does her latest lover, a Chinese horseshoe bat.

How I wrote it:

When I read that Madonna had said something about having a disease I immediately thought about her having contracted it by having sex with somebody. That’s because I’ve been writing Madonna-is-promiscuous jokes since well before she published her coffee-table book “Sex” in 1992.

So I gravitated toward my Punch Line Maker #3, asking myself this question: “How did Madonna get the coronavirus from sex?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed associations of the topic handle “coronavirus” and arrived at “it came from a bat.” I thought that association provided a sufficiently surprising answer to my question so I made it the basis of my punch line.

But this version of the joke would have been too on-the-nose: “Singer Madonna revealed that she has coronavirus antibodies. She says she got them by having sex with a bat.” To boost the funniness of the punch line, I added an angle implying that the source of Madonna’s infection is a complete mystery. That way when the punch line reveals an obvious source the surprise is heightened.

In editing my laugh trigger, I used my Joke Maximizer #9: Get specific. I researched the specific type of bat that has been found to carry the coronavirus and used that name instead of the generic “bat.”

Adding “Chinese horseshoe” to “bat” makes the joke clearer too, because “bat” could also refer to a baseball bat.

Joke About Ruth’s Chris Steak House

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The joke:

Ruth’s Chris Steak House will return the $20 million small-business loan it received from the government. When asked for comment, steak experts said, “Well done.”

How I wrote it:

To write this joke I used my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–but in an unconventional way.

The conventional way is to start by identifying two words or short phrases in the topic that stand out and could serve as the handles for creating the punch line. One obvious handle is “Ruth’s Chris Steak House.”

The second topic handle could be “loan,” “small business,” or “$20 million.” But as I thought more about the topic, and about what the restaurant chain had done, phrases like “good job” and “nice work” popped into my head.

Then I realized that “Ruth’s Chris Steak House” has the association “steak,” which has the sub-association “well done.” And I could create a punch line by linking “well done” with the idea that the restaurant chain had done a good thing.

This joke shows that a topic handle doesn’t have to be a word or phrase in the topic; it could also be something that stands out about the topic as a whole.

I considered omitting an angle and just going right from the topic sentence to “well done.” But I decided that the wordplay would be clearer, and the joke funnier, if I included an angle that repeats the word “steak” from the topic without telegraphing the punch line.