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Joke About Covid-19 Escaping

Posted on May 31, 2021 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

Scientists now think that Covid-19 may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. As evidence, they point to a cell in the lab where there’s a blanket almost covering a dummy coronavirus head made of papier-mache and hair clippings.

How I wrote it:

I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. “Covid-19” was an obvious choice for one topic handle because it’s responsible for a lot of the topic’s newsworthiness.

But the choice of the second topic handle wasn’t so obvious. “China” was a possibility but, in connection with “Covid-19,” it doesn’t add much to the newsworthiness. A word that adds more is “escaped.” So I chose “escaped” as my second topic handle.

The verb “escaped” is an unusual choice because topic handles are almost always nouns or noun phrases. Still, the word seemed to have a lot of potentially useful associations, so I went with it.

Brainstorming associations of “escaped,” I visualized an escaping prison inmate placing a handmade dummy head of himself in his bed to fool the guards. Grafting a coronavirus into that scenario, I had my punch line.

To describe the escape scenario and make my punch line completely clear I needed a lot of words. But I wanted to adhere to my Joke Maximizer #5–“Don’t telegraph the punch line.” And the longer the punch line was, the more likely the audience would be to get ahead of it. If the audience predicts a punch line, they won’t be surprised by it and they won’t laugh.

I minimized the potential problem of telegraphing by moving the most revealing details of the image I was painting as close to the end of the joke as possible.

I also prolonged my misdirection of the audience by using the phrase “a cell in the lab,” which could also refer to a biological cell.

Posted in Joke Writing Workshop | Tags: coronavirus, Covid, Covid-19, escape, leak, Wuhan, Wuhan Institute of Virology | 4 Comments
« Joke About Amazon Buying MGM
Joke About Eating Cicadas »

4 thoughts on “Joke About Covid-19 Escaping”

  1. Gary says:
    June 25, 2021 at 10:19 am

    Thank you for explanation… but this one didn’t work for me. I didn’t even get the connection to a prison break until you explained it. You did put in “cell”, but that just confused me. The papier-mache also threw me off – I pictured a model of the coronavirus, the hair being the “crowns” sticking out of the virus that we’ve all seen on TV. I also didn’t know that people in prison built P-M heads and hair clippings to escape. Maybe being explicit about a “bed” and being more straightforward with the dummy they found would have helped.

    Either way though, it’s instructive, so thanks!

    Reply
    • Joe Toplyn says:
      June 26, 2021 at 8:23 am

      Thanks for reading it.

      Yes, deciding whether an audience will make the associations necessary to get a joke is a judgment call the writer makes. So all the writer can do is take a guess and then try out the joke.

      Reply
      • Gary says:
        June 27, 2021 at 2:14 pm

        That reminds me of what a speaking mentor once told me – How do you know what’s funny? The audience (I don’t mean me) will tell you. Thanks for putting your stuff out there. I just saw your book – I can’t wait to read it!

        Reply
        • Joe Toplyn says:
          June 28, 2021 at 8:23 am

          Thanks! My book covers all the techniques I mention in these Joke Writing Workshop posts, and much more.

          Reply

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