The joke:
Today is National Lipstick Day. So put on your favorite, sexiest color lipstick, pucker up, and then describe to people what it looks like under your face mask.
How I wrote it:
This news item caught my eye because a holiday can often be a useful handle for a joke. That’s because a holiday usually has many associations, including how people might celebrate it.
That line of thinking led me to my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. To find such a link, I started by visualizing an association of the topic handle “lipstick,” namely a woman applying lipstick.
That mental picture suggested an image of something else that people are doing to their mouths during this pandemic, namely covering them with face masks. That link became the basis of my punch line.
Next I needed an angle to guide the audience smoothly and logically from my topic to some punch line involving a face mask. I considered writing an angle about how people are carefully applying lipstick only to have it smeared by their face mask.
But instead I thought it would be funnier to make the angle about how no one can see what’s under your mask. That way I could summon up a sexy image in the angle and make the introduction of the unsexy face mask in the punch line even more surprising.
When I wrote the angle I also employed my Joke Maximizer #10–Use the Rule of Three; two unfunny activities are followed by the punch line activity of describing your lips.