The joke:
Forty-three camels have been disqualified from a popular camel beauty contest in Saudi Arabia for getting Botox injections and other cosmetic enhancements. The news about the camel beauty contest was announced by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Stereotypes.
How I wrote it:
This news item caught my attention because it’s so odd. Plus my Punch Line Maker #3–Ask a question about the topic–could take the joke in many directions. Why is there a camel beauty contest? What do the judges look for? What does the winner get?
But then I considered my seldom-used Punch Line Maker #6–State the obvious about the topic. The news item suggests the obvious question, “Doesn’t a camel beauty contest fit everybody’s stereotypical image of Saudi Arabia?” So in my punch line I could state the obvious answer to that question: “Yes.”
But my Joke Maximizer #11 is “Don’t be too on-the-nose.” So I didn’t want a punch line that’s too direct, something like “The good news is that the contest itself won a prize: Biggest Saudi Arabian Stereotype.”
Instead I stated the idea of stereotype more indirectly. I had the news announced by an official whose title includes that word. Maybe I got that idea from jokes of the form “You can read all about it in the magazine ‘Stereotypes Weekly.'”
I liked the dignity of the title “Minister.” But before using it I made sure that Saudi Arabia actually has Ministers in its government. If the lead-up to the laugh trigger sounds more credible, the laugh trigger will be more surprising.
I wanted to include the details about the Botox and so on in the topic because I thought the audience would want to know why the camels had been disqualified. But that made the topic sentence pretty long. So I repeated “camel beauty contest” in the angle, to make sure the audience would understand the laugh trigger “Stereotypes.”