The key to writing a successful joke is to make sure you understand how joke structure works.
PREMISE. First you need a setup. This is a topic that is what your joke is about. It could be about relationships or politics or or even an anecdote of something that happened to you. Relationships, travel experiences, work stories, daily annoyances are all good places to start. The premise of your joke can be found when you ask yourself what is weird or crazy or difficult or stupid about your topic. You went to the dentist last week. Great. What made your trip to the dentist last week so unusual?
Premises are very often amusing or funny but this isn’t the funny part of the joke. This is the original, truthful, honest or interesting idea you have. The premise is the first half of your joke, your setup – what you plan to explore. It is usually important to add your attitude or emotion about your premise straight into the setup. I hate going to the dentist but last week I actually kind of liked it.
PUNCHLINE. Once you have your premise or funny idea which is your setup ONLY, the next thing you need to have is a payoff – the punchline. Many comedians come to comedy open mics with just a premise. Wouldn’t it be crazy if an elephant met Bill Clinton? That is a funny idea – or weird at least. But until you add a punchline it’s just the premise and the idea it hasn’t been explored yet.
TOOLS FOR WRITING PUNCHLINES.
Some of the most classic punchline structures are as follows:
ACT OUT – this is where you perform your joke as if you’re a person in the story. In an act out you will usually become a different character, but you could even become yourself in the situation you are describing in your premise. It requires commitment usually, to make it work. Eddie Murphy is a master of act outs and characters in his jokes because of his specificity and commitment.
WORDPLAY – this is usually where you play with words or phrases using a double meaning or redefining the word from its expected use. Interest for example refers to money and love. How can you make a joke substituting one meaning for the other? Can you take the word out of its usual context? Does the word have more than one meaning? Is there a sound-alike? Exploit any ambiguity with the meaning of the word to make your punchline work. Steven Wright is known for his subtle, understated wordplay punchlines. One of his personal favourites, according to him. “I went to a place to eat. It said ‘breakfast at any time.’ So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.”
WORDPLAY:
Premise: I saw a sign that said “Fine for parking.”
Punchline: You know, I’m starting to think that sign doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.
MISDIRECT – this is where you set the audience up to assume you’re going to talk about one thing but then you actually you’re going to talk about an unexpected thing. Comedy can be more like magic than theatre, because it is mostly about the ways you will surprise your audience. Joan Rivers kills at this skill.
People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.
Joan Rivers
LISTS OF THREE – you establish a pattern, you repeat your pattern and then you subvert the pattern with an unexpected third choice. The key to using this tool is that it is not always about having list of exactly three things – Maybe your list has 5 things – so much as it is about creating a pattern and breaking the pattern in a funny way. Most people find the rule of three to work well however.
LISTS OF THREE:
Premise: I went grocery shopping last weekend and bought…
Punchline: Milk, eggs, and a PlayStation 5!TAG: I am so good at being an adult.
ANALOGIES – An analogy is saying something is like something else to make some sort of a comedic point. You can use metaphors (saying something is something else) and similes (is like something else) when creating an analogy. This paints a clear picture for the audience about your last boyfriend was just like the sushi you two used to order (only nice when it was fresh). This is a way to use incongruity in your comedy and also add surprise. Here is a clever analogy where Maria Bamford hands us a comparison at the end that makes it all worthwhile.
“I do wanna get married. It just sounds great. You get to go grocery shopping together, rent videos, and the kissing and the hugging and the kissing and the hugging under the cozy covers. Mmmm! But sometimes I worry that I don’t wanna get married as much as I want to get dipped in a vat of warm, rising bread dough. That might feel pretty good, too.”
Maria Bamford
EXAGGERATION – this tool allows you to blow up the thing that you can see in your premise into something much bigger so that an audience will understand how crazy or weird or stupid or ridiculous it could be in a larger form. You’re not just a quiet person! People mistake you for a librarian even when it isn’t Halloween. Try using this simple structure to find exaggerations. It (your topic) was SO BLANK that ___________. (My apartment was so quiet that I thought the flies were studying.) Think You’re mama’s so fat jokes, and then don’t make them.
Want to know why women don’t blink during foreplay? Not enough time.
Joan Rivers
Putting it all together
Now we can take the example of the premise (wouldn’t it be weird if an elephant met Bill Clinton?) And see how many different types of punchlines we can get using the same premise. In an act out punchline. either the elephant or Bill Clinton would have something to say, a line of dialogue.
ACT OUT:
POINT-OF-VIEW (what is the joke trying to say?) Politicians will say anything to get people to believe they are just like us.
Premise: Wouldn’t it be weird if an elephant met Bill Clinton?
Punchline: Bill: Nice to meet you, I’m Bill! extends hand for trunk shake Elephant (pretends to shake with trunk)
With a word play punchline, we would try to brainstorm all the words we can think of related to either Bill Clinton or the elephant and see where we could find a double meaning that might exist between the two things (leader of the pack = pachyderm?). In a misdirect punchline we would probably start with talking about elephants and then the punchline would be something about Bill Clinton – because Bill Clinton and elephants are not naturally related so the audience wasn’t expecting us to go there. Surprise is to key to making audiences laugh. A list of three punchline might look for three things both Bill Clinton and elephants would both like, and the third choice we made on our list would be the funniest one (point 1, point 2, they’re both endangered!) An analogy punchline using this punchline tool might ask us to think about what it would be like for an elephant if he were in Bill Clinton’s shoes and then we would try to find an analogy to a situation similar to that experience. We might look at a situation that mirrors that idea – like where somebody was in in a situation that was in an unexpected position of power for which he wasn’t qualified. We could use an exaggeration punchline in a number of ways. We could exaggerate physical appearance – something like Bill Clinton’s ears are so big that an elephant would think he was one of the herd. We could exaggerate an emotional aspect as well.
Sorry for the super 90s political reference but modern politics are beyond satire. Turns out Bill Clinton meeting an elephant is not huge comedy fodder. Now we all know.
