•How will it affect the future?
•Will there be long-term effects?
•What would famous people think about this?
•What would the Average Joe say about it?
These are just our questions. They are fairly generic. Your list may include some of these questions, may be completely different, or pertain only to your selected article.
It’s a good idea to write your questions down or keep them in your computer. That way you have a ready-made list for the next time. You can change, alter, add, or delete as needed for your new assignment. Asking and answering questions can often provide the impetus that jars joke ideas out of your imagination.
As an example, let’s say your local paper published an article about the public library closing due to budget cuts (these small-town presses are a gold mine for comedy ideas). You interview yourself with the questions you generated. One question is “What would happen if the library closed at a different point in history?” This may cause you to think of Ben Franklin, who formed the first library. Based on that idea, you may come up with the line:
Ben Franklin said, “If I knew today’s politicians were going to be so irresponsible, I never would have invented the darn thing in the first place.”
This gives you an idea. Now you do it, using the article you picked out earlier and the list of questions you created. Write twenty jokes that are based on your article and answer the questions in a funny way.
Every joke has a concept or, in other words, the thought the joke conveys. This aspect of a joke is important, but it’s not the only component. The wording of a gag is also essential.
In fact, it is the phrasing that transforms a comedy idea into a joke. Let’s take a look at this funny idea:
My wife talks a lot.
The idea has humor, but it isn’t a joke—yet. It’s the thought behind the joke. Now let’s look at the way Henny Youngman conveyed this idea:
I didn’t talk to my wife for three weeks. I didn’t want to interrupt.
Henny made it a joke. It went from a funny thought into a full-fledged, fleshed-out gag.
The phrasing of a joke can be tricky. You need to give enough information to your listeners so that they understand what you are saying, but not so much that the audience loses interest.
Using the classic Henny Youngman line above, notice how there is no mention that his wife talks a lot. The wording of the line implies that. What if Mr. Youngman had said, “My wife talks so much. For three weeks I never got to say anything.”
The concepts are the same, but one is a great joke and the other . . . well . . . isn’t.
The following is a list of twelve comedy concepts. There’s humor behind them, but at this stage they aren’t jokes. Your job is to take each sentence and transform it into a joke.
•Whatever line I get in always moves the slowest.
•My wife spends so much, I hope her credit card gets stolen.
•Gas is so expensive, I have to find different ways to afford it.
•Women hate it when men watch football.
•Men hate it when women watch figure skating.
•How much we depend on electricity.
•Every device manufactured now has a clock built into it.
•What used to be “courtship” is now considered “criminal activity.”
•Smoking has become unattractive.
•Ways to prove that dog is man’s best friend . . . or not.
•How much Las Vegas casinos love people with “a system.”
•Money can’t buy friendship.
You can repeat this exercise many times by coming up with some concepts on your own. Or for more of a challenge, have a friend generate them for you. Now take these ideas and turn them into funny lines.
Obviously, words are important to any writer. Good writers search not only for the correct word but for the precisely accurate word. Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Someone later wrote a variation: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between ‘chicken’ and ‘chicken pox.’”
So serious writers are intent on finding the “no-other-word-will-do” word. In joke writing, it’s imperative to use accurate, descriptive words. However, sometimes comedy writers call on their creativity to find the precise wrong word to use in place of the exact right word.
In 1775 Richard Brinsley Sheridan wrote a play called The Rivals. One of the characters was Mrs. Malaprop, who was noted for misusing the English language. Throughout the play she would inadvertently use the wrong word. For instance, she said of another character, “She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the Nile.” She meant, of course, “alligator on the Nile.”
These have since become known as “malapropisms” or “malaprops” and can be used to great effect for comedy. Leo Gorcey, who played the unofficial leader of the gang in the Dead End Kids movies, mangled the language masterfully. When he had a brilliant thought, he’d boast, “I’ve just come up with a brilliant seduction.” If he interrupted a conversation, he would say, “Forgive my protrusion.”
At a roast you may hear a speaker say:
I have been seated next to our guest of honor at this banquet and I can tell you now that he is a man of great perspiration.
Often the wrong word can also paint a graphic picture that adds to the comedy. For example, this line from Archie Bunker:
Edith is not here right now. She’s had to visit her groinacologist.
Or the tycoon
