HOW TO WRITE A JOKE

You don’t need to be good at telling jokes to be able to write them. If you get tongue-tied down the pub when everyone is rattling off one-liners, don’t despair. Many good comedy writers are shy people.

The classic joke structure is a setup which establishes an expectation, followed by a punchline which subverts it. For example: “My husband left me on Tuesday and I’m depressed. Because the bastard came back on Wednesday.”  The first sentence sets up an image (depressed because he’s left) which is turned upside down by the punchline in the second sentence (depressed because he came back). There’s a great joke from a Woody Allen routine: “When I was a child I was kidnapped. My dad leapt into action –  and rented out my room.” Our expectations of a heroic dad fighting to rescue his son are overturned by the cynical reality. In each case the punchline provides a surprise which makes us laugh.

So all you have to do is tell a little story in which the second part subverts the first. Easy? Well, sometimes, but usually you have to do a bit of work. Give yourself a theme to write about. Let’s try dating, it’s something everyone’s done and is full of emotional complications which are great for comedy. On a sheet of paper, write down a list of topics related to dating: going to a restaurant, kissing, the cinema, blind dating, speed dating, dating people at work, etc. You can expand the list yourself.

Now look down the list and see if we can find ways of twisting a topic into a setup and punchline. One good technique is switching it round or inserting something else. Let’s look at “blind dating”: what can we switch in that? How about deaf dating? After doing a little work we could come out with “I’ve stopped blind dating and now do deaf dating. It means I don’t have to listen to them.” You can change the wording slightly according to your gender.

Wordplay is another useful technique. We can find different word meanings, either through contrasting usage, as a well-worn phrase or as a straightforward pun, and incorporate that into the setup – punchline structure. Looking down our list, we find “dating people at work”. Dating the boss is interestingly fraught. Also, the word “date” has subtle shades of meaning. “I asked my boss for a date. So she gave me a month’s notice.”

Don’t stress yourself by expecting to come out with a string of comedy pearls all the time. It’s normal to produce a few mediocre groaners before finding that little gem. You’ll need to polish the phrasing by cutting out unnecessary words, finding shorter ones where you can, and giving it a good rhythm. Words with a hard consonant, often “k”, work well. “Kipper” is funnier than “fish” and “cake” is funnier than “gateau”. And at all times think of that magic setup and punchline structure.

Funny Words

“What’s comedy all abou- TIMING!!!!!”, according to the old joke. Actually it’s about quite a lot else, and one of the main factors by which a joke stands or falls is wording. Yesterday’s flat joke may bring the house down today if expressed with just one altered word.

Some words are funnier than others. Haddock is funnier than Fish. Cake is funnier than Gateau. Grub is funnier than Larva. Why? Often comedy writers just say “Well, they just are funnier” and leave it at that, but I think there’s a science to it. Or a bit of a science, let’s not get too nerdy about this...

The first rule is that short words are funnier than longer ones. Cake vs Gateau, Grub vs Larva, Wig vs Hairpiece. A short word has a punch which pushes the breath out and causes laughter. Brevity is the soul of wit. Long words can get in the way very quickly. Then again, Haddock is longer than Fish, so you can hardly say that this is an unbreakable rule, just like everything else in comedy.

The second rule is that hard consonants are funnier than soft. Cake and Haddock both have that wonderful edgy “k” sound, the ideal comedy consonant (there we go again). Cookie is funnier than Biscuit. The “g” in Wig is fairly hard. It has impact, and adds to the punch factor. Also, and this is important, hard consonants are easier to hear. A muffled joke has no impact.

The third rule is that words with hidden, or slightly underground, associations, can work really well. Hob Nob is funnier than Biscuit because, subliminally, it sounds like part of a  knob gag. Lunchbox is funnier than Packed Lunch because it also has knobby connotations. The Fluke fish sounds funny because it also sounds like something else. It doesn’t mean these work as puns. If they did, it would distract from the point of the joke. But there’s something in all these words which makes the audience sit up and listen. Their comedy sensibility has been alerted.

The fourth rule is probably the most important but also the most obvious. The word has to convey the sense of the joke precisely. If you set up with the phrase “The butler fetched the president a hob nob” it’s distracting because we’re expecting something posh – unless the joke is about spending cuts in the White House, or something like that. This rule overcomes all the others. Unless it doesn’t. This is comedy, after all.

Comedy Writing -  craft or art?

Is a great joke, sketch or sitcom created in the white heat of inspiration – or is it the product of hours or even months of hard work, refining and honing? You’ve probably guessed my answer from the way I’ve phrased the question.

Maybe the idea for a great joke or a sketch will come to you while you’re washing the dishes or taking the dog for a walk. Maybe it will arrive in your head fully formed and all you have to do is jot it down as fast as you can before the vision fades. I often think of the legend of “Kubla Khan”: that Coleridge dreamt the whole poem while stoned out of his head on opium. He was feverishly scribbling it down the next morning but was interrupted by a caller from Porlock. After the visit, the dream had gone, he’d forgotten nearly all of it and we’re left with a truncated few lines.

Imagine Coleridge’s script editor the next morning. “Interrupted by a man from Porlock? Why not just say your dog ate the script, I’d believe it more. Besides, you’ve passed the deadline!”

Comedy writing – like all writing except, obviously, romantic poetry – is all about producing stuff. In this case, a certain number of sketches, jokes or episodes, on time, which fit the bill and which make people laugh. You can’t do that if you’re smashed out of your mind on opium. It’s a nuts and bolts thing:  X number of laughs in Y number of minutes. It takes time to learn how to do that, and a lot of trial, error and falling on your face.

I remember Bill Dare of the BBC saying at a script meeting years ago that they weren’t interested in someone who produced one immortal sketch of genius, but people who could write five or six reliably funny sketches, and come back next week with five or six more. It takes craft to do that.

It’s not to say that brilliance and inspiration don’t come into it. We’re all aiming for that. But it’s more important we just keep writing. Once you’ve really mastered the lower slopes, you can more confidently tackle the heights.