If you are writing comedy, or drama, and want to get a laugh, it’s tough to avoid jokes. There is both craft and talent involved in joke creation. To make this article more interesting, we sat down to write without a specific joke in mind. Instead, everything you read here was created without forethought using the steps we’ve described (This will probably become more obvious to you as you read on). To make things a bit more interactive, you might want to play along and create a joke for yourself following each step as you read.
The Producers (1967). Photo courtesy: MGM
Step 1 – Identifying a Topic
Begin writing a joke by identifying the topic you want to write about. Based on two of our favorite humor sources (Sigmund Freud and our friend and stand-up coach Greg Dean) the topic should be something that gets you frustrated or angry.
Your topic shouldn’t be too broad or too narrow. If you picked Hollywood as your topic, you would find that it’s way to unfocused and wide ranging. If we decided to talk about the furniture you find in the waiting room of most agents, that’s going to be a bit too constricting.
For our purposes, we’re selecting Hollywood Literary Agents (Without them, it’s pretty tough to sell a script.).
The Player. Photo courtesy: New Line
Step 2 – Free Associate about the topic
When you sit down to write a joke about a topic you’ve selected, chances are that if you wait to think of a funny joke that comes to you, you’ll be staring at a blank piece of paper for quite a while. The way to open things up is to free associate about your topic. It’s tempting to jot down two or three items so you can move along. Bad idea. It’s during this free association period that a lot of funny ideas will start popping into your head. Be expansive. Here are a few thoughts we came up with about agents:
- Don’t call them, they’ll call you…but they never do
- Are as hated as lawyers…maybe more
- Have no ethics
- Love meetings and hate reading scripts
- Kiss up to their big clients and ignore less successful clients
- Have fewer friends than critics do
- They have no hearts…they feel no guilt
- Unoriginal…only like things that other people like
Sydney Pollack plays Dustin Hoffman’s agent in Tootsie. Photo courtesy: Columbia Pictures
Step 3 – Select one of your associations and identify it’s opposite.
This will lead you to the most difficult step in joke writing – the setup. We will use Agents have no Ethics. We like this because it’s short and we don’t have to type as much. Its opposite is that agents have ethics.
Matthew McConaughey is an ethical agent in Tropic Thunder. Photo courtesy: Paramount Pictures
Step 4 – Create the Setup
The model we are using here is referred to as the Two Story Model of Joke Construction. The first story is intended to mislead the audience. Here’s our setup:
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…”
We are preparing the audience to receive an example of agents acting ethically. We are leading them away from the idea of the joke. Since most people who know agents view the behavior of agents as unethical, we are making use of that assumption in our misdirection for the setup. The stronger the natural assumption is, the less they will see the punch coming.
Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. Photo courtesy: Universal Pictures
Step 5 – Create the Punch
Demolish the assumption in the setup with a contradictory thought, presenting the view of the target we first selected.
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…when they think they have been wronged.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…when everything goes their way.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…when their kids are around.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…unless money is involved.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…when negotiating for an unimportant client.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…when doing charity work.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…between the hours of 3 to 5 AM.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…if it doesn’t cost them anything.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…until they understand the issues.”
“Agents are scrupulously ethical…when they curry favor.”
Once you create a setup, it’s easy to follow it up with a punch. Here are just 10 quick ones. It’s only word count limitations that prevent us from coming up with more.
Once you’ve created a joke, the question is how does it enter your script? Use caution because jokes can get in the way of a good story. Jokes must meet two criteria before putting them into your script. Jokes should advance the story and come out of character. You must learn to think of jokes as disposable. Even if a joke is hilarious, you must flush it if it doesn’t meet these criteria.