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7 Ways to Improve Your Joke Writing
by Brad Manzo

"Nobody can teach you humor writing. The secret is passed on from one generation to another and I will not tell mine, except to my son," Art Buchwald once mused. However, comedy writing isn't quite that secretive, and as John Byrne wrote in Writing Comedy, "writing comedy isn't quite as painful as it's made out to be."

In fact, to put it simply, "A joke is a form of _expression with a surprise ending," Mort Scharfman, the Director of Development at Epigram Studios and former staff writer for TV shows such as All in the Family and Too Close for Comfort, says. An entire comedy routine can be as basic as "a typical standup style, such as Jay Leno's - setup, punch, setup, punch," Bob Mills, former head joke writer for Bob Hope, says.

You can learn and improve upon your joke and humor writing skills, regardless of genre. As Mills adds, "Every joke is a story with a beginning, a middle and an end."

Here are seven ways to improve your joke writing:

1. Know the different joke types

"For years, comedy writers have claimed there only a few basic joke types. What they mean by this is basic construction formulas," Melvin Helitzer wrote in Comedy Writing Secrets. Just how many is up for debate. Helitzer isolates seven joke formulas in Comedy Writing Secrets:

1. Double Entendres, the plays on words that include cliché reformations and takeoffs

2. Reverses that trick the audience by a switch in point-of view

3. Triples that build tension and are the framework for an exaggerated finale

4. Incongruity that pairs two logical but unconventional ideas

5. Stupidity that encourages the audience to feel superior to silly thoughts or actions

6. Paired Phrases that utilize the rhythms of antonyms, homonyms, and synonyms

7. Physical Abuse (slapstick) that caters too our delight at someone else's misfortune"

Scharfman mentions several others as well. "There's imagery, irony, misunderstood words and malaprops - such as when Archie Bunker said 'figleaf of your imagination.'"

Regardless, if you can master just a couple of these joke types - or even just one - you'll be on your way.

"Consistency... that's the key," says Mills. "All the jokes must be in the same style and have the same point of view. When aspiring comics start out, they usually don't have a point-of-view and perform jokes from all over the lot. Gradually, they sense which jokes work best for them and start to concentrate their efforts in that direction."

Rodney Dangerfield found his fame through one single premise: "I don't get no respect."

2. Know your audience

Knowing your audience is critical to any writer especially if you're writing jokes for a performer. Not only is your reputation at stake, but the performer's as well. As Mills says, "One wrong line 'for the room' as we say in the business, and you'll never recover." 

"When we wrote material for Bob Hope, we had the advantage of questionnaires that had been previously sent to each venue. Local references like current news items, scandals, etc. We then wrote lines he'd plug onto the beginning of his act just to let the audience know who they were and that he knew, too," says Mills.  

Successful humor columnists, such as Dave Barry, know how to reach their audiences and rarely stray from a working formula. "As a result, they frequently concentrate on the beat they know best, themselves," Helitzer wrote in Comedy Writing Secrets.

3. Learn from your predecessors and current joke writers

"If you want to become a great artist, you study paintings done by the masters. Would-be comics should devour everything about comedy they can put their hands on," says Mills, who studied comedians from W.C. Fields and Fred Allen to Lenny Bruce and Alan King. 

Modern day humor finds "its roots in Vaudeville," Scharfman says. "Parodies and skits preceded sitcoms," Scharfman adds.

In Comedy Writing Workbook, Gene Perret recommends, "gathering a list of 25 jokes that you think are top drawer. With 25 jokes to study and analyze you'll begin to uncover patterns. Those trends will indicate the direction in which your own comedy style should move."

Two comic minds worth emulating are Neil Simon and Woody Allen. "They're both masters of observations with some truth," says Scharfman. "Here's a great Woody Allen example: 'Those who can, do, those who can't teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym.'"

4. Write and practice joke setups

"Monologists create an exhaustive list of ideas and setups...She was so fat, It was so cold...New York is a great place to live...." Scharfman says.

Create your own list of ideas and joke setups. Joke books can be great places to find setups that you know work.

Quotes, or misquotes, by entertainers or politicians and current events can supply endless amounts of comedy source material as well. You may even be able to recycle jokes simply by changing the target of the joke, in this case, the airline, as Helitzer points out in Comedy Writing Secrets. "They not only give you the arrival and departure, they also give the odds."  

5. End the joke on the punch line

Comedians and performers often pause to give an audience a chance to laugh at a joke. If words come directly after a punchline, you may cause the opposite effect - no laughter.

"You can structure jokes in many ways but the payoff must come at the end. If it doesn't, everything said thereafter is anti-climatic. The trick is to tell the audience just enough to paint the picture, no more, no less," says Mills.

"A sentence has its strongest emphasis at the end, so the relevant word or idea that is going to make a joke work has to come as near to that point as sense will allow. If you remember that you want an audience to laugh at the end of the joke, not the middle, then you cannot go far wrong," Jenny Roche says in Teach Yourself Comedy Writing. Example: "Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died." Erma Bombeck

6. Delete all unnecessary words.

Whether you're writing a joke for a speech, a movie script or a stand-up comedy routine, the following holds true: "No words should be left in that don't push the story forward," says Mills.

As Roche adds in Teach Yourself Comedy Writing, "Being too wordy or going off at a tangent will diminish the effectiveness of your funnies and your audience will probably be stony-faced. If you think of your funny as a journey, then an audience will want to know no more than the departure point (establishing the funny), the route (the body of the funny), and when they have arrived (the punchline)." 

7. Make sure your jokes are self-explanatory

You should never have to explain a joke. "If a funny is not getting laughs, perhaps it is an obscure allusion or reference." Roche says in Teach Yourself Comedy Writing.

Mills says, "The clearer the references in a joke, the better. That's why in early radio, and to some extent television, product names were used by the writers so often. Before the FCC cracked down on the practice, writers would make a list of products they needed and the staff would try to mention the product in a joke." 

Bottom Line: Writing jokes and comedy is no easy task, but it isn't rocket science either. "Practice, practice, practice," Mills says, and you'll be making others laugh in no time.  

Additional Joke and Comedy Writing Resources:
- Comedy Writing Step by Step, by Gene Perret
- How to Write Jokes, by Robert Makinson
- The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes, compiled by H. Aaron Cohl
- The Comic Toolbox, John Vorhaus

Copyright 2005 Brad Manzo. All Rights Reserved.

About Brad Manzo: I have written for WritersWeekly.com ("How to Successfully Query Your Sitcom Spec Scripts over the Phone"), the Writer, the Writer's Handbook 2004, The Writer's Journal ("Sitcom Writing: Getting Your Foot in the Door"), Writer's Digest, and RealScreen magazine. I was also a finalist in the TV/Movie (sitcom) category of the 72nd Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition and I have had over 100 jokes published on websites such as http://funnyfirm.com