The Serious Guide to Joke Writing: How To Say Something Funny About Anything pdfdrive com

When There Isn’t a Central Kernel
Sometimes  when  you  look  for  the  central  kernel  you  might  even  find  out  that
there isn’t one. Don’t despair! You might have what I call a ‘Glimmer of a Gag’
(see Chapter 5 for more examples).
You can see the gag in the distance but you can’t quite grasp it. I always open a
‘Weak Joke Hospital’ in my classes to help such ailing specimens. To resuscitate
a  weak  gag  I  run  the  basic  idea  through  another  joke  writing  method  –  ‘Open
Gag Surgery’!
If  you  wrote  the  joke  using  a  joke-web  then  put  it  through  The  Surrealist
Inquisition or try doing Stream-of-Consciousness on it. If it’s a pun do a double
joke-web on each half of the meaning. Be like surgeons battling to save the life
of  the  gag,  give  it  the  oxygen  of  brain  power,  the  adrenalin  of  thought  and  see
what happens. If the joke still dies at least you know you’ve tried everything and
you can lay it to rest, grieve for a while and move on.

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