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

Is It Too Wordy?
Once you have found the central kernel you need to look at the gag as a whole
and  see  whether  it’s  too  wordy.  To  do  this,  ask  yourself  ‘what’s  the  minimum
that this gag needs to make it work?’ I once wrote a joke about a politician that
came from a newspaper report:
On  Tuesday  afternoon  the  Deputy  Prime  Minister  could  be  spotted  in  the
House  of  Commons  steering  the  Equality  Bill  gently  through  its  first
reading.
I added the punchline:
She’s all right steering as long as she doesn’t try and park it.
The politician had recently been done for parking offences so it was a pertinent
gag. However the set-up doesn’t trip off the tongue very easily so I changed it to:
She’s steering a bill through parliament at the moment...
She’s all right steering as long as she doesn’t try and park it.
It’s  easy  to  get  attached  to  long-winded  set-up;  especially  if  it  sparked  your
thinking it can seem sacred. It’s not. When students do long-winded routines or
sketches in class I always tell them to write out their routine in full. Highlight the
bits that are funny. Look at the space in between and cut that down as much as
possible.

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