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

Chapter Four (THEORY): Jokes
Exist In The Ether!
Where the ideas come from I don’t know...
it was inspiration, but I know not from where.
Spike Milligan
You’ve got your dream job. Brilliant! You’re a writer on a topical comedy show
when  a  big,  huge,  you  can’t  avoid  it  news  story  breaks.  Say  a  politician  has
resigned. You think it’s a shame as you were hoping to lead on a celebrity boob
job story. However you can’t tell your team there are no jokes on the politician
resigning. They wouldn’t believe you anyway. Within minutes of any news story
breaking  jokes  start  flying  round  the  internet.  You  can’t  nick  jokes  from  the
internet though. Your jokes have to be original and acceptable to a mainstream
audience.
But in reality this wouldn’t happen. If you really were a writer on a topical show
you’d already know that no matter what the story, you can find jokes on it and
you would have ways of tracking them down.
In Chapters One and Three you saw that it’s not genius to realise that something
can have a double meaning but it is clever to link words that haven’t been linked
before to make a new joke from them.
I think those links exist already: they are Jokes in the Ether. Others have called it
other things. It’s not a new concept. But to those who don’t know, it does sound
a bit kooky, as if you need to go to a séance to get new jokes. Let’s try it.

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“Are there any jokes out there? Knock once for yes, twice for no...”
“Oh no, I don’t want ‘Knock Knock’ jokes!”
This  cartoon  is  literally  a  joke  in  the  ether  because  it  takes  two  normally
unconnected subjects (séances and joke writing), and finds a link (knock knock)
and  turns  it  into  a  joke.  That  link  existed  before  we  came  along  –  it  was  there
waiting to be found.

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(P)eople say they write songs, but in a way you're more the medium. I feel
like all the songs in the world are just floating around, it's just a matter of
like an antenna, of whatever you pick up

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Keith Richard
Even surreal jokes are based on unusual angles or twists on subjects - you just
have  to  find  them.  You  don’t  need  sinewy  brain  power,  you  just  have  to  know
how and where to look, and keep at it. In 1998 I did a writing audition for a TV
company  making  the  11  O’clock  Show  for  Channel  4.  I  was  given  the  task  of
writing as many jokes as possible over three days, but only on subjects that were
in the newspapers on those days.
This was mid-August.
It  was  hot,  everyone  exciting  was  abroad,  and  nothing  much  was  happening  in
the world. I discussed it with a fellow comic who was doing the same audition.
He agreed –there was nothing in the news. I spoke to friends about it who also
told  me  there  was  nothing  in  the  news.  But  there  was.  Newspapers  were  still
being printed every day. They still had the same number of pages. Topical radio
and  telly  programmes  were  still  going  ahead.  They  would  have  to  work  with
what was there. I decided to do the same.
If you do not seek you will not find.

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Sophocles
I  flicked  a  paper  open.  There  was  a  story  about  purpose-built  offices  for
politicians  being  built  next  to  the  House  of  Commons,  another  one  about  new
trading  standards  rules,  and  then,  hidden  away  in  the  corner,  a  couple  of  lines
about Prince William taking driving lessons. For the next three days I pored over
every  line  of  every  newspaper,  over  and  over  again.  I  hunted  in  the  subtext,  in
the picture headings, in the last line of the longest paragraph, and I knew that, no
matter how dull the story, I could find links, angles and juxtapositions to make it
more interesting
xi
.
I did joke-webs.
I broke words apart and put them back together in new ways.
Eventually I wrote jokes about special alterations being made to the building for
politicians  to  make  it  easier  for  them  to  sleep  with  their  secretaries.  I  then
applied  the  new  trading  standards  rules  to  things  they  normally  don’t  regulate,
such as bra sizes, and wrote a visual joke (it was for telly after all) about Prince
William driving as part of a royal cavalcade, with all 30 cars reversing at once. I
got the job.
My friend didn’t send anything in. When I saw him, he mimed flicking through
the newspapers.
‘There was nothing in them,’ he said.
The truth was he hadn’t looked properly in the papers or in the ether. He thought
that a good joke comes from a good news story.
This experience taught me that there exists somewhere, a joke on every subject
in the world, even dull news stories. You just have to put the effort in to find it.
It seems to me that most of the jokes I make already exist Out There in some
strange realm of ideas, and that the comedian travels towards them.

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Logan Murray
Also,  once  you  really  understand  that  jokes  exist  in  the  ether,  you  can  stop
beating yourself up when you find corny jokes, rude jokes or rubbish jokes. You
just found those jokes there. You don’t have to use them.
In  fact  when  I  start  writing  on  any  subject  I  get  the  puns  out  of  the  way  first.
Puns exist, words have double meanings, and they are bound to be my first port
of call on the search for jokes. Sometimes I can use them as a basis for a better
joke. Sometimes I tell them to a friend just to hear them groan.
Which brings me to my final point.
Just  trusting  jokes  are  there  and  not  putting  any  effort  in,  doesn’t  work  I’m
afraid.
Pray to catch the bus but run like hell for it anyway.

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Anon
I’ve tried it. You’ve tried it. You have to put the time in. Believe me at my joke
writing courses I don’t just teach them that jokes exist in the ether and tell them
to  sit  and  wait  for  them  to  turn  up.  Oh,  how  great  that  would  be!  We  get  busy
with the exercises, crank up our brains and
then
they really do appear...

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Summary
• You don’t have to be a genius to write jokes, they exist in the ether!
• You just need to spend time looking for them! Why not start now?

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