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

universe...’ I offer.
‘In  a  parallel  universe  everything  in  the  world  is  run  on  wind  power  and  solar
panels.  Yeah,  in  the  parallel  universe  they  didn’t  have  an  industrial  revolution,
they  didn’t  invent  the  steam  engine,  no,  so  they  invented  the,  er,  STREAM
engine, powered by rivers.” (Steve looks pleased with himself at this. I can see
his  mind  really  working  now.)  He  goes  on  to  talk  about  the  SCREAM  engine,
powered  by  screams  and  the  DREAM  engine.  He  does  a  few  minutes  on  how
this  would  work,  how  the  screamers  and  the  dreamers  would  be  wired  up  etc,

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then he looks at me again.) ‘What really gets to me...’
‘What really gets to me is that people who deny climate change just can’t see the
bigger  picture.  They’re  small  minded  bigots,  seeing  only  their  own  little  lives.
They  can’t  see  the  bigger  picture,’  he  repeats,  ‘despite  the  fact  they’ve  got  52-
inch tellies.’ (This gets a big laugh.) ‘I want to sit and write that down,’ he says.
‘It’s  all  right  we’ve  got  it  on  tape’  I  reply.  Try  again  with  ‘what  really  gets  to
me.’
He starts again. ‘What really gets to me is that we haven’t done anything about
this before because big business need to lead it.’ (He does a few more lines on
this  before  he  comes  out  with...)  ‘We  ought  to  make  Mother  Earth  PLC.  And
charge  everyone  for  using  her  resources  and  everyone  on  the  planet  are  her
shareholders...  Actually  I  think  big  business  are  a  bit  worried  cos  they’ve
realised  most  of  the  oil  is  hidden  underneath  countries  that  pathologically  hate
them.  Mind  you  if  we  go  solar,  most  of  the  sun  is  above  countries  that
pathologically hate them.’
The class laugh. Steve looks at me pleadingly so I tell him it’s okay to stop.
He’s done his 10 minutes. His face is flushed but he looks happy.
That’s what happens when you keep talking. And it works the same if you keep
writing.  You  just  need  to  write  or  talk  without  stopping  and  it  doesn’t  matter
whether  it’s  funny,  you’re  processing  ideas  at  a  rapid  speed  and  pushing  them
out, the more you push out the more ideas follow. Not only that, if you look at it
or listen to it the next day, you can extend your ideas and use your own lines as
set-ups the way we did in Writing From Newspapers (Chapter 7).
I ask the class if anyone else wants to try.
‘Yes, me,’ says a bloke at the back.
‘What’s your subject?’
‘I  hate  people  who  whinge  on  about  climate  change  all  the  time.’  Everyone
laughs.
We do a few more, and I tell them to try it for homework as a written exercise,
and hand out the following question sheets:
• Stream-of-Consciousness: Basic Questions
• Stream-of-Consciousness: Things You Secretly Love or Hate
• Reverse Stream-of-Consciousness

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