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

Troubleshooting
Problem: I get what you’re doing but when I tried it nothing happened.
Solution: The Surrealist Inquisition can be tough! If you’re struggling, the best
way to get into it is to go through the motions. When you’re asked to describe
the situation to aliens, actually do it. Be like the aliens in the Cadbury’s Smash
advert  -  if  you’re  old  enough  to  remember  them.  They  describe  potatoes  like
this: They boil them for 20 of their minutes then they smash them all to pieces.
Try it like that. Then see yourself as an alien looking at your subject. Every time
you go off at an angle, apply it back to the subject, the way we did in the group
exercise. Then imagine a child you know and explain it to them. Imagine what
they might make of it.
Do this for ALL the questions. Accept that some of them might not work but, if
you have done it thoroughly, at least you have ruled out that avenue. The student
who wrote the jokes about plants in the How Did The Class Do? section told me
that explaining gardening and plants to a child didn’t yield anything and that the
act of gardening is often used as an analogy, so the analogies section didn’t go
very well either.
But, and this is the important bit, other parts of her Inquisition did work. For the
aliens  section  she  imagined  the  aliens  were  Triffids  judging  how  we  treat  our
plant  life  here  with  pesticides  and  being  very  cross  about  it.  Then  when  she
started  thinking  about  things  from  her  indoor  plant’s  point  of  view,  thinking
about  it  not  being  watered  and  there  being  water  outside  the  window,  and
thinking about it watching telly, then it all started happening.