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

Exercise 5: Mini Joke-webs (Specific Subject)
If you don’t have much time you can do a mini joke-web on a specific subject by
cutting  out  the  first  level  of  the  general  joke-web  and  only  going  down  two
levels in total. This can take anywhere from 5 –15 minutes.
1.  Find  the  back  of  an  envelope,  shopping  list  or  letter  from  a  utility
company that has blank space on it
x
.
2. Choose a specific subject. If you find yourself with a general one, break
it down, find ONE angle or aspect of it, e.g. don’t choose cars, choose seat
belts. Don’t choose food, choose sub-tropical fruit. Write your subject down
on the back of your envelope and draw a circle with lines coming out of it.
3.  First  of  all  free-associate  on  the  subject,  see  it  from  as  many  different
angles as possible. Top this up by using the Ways To Think About Words List
to break up any words and phrases. These are your sub-subjects.
4. Put your hand over the initial subject and look at the sub-subjects and
free-associate on them, again using Ways To Think About Words List if you
get stuck.
5. To look for jokes see if you can apply the new meanings of your words
back  to  the  original  subject.  Go  through  all  the  associations  step  by  step,
like we did in class. Not every association is going to lead to a joke but you
must  investigate  it.  Run  it  through  your  mind.  Check  it  out.  The  biggest
mistake  people  make  is  deciding  up  front  that  there  are  no  jokes  there  (or
losing the envelope they wrote them on).
6. Highlight any ideas with a highlighter pen, then when you look at your

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joke-web  again  you  can  just  look  at  the  highlighted  bits.  Also  once  you
have a mini joke-web you can collide it with another joke-web (see Chapter
5) for even more jokes.

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