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

Ways to think about words list
Break up words and sayings.
Can you replace either of them?
Can you pun on all or half of it?
Take words out of their usual context.
Do the words have another meaning?
See the words historically and socially.
Is there a sound-a-like?
Can you think of an opposite?
Are there any clichés to do with the subject or words?

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How to Choose a Topic
Try two random ideas as we did earlier.
Sometimes stories in the news are ripe for double joke-webs; look for politicians
with  weird  hobbies  (do  one  joke-web  on  politics,  one  on  the  hobby),  celebrity
stories, offbeat news items like police storing DNA with ice-cream (do one joke-
web  on  DNA,  one  joke-web  on  ice-cream).  Look  for  scientific  ideas  such  as
monkeys in space (do one joke-web on monkeys, one joke-web on space) etc.
If you find a good pun, do a joke-web on each half of it, e.g. you might take the
example  of  reproduction  that  we  found  above  and  do  two  joke-webs  one  on
photocopiers, one on wombs.
Try and find contradictions in your own life, e.g. wanting a new partner but can’t
be bothered to dress up and go out and look for one.
Break up popular sayings such as General Hospital (do one joke-web on General
and one on Hospital) and Surfing the Net (one on Surfing, one on Nets).
The  world  is  changing  and  to  cope  with  it  we  are  inventing  new  words  all  the
time.  Think  of  these  words  as  NPOs  (New  Pun  Opportunities!)  Be  the  first  to
pun on them. Examples are bi-polar (we just used to be manically depressed) and
IVF cycle (you had to adopt). Both of those have been used in this book but by
the time this is in the shops there will be more.
If you’re a stand-up, story teller or monologist see if you can find links between
the subjects you already talk about. This will help the flow of your set.
Have you found a subject? Then you are ready to do the next exercise.

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