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Writing Secret:
How To Write Funny Fast!

To write jokes fast, focus on the essentials. A formula helps.

My formula for a joke is: Upset the Setup.

What you're shooting for is a way of saying or doing something that surprises your audience. We'll laugh at almost anything if it strikes us as incongruous - if it's outside our normal expectation.

To create humor, set up a norm, then turn it upside down.  For example: show your readers a pyramid of bright red apples arranged oh-so-carefully, one atop another, in an obviously tippy cart. Then, when it's least expected, DON'T overturn the cart. Instead, make the apples slowly loosen on their own.  Make them, one at a time at random intervals, bounce down the pyramid, off the cart, down the street, out of sight.

To create humor, you have to create an expectation - and then meet it in an unexpected way. Here's a two-step process to help you do it fast.

STEP 1 - FIND YOUR SETUP

In the example above, the apple cart is the setup. It's a known symbol with a built-in expectation.  Most anyone would recognize the phrase, "upset the apple cart."  That's good, because when you're looking for quick results, it's best to start with a prefabricated setup. Use a cliché, a well-known phrase or a quote, one that your audience should already know. If they know the cliché, they'll have an expectation for how it should sound and what it should mean.

For example: here's an old saw most of us have heard:

Give a man a fish; you feed him for a day
Teach a man to fish; you feed him for life.

Weighty stuff - all about the importance of learning.  But how do we make it witty?

STEP 2 - UPSET YOUR FIND

Step 2 is where you spring the surprise.  Here's the twist on the phrase that goes beyond just overturning the cart and makes us laugh. Your twist must be connected to the setup, that is, it has to logically follow, but it should do so in a surprising way. Here's an example using our fish phrase...

Give a man a fish; you feed him for a day
Teach a man to fish; you...
--- make an enemy of his wife forever.

THE PAYOFF IS THE PAYOFF (At least for Copy Writers...)

This approach comes with a built-in bonus.  You can switch the phrase depending on your audience or your subject or the point you want to make... or the product or idea you're trying to sell.

Say you're trying to reach a group of rabid environmentalists. Your twist might become:

Teach a man to fish, you...
--- endanger yet another species.

Or maybe you're writing an ad to go into Cat Fanatic Magazine...

Teach a man to fish, you...
--- make his cat almost grateful.

The point is - give it enough thought and you can almost always find a relevant tie-in to a good setup.

USING THE "TWO LISTS" METHOD MAKES FOR AUTOMATIC RESULTS

Here's a method that can save you more time and give you results almost automatically. Brainstorm two lists. In the first one, put all the words and ideas that come to you about the Setup.

In list two, put all the words and ideas you can think of about your subject, audience, or product.

Once the two lists are as complete as you can make them, go back and cross-connect each entry in List One to each one in List Two. You'll be pleasantly surprised at what pops up: several funny connections. They’re funny because they’re logical but not expected.

There’s even a plus: this two-list technique is good for almost any type of idea creation.

Here's an exercise to try out the two-list method. Almost everyone over forty knows JFK's famous quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." See what you can do with it as a Setup. Link your second list to a product you're currently selling or an audience you want to reach.

(Even if you're too young to remember that JFK refers to a US President named John F. Kennedy, you can still do the exercise. No excuses accepted!)

FINAL WORD

Upset the Setup. Focus on connections. Look for logical but unexpected twists. Here's a visual twist on IBM Founder, Thomas J. Watson's famous admonition to help you remember:

. . . S D R A W K C A B  K N I H T

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