Last week I posted a joke that went over pretty well.

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The reason that this joke works is because of the word morning. That’s it. That’s all you need to know about comedy. Good night. Have a good life.

 

However, if you’re the curious type, try reading the joke aloud without saying morning and notice how flat the Punchline feels. If you still don’t notice a difference then go study improv for a while and come back when you’re able to, okay?

 

There’s plenty more that goes into writing a joke than just the Punchline. There’s psychology, wordsmithing, and unresolved post-traumatic stress disorder. Now, I’ve spent the last three years studying the principals of humor from all the great teachers, and a few shysters, and I’d like to share my thought process while writing this particular joke because I’m all about me.

 

THE SETUP
 

‘I just met a girl at the library named Brooke who calls herself a Brookeworm which is a good enough reason for me to start morning drinking.’

 

The one thing about jokes that you probably already know is that each one has a Setup and a Punchline. Even if they’re implied through shared knowledge, both factors still exist somewhere within every joke.

 

If you look closely at my Setup you’ll notice that there’s already potential for a joke. I swear to Gosh you will. Go ahead and reread it and then get back to me when you spot it. You’re doing so well and I’m very proud of you.

 

I just met a girl at the library named Brooke who calls herself a Brookeworm.

 

Did you see the bit of wordplay going on with the word Brooke? This could make for an okay pun with a little rewriting: ‘My friend Brooke never leaves the library. Let’s face it, she’s practically a Brookeworm.’ Something like that.

 

It’s an okay joke but in the Hierarchy of All Things Funny this is far from being top billing. It needs something extra. (As a sidenote: don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that puns are just for kids. Adults regularly laugh whenever someone cleverly uses the word come as a double-entendre, and you still can’t get booked on Jimmy Fallon doing it. Or saying it, if that makes more sense. Whatever you do just don’t come on Jimmy Fallon.)

 

The first part of my Setup is the phrase ‘I just met a girl.’ Now I could’ve written, ‘I know someone who met a girl…’ or ‘Wouldn’t it be weird if you met a girl…’ but neither of those statements are as well-grounded as the original. Joe Topyln writes in ‘Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV’ that an audience will pay closer attention to a joke if its Setup appears to be factually true. The phrase ‘I just met a girl’ is just that. You’re aware that I’ve just put my heart on the line and you’re invested as to how it turns out for me. Its boy meets girl, something that just about anyone can relate to.

 

Now if I’d written ‘I just met a space monster’ the chances of you feeling engaged would dramatically decrease. Trust me, I’ve seen plenty of History Channel documentaries about Martians abducting West Virginia hillbillies but those shows never really capture my full attention. Giving myself an anal probe doesn’t help out either. In fact, it's quite distracting.

 

So now that you‘re aware that ‘I just met a girl’ is intended to appear as real as possible I should point out something just as important: its all a damned lie. When I wrote this joke I was nowhere near the library. I hadn’t even met a girl named Brooke that afternoon and the way my life is going I probably never will. But as long as the joke feels grounded in reality we’re gangbusters.

 

The order of the words is also very important. Any joke-writing book will stress what’s called an economy of words: don’t say it in twelve words when eight will do. So try not to sound like this: ‘I was over at the library today, the one uptown, and I met this girl who was sitting there named Brooke. Anyways, we talked for a while and she said to me that she calls herself a Brookeworm because she’s always at the library. I thought it was super funny.’ If you know someone who takes forever to tell a joke you have my full permission to clock them square in the mouth. (Get it? Telling them to hurry up? Clocks? There’s a joke somewhere tucked away in there. You figure it out.)

 

And just as important as having a good word economy is something Joe Topyln calls backloading the topic: getting the least important details out of the way first.

 

Let’s take one more look at my Setup: I just met a girl at the library named Brooke who calls herself a Brookeworm.

 

The least essential information is the library so that's what gets chucked out front. The more important detail is about the girl who gave herself a nickname because that’s where this joke is heading. Now we could attempt to structure the Setup like: ‘I just met a girl at the library who calls herself a Brookeworm named Brooke’ but doesn’t the rhythm sound clunky to you? It’s best to think about word-choice like a musician and play around with every possibility until you find your groove. Just ask Cardi B, I hear that plenty of guys have squeezed into her groove.

 

So now that our Setup is firmly in place, next up is the Angle.

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THE ANGLE
 

‘I just met a girl at the library named Brooke who calls herself a Brookeworm which is a good enough reason for me to start morning drinking.’

 

The Angle? What’s that? Well, it depends on who you ask. There are plenty of comedy writers who barely mention it at all. I like to think of the Angle like an overlooked middle-child. It’s the Jan Brady of jokes.

 

The Angle is the part of the joke that bridges the Setup seamlessly into the Punchline. Greg Dean refers to this point as The Connector, the part of the joke that has “one thing interpreted in at least two ways”.

 

To bring this point home I want to show you how the Angle works in a joke written by Garry Shandling:

 

In second grade the kids called me “four eyes” even though I didn’t wear glasses. In fifth grade, when I did start wearing glasses, they called me “six eyes.”

 

So what’s the Angle here? It’s the phrase ‘in fifth grade when I did start wearing glasses’. Larry could’ve said a number of things to follow up that statement like ‘they stopped calling me four eyes’ or ‘they still called me four eyes but I stopped caring’. Either of those sentences might work logically, but comedians aren’t entirely worried about logic. Comedian's primary concerns are about stuff like exaggeration, incongruity, and why does my Father still consider me a failure?

 

Here’s another one of my favorite jokes. This one from Artie Lange:

 

A lot of people say you don’t have energy after you fuck, but all the girls I’m with have just enough energy to throw up.

 

And here’s how that joke breaks down:

 

The Setup: A lot of people say you don’t have energy after you fuck
The Angle: But all the girls I’m with
The Punch: Have just enough energy to throw up

 

When we listen to each other speak, our rapid-fire brains have a tendency to fill-in-the-blank before the other person is finished talking. We all do it. That’s what the comedian is banking on. Our mind presumes that Artie is going to say something like ‘But all the girls I'm with have plenty of energy’ and the Angle of his joke is written specifically to keep our assumptions alive so that he can continue to build surprise before delivering the Punchline.

 

Are you beginning to see how this all works?

 

The Angle is responsible for generating a few educated guesses for us to assume where the joke is supposed to go. In my joke, the phrase ‘good enough reason’ has a positive connotation and so that’s where you’re expecting me to go as if I were saying ‘I just met a girl with a funny nickname and this fills me with hope.’

 

…or so I‘d like you to believe.

 

THE PUNCHLINE

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‘I just met a girl at the library named Brooke who calls herself a Brookeworm which is a good enough reason for me to start morning drinking.’

 

Hey, it’s no WC Fields but its a start!

 

The Punchline in any joke is responsible for a number of things. First, it’s job is to pinpoint the exact message that the Angle has purposefully obscured. You should now understand that ‘good enough reason’ isn’t meant to be interpreted as something positive. Rather, it’s sarcastic. The only reason that the girl’s nickname is good enough for is my complete emotional withdrawal and rapid descent into unmanageable alcoholism. It’s hilarious when you think about it.

 

Another necessary ingredient to a Punchline is the visual element, the picture that gets painted in the audience’s mind. Take this example from Brian Regan where he talks about visiting the hospital for a stomach flu:

 

They ask the most insulting question when you check into a hospital: “What seems to be the problem?” What seems to be the problem? “Well, it seems like everything on my inside wants to be on my outside, but I'm no doctor.”

 

Can you see the secretary? The check-in counter? Brian Regan standing there about to spill his groceries all over the front desk? Those images are what give great jokes their Punching power. When your words start creating real estate in your audience’s mind you’re halfway home. You might even convince them to invest in a timeshare. Get the picture?

 

At the beginning of this article, I said that the reason my joke works is because of the word morning. That’s the key phrase responsible for narrowing down the vague notion of mere drinking and presenting us with the image of a haggard, chronically-ill alcoholic: the morning drunkard.

 

And why do we laugh at this? Well, it's partially due to what Steve Kaplan refers to as Positive Action in ‘The Hidden Tools of Comedy’, someone who behaves in whatever manner they think will improve their situation no matter how foolish their actions may be. The character in my joke (in this case, me) assumes that drinking himself to oblivion is more beneficial than pursuing a relationship with a girl who makes terrible jokes.

 

It’s obvious that the character in my joke is an idiot. Well, I think its obvious anyway, and I’m the last person you want ask about these things because I’m an alcoholic. To better understand this bit of psychology I urge you to listen to Steve’s explanation. He literally wrote the book on comedy.

 

I didn’t have to be an alcoholic to make this joke any more than you’d have to be one in order to find the humor in it. All anyone needs to recognize is that we’re all extreme and self-destructive… at least some of the time. Our shared human DNA compels us to behave foolishly. Having the courage to make a joke about our flaws is one way we discover we’re not alone in the universe. We’re all doomed and everything is going to be okay. So we might as well laugh about it while we’re still here.

 

And besides that, recognizing our potential to be error-prone is more than just kumbaya. That recognition is one of the eight major triggers embedded in our brains which provoke laughter. It’s a purely psychological phenomenon called ‘having a sense of humor’ and if you haven’t noticed, more people desperately need to find their own. The other seven triggers you can read about in Jerry Corley’s ‘Breaking Comedy’s DNA’. I started my joke writing journey with that book and if it works for me, it works for me.

 

But you, you’re on your own.

 

THE TAG

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So by now, it’s my hope that you have a working idea of how a joke works. You should be able to read or listen to a joke and be able to deconstruct it and see it’s moving parts. If you think about this stuff long enough sooner or later the comic instinct will take over.

 

Being funny is a learned skill. Whether you learn it by watching hours of stand-up, reading books, or by getting roasted on the school playground, the skillset is the same. If you want to write jokes you have to own it.

 

Although I’ve highlighted a few sources throughout this article there are a number of experts who have plenty more to say on the subject. Like an itch buried deep inside my asshole, I’m only comfortable scratching the surface.

 

So, who else should you be reading?

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Everyone.

 

And then write your own jokes. And do it now.

 

There is no other way.