Creating simple jokes
Sometimes in the process of writing dialogue, I wish to insert a joke in the exchange. I could copy an existing joke, or I could come up with one. The latter option seems preferable if I could tie the new joke with the on-going dialogue.
Of course, one could simply be creative, without any technique, and come up with the right idea. The same is true for any art, yet we practice to achieve speed and familiarity with basic and standard techniques so that we do not have to re-invent them each time.
Is there any basic/standard technique/algorithm to create simple jokes primed by the previous few lines of dialogue? They do not need to be award-winning strokes of genius. Even just bringing a smirk to the reader would be sufficient.
2 answers
Jokes are just humor where you provide both the set-up and the punch-line yourself.
A stand-up comedian talking to a room full of people has to reel off jokes one after the other, as they have no input from others (unless they're responding to a heckle or doing audience participation). In regular real-world conversation, you may need to divert to your own set-up in order to tell a joke.
However, in the context of story dialogue, it will seem very jarring to have a character suddenly stop everything in order to tell a joke. Unless that is the point (for example, writing a character that constantly diverts conversations to tell jokes) the reader may be confused as to how that is relevant to the story at all.
The benefit of writing the entire exchange is that you can make a joke out of the back and forth. Consider this one-liner:
I've decided to sell my vacuum cleaner... well, it was just collecting dust.
You can change this in the context of a dialogue by making it:
"Do you need a vacuum cleaner? I'm getting rid of mine, I don't use it much."
"Sure, I'll take it. Seems better than it just collecting dust."
Obviously this is based around the fact that one character needs to dispose of a vacuum cleaner. But this works better than someone mentioning a vacuum cleaner, and another character telling a joke about vacuum cleaners.
Putting humor into an exchange isn't the same as having a witty back and forth, it is by definition a joke, as you are controlling both sides of the exchange. You're just allowing one character to provide the set-up and another to deliver the punch-line, as it sounds more organic to the reader.
So whilst writing dialogue, you may either know a pre-existing joke that you steer their conversation towards in order to be able to tell it, or you may have a character say something that naturally sets up a punch-line without it feeling forced. You may even want to have the same character deliver both the initial set up and punch-line by having another character provide the filler (like with a knock-knock joke).
The point is that you aren't required to have one character tell a joke to another in an attempt to make them laugh, because your objective is to make the reader laugh. This means that you can use the tools you have at your disposal to make the most effective joke, one in which you provide both the set-up and the punch-line within the story, even if the characters themselves don't find the situation humorous at all.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44352. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Jokes happen when someone is missing the point.
Most of the time, a joke happen when the answer (payoff) to a question (setup) is unexpected or out of place. Bonus point if the joke answer is a correct answer. For example, if I show you my hand with three raised fingers and I ask you what you see, a joke answer could be anything between "pink sausages" and "a graysy man with a mustache". Still technically correct, it's not what the setup made us expect.
But the payoff of a joke can not come from thin air: it has to be related to what was happening in the scene to work better. If, for the same example as above, I had answered with "the miserable grass of autumn", we are entering non-sense zone and it's either hit or miss, depending on a lot of factors (from the overall tone of your story to the very personality of the character).
The more the joke blends in the context of the scene, the funnier it is. The perfect example for me are "What is it?" jokes from Airplane:
“Excuse me, sir, there’s been a little problem in the cockpit.”
“The cockpit? What is it?”
“It’s the little room at the front of the plane where the pilots sit. But that’s not important right now.”
There is your joke: unexpected (yet accurate), and mixes with the flow of the scene without interrupting it.
The setup of a joke is not necessarily a question
In my above examples, I used the question/answer format, which works well in dialogues between characters. But setup/payoff can work in context with literally anything, as long as someone is missing the important point.
Let's say one of your character has an important thing to say. The jester of the group will focus on how he is poorly dressed and all of his lines will be about what he perceived instead of what the other wants to say.
Or, one character needs help (for a simple task or even in danger of death), and the others keep talking as if nothing was happening or just don't seem to be troubled at all.
Another point to take into consideration is that, in my opinion, the best jokes do not mock a person, but the teller (for his misunderstanding of the question/situation). In the last example, if people were mocking the person in need of help, they are no longer jokers, they are salty a**holes, which gives a very different view on the character for the reader.
This is not exact science of course, because what make people laughs depends of a lot of variables. Or, if I had to rephrase this as a joke: "Flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle. Just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes" (still from Airplane).
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44356. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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