Did you hear the one about…?
A priest, a rabbi, and a monk walk into a bar…
What did the wife tell the husband when he found out that she…?
JOKES.
Some awful, some not so bad, others quite creative, and the precious few that are really, really funny. Many a friendship has started off as a result of an overheard joke and many a grievance has been resolved by sharing one. For as long as there has been human community, hilarity has existed as a tool to strengthen our bond with one another, from the guttural histrionics of Neanderthal tribesmen to the unbridled laughter of MIT professors at Dr. Kozlowski’s skit pretending to calculate the square root of a negative number. How can you not blow your Eucalyptus tea out of your nose over that one, right? Our personal relationship with jokes – love them, hate them – paints a very clear picture of who we are as individuals. We all know the proverbial guy or gal who knows thousands of them, and seemingly has the single purpose in life to curate that collection. Or that other friend who routinely misses even the simplest of punchlines. And of course, the inveterate double-entendre “artist”, whose mental development stopped somewhere around the 8th grade. Jokes are as archetypal as the ways people react to them. More than just laughter, they can elicit disgust, outrage, compassion, amazement, and a myriad other feelings. It is this capacity to play on so many of our emotions that makes them so effective.
“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face”
Victor Hugo
What is it to us writers?
Jokes are storytelling at its most essential! A joke is a story with a condensed running time, a very small number of characters, a single event that affects them all differently, and a defining outcome, usually an absurd, unexpected twist that elicits an instant response. No fat, no carbs, no water under the skin, like a bride on a 500 calorie-a-day diet trying to cut 60 lbs for a wedding five weeks away. And just like that poor woman, the stakes could not be higher, for a joke either registers and we get a laugh, or it tanks and listeners furiously wave us off. Never does a person place more importance on 20 seconds of their time that when they trust us to tell them a joke. We could spend countless minutes with that same person on the queue for a movie, impatiently stomping our feet on the ground, or stuck in traffic together for hours, damning this undesirable situation to hell, but God forbid our quickie of a joke falls flat. Jokes come with a performance guarantee, an unbreakable contract that states “this had better work”. Or else. Talk about performing under pressure! And the only reason they work far more often than not, and we live to joke another day, is because they follow the Storytelling Principle to a tee.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted”
Charlie Chaplin
So, what proven elements can we take from jokes and implement into our own writing?
Broad appeal. Most good jokes work anywhere on planet Earth because they appeal to universal emotions. When writing your story, strive to make it relevant to readers all over, even if you don’t intend for your novel to be published in Indonesia or your documentary to be seen in Uruguay. If you are a niche writer, focusing on select topics, or worse, specific audiences, your work will, at best, only appeal to those people. At worst, it will appeal to no one. The adventures of Tom Sawyer is such an universally beloved classic because, despite the fact that very few people can relate to being a boy growing up in the American south of the 1800s (no one can relate to that anymore really), we all grew up somewhere, had our share of first loves, boring school days, family arguments, best friends and sworn enemies (interchangeably), all wreaked some level of havoc and mischief, and all dealt with situations that defined the adults we would grow up to be. Universal themes. As an eminently American novel, it reveals language, traditions and beliefs that are very specific, not only to the country, but to the region and the time period. Those particulars may only be understood and appreciated by American readers, but the book works for readers anywhere, and it works just as well 143 years after it was published. Good stories appeal to all.
Exposition is key. Many beginner writers wrestle with the concept of exposition, not knowing how much backstory to reveal, when or how. Jokes are exemplary at this. They have to be. We can neither take more than a few seconds to lay down the premise of our joke, nor can we leave anything of importance out of it, or the punchline will fail. Who are the people involved? What’s their relationship to one another? What physical or personality traits do they posses that may influence how they react to the upcoming event? That right there, is your first act, or Set Up. A good joke presents this information in a couple of sentences, and when we move on to the second act, where the event that leads to the Confrontation among the character happens, we know how each character will react. Or we think we know. That leads to the third act, or Resolution, when we react to the reaction of the characters. Interestingly, even when characters react in totally unexpected ways, this twist works because it plays against the grain, not because some new information has been revealed at the very end. That a story so short as a joke very much validates the three-act structure is eye opening, but this proven structure only works if the set up or Exposition is done right. Writers who withhold important exposition information, in the mistaken hope of creating suspense or intrigue, or stretching a thin story into a long one, are really only obfuscating their readers. Give readers exactly the backstory they need, no more, no less.
Keep it simple and succinct (KISS). Unless you believe what your friend told you about novelists getting paid by the word, or you like your prose as thick as the gluten-free caramel syrup on your decaf Mocha latte, present only information that moves your story forward. Keep it simple. Complexity can never be construed for substance, and a writer that constantly finds himself adding filler because he has no real story to tell, or likes the sound of his own brilliance a little too much, should perhaps consider another career. I hear there’s plenty of demand for Evangelical preachers. If you’ve read Ken Folletts’ excellent “Kingsbridge” or “Century” trilogies, you know that each of the six books tips the scales at over 1,000 pages, and yet, visually descriptive as Follett is, every single word keeps advancing the plot. Be succinct. In every story, chapter, paragraph or sentence, there is always a way to get to the point without fatiguing the crap out of our readers. And yes, you can still throw in those adornments that are so precious to your style. Just don’t belabor the point. Or you’ll end up discharging that proverbial 12-gauge shotgun over your toes and lessening your hard earned impact.
That was particularly difficult to learn for me. I was one of those who felt there is no such thing as too much garlic or too many adjectives. Sometimes, I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, slip out of the room, cover the speakers of my laptop so no one will hear it power up, open up my story, and start sprinkling narrative awesomeness all over. A cascade of thoughtfully chosen adjectives, melodically playing off each other, rhythmic yet incisive, whimsical yet profound, my previously simple story now pulsating with cosmic energy. I’m in the zone, bestowing my gift upon the blessed world. Overwhelmed by my frenzied senses ,I feel my eyes well up and my nose prickle, until I realize it is the whiff of manure emanating from my flamboyance that’s causing it. I have let my ego get the best of my logic once again. So I take a deep breath, my pulse slows down, my pupils contract to normal size, and I restore the previously saved version of my document. It is not easy. Some days are better than others, but I now know it’s for the best. You saw how I did it again? I could have stopped after saying this was hard for me. Instead, I rambled on, justified (and gratified) by my cute self deprecation. Get to the point!!!
Change it up. As we have already mentioned, many jokes work so well because the final act throws a huge kink into the mix and destroys our every pre-conceived notion, sending us barreling into a whole different rabbit hole. No wonder they call it the punch line, for we are left reeling, even if in laughter. Such a visceral pay off is the same trademark approach that works wonders in many horror stories, be it film or novel. That final revelation -who the killer is, how the victim is actually not dead- changes everything, and we have to re-thread our thought process to figure out how we missed something so blatantly obvious. Of course, we don’t need to aim for the unexpected every time we pen a story, yet, whenever you’re nearing your finale, proud of how neatly every little piece fits, stop. Give it a whirl, toss it up into the wind, drop the dominoes, and see what happens. Your story might end up that much better, and surprising yourself is as satisfying, if not more, as surprising your readers. Major twists need not only be endings, they work wonderfully as the plot points that slingshot the story into new territory, especially as the connections from one act to the next.
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one”
Oscar Wilde
In summary…
Whenever we need to write a query letter for a book, a treatment for a script, or a synopsis of any type, it is usually to present our work to whoever decides to buy it, produce it, or publish it. Such validating approval is a terrifying prospect. Let us not fret, and instead smile relaxed, for jokes are now our ally. If we can condense our story into a much shorter version of itself, while leaving no doubt as to who the main characters are, what their conflict is, and how it all comes to a resolution, we have a summary that works. And just like a good joke, it will leave our audience both with a sense of completeness and wanting for more.
Exercise:
Find a few of your favorite jokes and write a one-page extended version of them. Try different things, add more characters, up the stakes, change the ending from hilarious to tragic, write it in screenplay form if that’s your medium, play around with the stories. Just keep it interesting, whatever you ad should make this longer version just as catchy as the original.
As a writer who is transitioning into comedy, this is a GREAT reminder, truly, that brevity is the soul of wit. Thank you for this article, it’s exactly what I’ve needed to cut the fat and get moving again after a week of onerous creative blocks.
Thank you! Indeed, brevity is the soul of wit. It is a fascinating challenge to express the same idea, nuance and detail included, in less words rather than more. And it can be done. Good luck in your writings.