The punchline is the funny part of the joke.
First you have the setup, then comes the punchline. It’s the destination. The
setup normally exists for one reason - to lead the way to the punchline. (There
are talented people who get laughs out of their setups, but that’s fairly
unusual.)
Most people have probably heard someone tell a
joke and include all sorts of details in the setup that really weren’t
necessary. There’ve been many times when I‘ve heard someone setting up a joke
and I’ve muttered inwardly, “Would you please get to the punchline?”
Something happens to an audience when there’s a
long setup for a joke. The longer the setup is, the more people anticipate the
punchline. In my opinion, the punchline should be a surprise, something people
don’t see coming. Also, as a rule of thumb, the longer the setup is, the
stronger the punchline should be.
Many of my setups were questions that were a
little off the wall to get people scratching their heads a bit. For example,
Have you noticed that whenever a whale lands on the beach, people assume it got
there by mistake? Or, Have you ever wondered why people ignore the limits at
the express checkout counter?
When I wrote those bits, which were two of my
better ones, the setups were different from what I just wrote. I started out
with more and then cut the setups down to exactly what was needed to get to the
punchline. No more, no less. Nobody needed to know what species of whale I was
talking about. Nobody needed to know which chain of grocery stores I was
talking about. Those details could only have slowed down the joke.
If a detail doesn’t contribute to the effectiveness
of the joke, it simply has to go – no ifs, ands, or buttocks. You must be
mindful of the fact that people have short attention spans. You don’t want members
of the audience to be wishing they had a remote so they could hit the fast
forward.
For more
tips like this, check out Humor101: How to Tell Jokes for Power, Prestige, Profit, and Personal Fulfillment atAmazon.
Further Reading
Laughter is the best therapy
Practice telling your jokes
How to use sight gags
Related articles
Further Reading
Laughter is the best therapy
Practice telling your jokes
How to use sight gags
Related articles
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