Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook. Gene Perret
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a word joke attached. The drawing provides the situation and the caption provides the humor. That’s a similar structure for many one-liners.
Studying cartoon humor is a good basis for teaching yourself to write effective humor. Cartoons are visual. They’re drawings so they must be a drawing of something. The image is an integral part of the comedy. Sometimes it’s easy for us to overlook the value of the visual in verbal comedy. But it’s often the image that the word joke presents to the minds of the listeners that gives the gag added impact. A vivid picture painted in the audience’s mind gives a boost to the joke’s effectiveness.
Also, cartoons prepare the reader for laughter. Cartoons should be funny. Otherwise, why would they be published in the paper or magazine? When a reader sees a cartoon drawing, he or she is predisposed to being entertained. A good, solid oneliner should prepare the listener for the laugh to come. It should time the punchline for the maximum effect. It’s a lesson well learned from cartoons.
You’ll begin teaching yourself to write good stand-up material by learning the mechanics of writing captions for cartoons.
For this exercise, begin collecting good cartoons from magazines or papers. Gather at least ten or twelve funny cartoons. Either cut them out and paste them on paper or scan them and print them out. Save them one way or another.
Each cartoon will have a caption affixed to it. It should be a good caption, too. You don’t want to collect weak ones. You want solid ones. So the first benefit of this exercise is that you will have a few laughs.
But you’ll have even more laughs as you work your way through this exercise. You’re now going to create several alternate lines for each cartoon that you’ve gathered. These new lines can be variations on the original cartoon caption, or you can take the drawing in an entirely new direction and generate a funny caption that has no relation whatsoever to the one that was published.
As a humorist, you’re certainly going to try to “outfunny” the cartoonist. However, since the original was bought and printed, it’s probably pretty effective. Sure, you should try to “top” it, but even if you don’t, you’ll gain some valuable lessons from this exercise in writing comedy.
This exercise is similar to the previous one. However, it’s probably going to be a little tougher. You may find that to be true throughout this exercise book, but that’s how you develop skills. If you take violin lessons, your first practice piece will probably be an easy one. But as you progress, the music will become more complex and the lessons a bit more challenging to master. So as the writing exercises become more demanding, you will realize that your knowledge and skills are growing.
In the previous exercise, the caption was included with the cartoon. That provided a direction for the humor. You could use that “slant” to create your new captions. Or you could have, as we suggested, taken the humor into a whole different area. But in either case you had something to start with.
In this exercise, you won’t have that luxury.
Here, you should have a friend do your research for you. Ask this associate to cut out ten to fifteen cartoons from the newspaper or magazine and remove the caption from each one. If you’re terribly disciplined and promise yourself that you won’t cheat, you can select the cartoons yourself. But be sure to cover the caption before you snip the cartoon from the paper. You should not have any idea what the original caption said.
Now, of course, you will provide the funny caption for each drawing. It may be wise to write several so that you can select the best.
If it’s possible and your associate will cooperate, you may try to save the original captions so that when you’re done, you can compare your work to the original. But that’s a bonus of this lesson.
Just writing a brilliantly funny caption should be reward enough.
Now that you’ve had some fun with cartoons, you’re going to teach yourself how to use the captioning technique in writing verbal humor. A cartoon, as we noted, is a drawing with a joke attached to it. A one-liner often is a factual statement with a joke attached to it. It’s a straight line and a punchline. It’s similar to the cartoon structure.
Consider these lines about presidents that Bob Hope used:
Harry Truman ruled the country with an iron fist. The same way he played the piano.
Eisenhower switched hobbies from golf to painting. It was fewer strokes.
Ronald Reagan is one politician who never lied, cheated, or stole. He always had an agent who did that for him.
Notice they all start with a factual statement. It’s not funny; it’s simply there. The joke happens when you attach the punchline to it. In effect, you’re putting a caption on a statement.
For this exercise, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. Find a news item in a paper or a magazine. It can be in any area—politics, sports, entertainment, human interest, a goofy news item, anything. Read through the item and underline or make notes on several factual items. They needn’t be funny; in fact, it’s probably better if they’re not. Remember, many of the drawings in cartoons are not inherently funny.
Jot down a series of these factual items—somewhere between six and ten of them. They are now your straight lines. Attach a caption, or a punchline, to each of them. It’s not a bad idea to write several alternate punchlines for each.
By doing this, you’ve converted straight lines to jokes by attaching a punchline.
It’s a procedure you will use frequently as a professional joke writer.
Also, once you finish this exercise, you can repeat it often. All you need are different news items or topics.
“References” are an important part of comedy writing. They refer to either your main topic, your punchline, or both. Often they can help create gags by combining ideas that are otherwise seemingly unrelated.
I’m sure you’ve heard the question “What’s black and white and red all over?” The classic answer is “a newspaper.” This line refers to something that is black and white (a newspaper) and to something that is red. The punchline uses a play on words—“read” for “red.”
But “a newspaper” is not the only punchline. You can uncover other references. Something “black and white and red all over” could be a wounded nun . . . an embarrassed convict . . . a zebra with diaper rash. Even these are just the tip of the iceberg.
And that’s what we want you to work on—uncovering more of that iceberg. Come up with fifteen to twenty additional answers to the question “What is black and white and red all over.”
To begin, make a list of references—anything you can think of that is black and white.