Now let's have a little walk-through of using THREES. Our target is going to be me. Our hostility will be me getting angry at a buggy collector at the grocery store who carelessly allows a buggy to smash into my car. The realism will be that nobody is perfect, perhaps he's a perfectly good buggy boy. This one moment being the single lapse in an otherwise perfect career of collecting buggies. The exaggeration will be that I will completely lose my mind at the tiny little mark that is made on my car. The emotion will come from the manager of the store who doesn't want to have to pay me for the damage to my car. The surprise will be the buggy boy laying some philosophy on me in order to diffuse the situation.
My last paragraph might have been huge but I swear, this will become a short joke. We want to communicate as much as we possibly can with as few words as possible. Some elements of THREES might not be necessary. We may discover that a funnier joke can be created by cutting some aspects of THREES out. So here's my first attempt: Raging lunatic expects professionalism from renegade buggy collector. That doesn't really imply that my car has been nicked. How about: Careless bagger allows wayward buggy to nick random parked car, unveiling angry lunatic.
I'm using a sort of news headline kind of format for these, but this joke and almost any joke can be modified to work for a different type of performance. If I wanted to do this for stand-up, I'd change it to this: "When the bagger at the grocery lets a buggy make a nearly microscopic mark on my car... I transform... into the angriest judge of professionalism. It doesn't matter how many times... I've been fired... spoiler, it's been a lot." I might pause for laughter and then add in a sinister voice, "it just takes one mark." This could still use some work before I take it on stage, but I think you understand what I'm getting at. With a few changes in how you present the elements of the joke, you can adapt it to different kinds of performance.
So, what about our last rendition of the joke in the written form, this here: Careless bagger allows wayward buggy to nick random parked car, unveiling angry lunatic. Well, wasn't I going to add in a part about the kid being a philosopher and he drops some knowledge on me that changed my whole perspective on the world? I've decided that element would needlessly extend the joke for my purposes. Also getting axed, the part with the manager begging me not to sue. Although, this springs to mind: Spiteful bagger clangs buggy into parked car to make critical manager squirm. This changes the whole character of the bagger. Now he's some little shit doing something bad to get at the manager who keeps criticizing him.
We could go a bit further and say: Spiteful bagger clangs buggy into parked car unveiling angry lunatic for critical manager to deal with. This is okay and I've gotten myself to smile throughout this process. Which is really why I love jokes and working on them so much. Because they make me and others happy. But this version of the joke takes a lot of words to communicate a few things. Try this: Spiteful bagger clangs buggy into parked car unveiling angry lunatic for micro manager to deal with. Now this feels almost perfect and the only word that I changed was critical to micro.
Everybody hates a micro manager. Now we are on the kid's side. We're glad that he's caused an emotional explosion in the parked car. The manager has to clean up his mess and we're glad for that because it's what the asshole micro manager deserves. Plus, there isn't really anything all that bad happening to anyone, nobody is getting seriously harmed. The nick on the car is a small repair and won't cost whoever has to pay for it all that much. The kid probably won't get fired, these things happen and he'll probably get another chance. Maybe the manager will lay off from now on. All of this is speculation, but it's plausible and we don't have to feel guilty for laughing at the situation.
To turn this into stand-up comedy I think the best perspective to adopt would be the one of a former buggy boy reflecting on a sure fire method for finding an angry person. Maybe something like this: "If you want to find out if there is an angry man in a car...smack the car with a buggy. This will create two angry people, the person in the car and...your manager." Maybe we don't need the second part about the two angry people being created but it still communicates the general idea that we got from the concept that we settled on earlier. I like this enough that I will probably try it out at the next open mic that I go to. Then, I'll know for sure which parts to keep based on the audience reaction.
Applying the elements featured in THREES is a great place to start when writing a short joke. Another great tool or tools to apply are the funny filters. These funny filters come from the amazing book How To Write Funny by Scott Dickers. The funny filters are shock, irony, character (1-3 traits), hyperbole, reference, wordplay, analogy, parody, madcap, meta and misplaced focus. Learning and applying the funny filters to my joke writing has been a game changer. I have been writing funnier jokes more consistently ever since I started using the funny filters in earnest.
To get the best explanation of the funny filters, you'll want to pick up a copy of the book. I have a paperback version and an audible version. Both are great tools, one for improving on the road and the other for improving at home. Shock can be violence, nastiness, sexual type stuff. Anything that would be thought of as shocking to the general public. Although, you're going to want to keep the material to something where nobody gets seriously hurt. It's harder for people to laugh at something that caused actual damage and harm to someone.
Irony is when the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen takes place. Character works best when you have your 1-3 traits established and then you just put the character in situations that complement those traits. Hyperbole is extreme exaggeration. I think you probably get reference humor. One great reference joke I can think of is when Norm MacDonald was hosting some sports award show. It was around the time of the OJ Simpson murder trials. Norm congratulates the player that won the Heisman and says "This is something that nobody can ever take away from you...Unless you kill your wife and a waiter." This is reference and shock humor packed into one tight package. The subject of killing is shocking and the reference to the trial is the reference humor. Norm is a legend.
Wordplay is any kind of joke that makes use of the double meanings of words. One of my favorites that I've written is: Attorney turned priest cross examines the Lord. Cross is the word with the double meaning. Attorneys cross examine witnesses and Priests examine the importance and reverence of what happened on the cross. It's not a side splitting joke but it's fun.
An analogy is a comparison of two things for the sake of explanation. The process of creating jokes using the parts of an analogy can also be called the joke collider. This technique comes from the fabulous book The Serious Guide to Joke Writing by Sally Holloway. To make use of the technique, you make two separate lists of unrelated topics. Then you try to smash them together into jokes. I find that one of the easier ways to generate jokes from the lists is to put them into the form of an analogy. Doing that challenges me to find the similarities of two things that are almost certainly not similar. It's a consistent method for creating jokes.
Parody is when you make fun of something by perfectly mimicking it but in an outrageous and funny kind of way. Like the news reports from The Onion. Madcap is the silly, Bugs Bunny and the Three Stooges type stuff. A meta joke is the making of a joke about a joke. Further, jokes about the joke making process. Some comedians use meta humor when they make jokes about their act while they are performing. Misplaced focus is when you purposefully miss the point. Something like worrying about the mark on the exterior of your car when the engine is on fire.
The process that I demonstrated earlier about how to shorten out a joke is more or less the same for each joke concept. Using THREES, the funny filters and the joke collider method, you should have no shortage of concepts and therefore material to work with. Once you've made use of these methods and you have something that you're ready to refine, you start removing unnecessary words. Or substituting better words that communicate more while taking up less space. You might make ten or more versions of the same joke before you're really happy with it. You can try them all out at the open mic or in your writing or whatever. All that matters is that you get started writing your own short jokes. Get more laughs by saying less. Thanks for reading and make sure to share with any other funny people that might find this to be useful.
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