We ask almost every comedian we interview the same question: how do you write a joke? No two have given the same answer. One writes by hand and finishes on a keyboard. One scores every punchline out of five in a spreadsheet. One says creative block does not exist, and one says he cannot force a joke at all. One of the most admired observational comics in Britain told us he does none of it.
This piece puts twenty-five of those answers in order, from the first idea to the finished bit. They disagree about method. They agree, almost without exception, about what the work is for.
Jump to: Where jokes come from · Page or stage · Setup, punchline, tag · Writing on demand · Testing and cutting · Seven rules they share · Common questions
Where jokes come from
A conversation. For Krystyna Hutchinson, a joke usually starts when she says something funny to a close friend and thinks, “that’s a bit!” She writes half of it out with pen and paper, because typing does not work for her, and leaves the rest to find on stage. Read our interview with Krystyna Hutchinson.
An annoyance. Ian Edwards, whom Bill Burr has introduced as one of the best comedy writers, found a new angle on airline material, a subject comedians have worked since the 1950s. It came from feeling cheated by baggage fees. When something makes him angry, he says, “I feel compelled to write a joke about it.” He calls it his way of “asking to speak to the manager”. Read our interview with Ian Edwards.
A passing thought. John Jacobs keeps a list of joke topics on a small piece of paper and looks at it before he goes on. The thoughts arrive at any time of day and go into his phone. He does not sit down to write. “I don’t think you can really force creativity to happen. It just hits you.” Read our interview with John Jacobs.
The shower and the news. Diogo Portugal writes from two sources. Some ideas come in the shower, from his own life, and he exaggerates them into stories. The rest come from the week’s headlines. Read our interview with Diogo Portugal.
Already in its language. Manu Maciel performs in English and Portuguese and rarely translates. The premise, she says, arrives in the language the joke will be written in. We looked at that problem in our piece on comedy in translation.
Page or stage: where the writing happens
Jason Salmon has the neatest description of the route a joke takes.
“My first writing is in a notebook, my last writing is on a keyboard.”
Everything in between happens in front of an audience. For his first six months, he says, he had “premises and thoughts and clutter” and no jokes, until a friend sat him down in a diner and they wrote one together. Read our interview with Jason Salmon.
Others lean further towards the stage. John Achkar writes everything in his notes, then walks on intending to tell the best story he can, and stays alert for what turns up. “I feel I’m here, I’m writing this while performing.” Read our interview with John Achkar.
Aarushi Agni came to comedy as a poet and songwriter, for whom the right word decides whether a sentence lands. Improv loosened that. “Sometimes I’ll riff something really good and I won’t even remember it, because I was in a playful mind, not a writing mind.” Read our interview with Aarushi Agni.
At the far end is Seann Walsh. We asked how he crafts a joke with an act-out, and whether he writes the movements down. “I wouldn’t do any of that. It’s just how it comes out. If people laugh, it stays. If they don’t, it goes.” Read our interview with Seann Walsh.
And at the other end is Marina Di Marzo, a writer first, who writes and writes until someone stops her, and then has to memorise all of it. Read our interview with Marina Di Marzo.
Byron Bertram has never written a fresh five minutes to order. He writes constantly and feeds new bits into a longer set, between older jokes he trusts, until they settle. Read our interview with Byron Bertram. The conventional method is in our guide to the tight five.
Setup, punchline, tag: what they say about structure
Ask where a joke lives or dies and Manu Maciel does not hesitate.
“The setup. Always the setup. A weak punchline is a crime, but a strong setup is what makes the punchline almost inevitable in retrospect. Trying to compensate on the punchline is like building a skyscraper on a swamp.”
She also writes for other comedians, and thinks of herself as a surrogate: she takes a premise, grows it in their voice and hands it back. Read our interview with Manu Maciel.
Fletcher Michael learned the same lesson from a joke that died. He set it up at the top of a scene and paid it off at the end, and the audience had forgotten the setup by then. “You need to make sure that your setup is as good as your punchline.” Read our interview with Fletcher Michael.
Judy Carter, who has taught joke writing for decades, explained it to us through Joan Rivers. Rivers took out every unnecessary word to reach the joke sooner. Then came a quick setup, the punchline, and a run of extra punchlines on the same setup, which comedians call tags. Rivers aimed for a laugh every ten seconds, and sometimes every three. Read our interview with Judy Carter.
CeeKay Brown opens her act with ten minutes of one-liners for a structural reason. It “gets the audience prepared for what a joke sounds like”. A room has to learn the rhythm of setup and punchline before it will follow a comedian into a story. Read our interview with CeeKay Brown.
Stephan Dyer builds a set the same way: three to five “bulletproof” one-liners, then longer bits of a minute and a half to four minutes. His school teaches thirteen joke structures, on the principle that if structure can be taught, humour can. Read our interview with Stephan Dyer.
Irene Woo wrote her first hour in sections, a tech section and a childhood section, and wrote far more than she needed. Then she kept the strongest jokes and arranged them around one event that the show keeps returning to. “I wanted this to be stand-up first.” Read our interview with Irene Woo.
Ian Edwards has a rule about swearing. He may use a curse word to sell a new joke the first time he tries it. Then he takes it out. “I’m like, that’s not good enough. I have to come up with a real punchline.”
For the mechanics in detail, see how Williams, Carlin and Gervais build a joke, the anatomy of a callback and why timing is everything.
Writing on demand, and whether creative block is real
Lucy Boisvert once had three sketch deadlines every month, and came out of it with a firm opinion.
“The only way to be creatively blocked is to say, I have creative block. People aren’t getting construction block when they don’t want to go to their construction job. You just have to go to work.”
She showed us how it is done. A script had a gap where a joke was needed: a character has seen something in a basement. She and her writing partner asked what is in a basement, then what was in a basement in the 1950s, reached a foosball table, and kept asking what kind until they had a line about the most sexist foosball table she had ever seen. “It’s not always fun. Sometimes you just have to make a joke appear.” Read our interview with Lucy Boisvert.
The playwright Hannah Ponturo is less cheerful about it and reaches the same place. “I hate writing. But having written, and having a piece to show, is delightful.” The problem, she says, is not block. It is the discipline of sitting down. Read our interview with Hannah Ponturo.
Tom Johnson’s method with his sketch partner is the least solemn of all: go to the pub and see what they can say to make each other laugh. Read our interview with Tom Johnson.
Larry Charles, who wrote for Seinfeld, offers the warning that belongs beside all of this. He and Larry David did not know how to structure a sitcom when they started, and ran on one principle: what is funny to us. Fifty years on he still believes it. “There is no right or wrong when it comes to comedy. There’s only the laughter.” You can learn every rule, he says, and none of them guarantees a laugh. Read our interview with Larry Charles.
Testing, scoring and cutting
Fail on purpose. Jason Salmon thinks every set should fail at something. If a joke goes perfectly he pushes it further, and further again, until the laughter stops. “That’s where your jokes become better. You find the end point.”
Say it wrong. Ian Edwards accepts that he will sometimes ruin his own joke. “Sometimes you have to say it wrong to say it right. It’s all information and a data gathering experience.”
Keep score. Jackie Joy records every show. Her punchlines go into a spreadsheet and are marked out of five. She is unimpressed by comedians who claim they simply walk on and are funny. Read our interview with Jackie Joy.
Move the joke before you bury it. When a joke she believes in keeps dying, Corinne Fisher tries it in different neighbourhoods or different cities, rewrites it a little, and asks a few other comedians to troubleshoot it. If it still fails she puts it away and returns in a few months. She also reads a run of bad sets as a signal: it means, she says, “I have graduated from that material”, and it is time to write more. Read our interview with Corinne Fisher.
Get an editor. Brendon Lemon, an American, wrote his Edinburgh show with the British joke writer Adele Cliff, who kept handing his material back. “These aren’t really jokes.” They went back and forth until each one was. Read our interview with Brendon Lemon.
Study the ones who did it. Danielle Slaughter has listened to Eddie Murphy’s Raw perhaps a hundred times, listening for the formulas. Her test for her own material is short. “Everything’s in service of the laugh.” Read our interview with her trio.
Ask if the line decides anything. The manager Barry Katz once talked a comedian out of a single line in an hour special by asking whether anyone would think the special was great with it and poor without it. His view of the best comedians is that they treat the audience “as the writing partner”. Read our interview with Barry Katz.
Seven rules they share
- Catch the idea when it arrives. A phone note, a scrap of paper, a notebook. Nearly everyone has a place for it.
- A premise is not a joke. Salmon had six months of premises before he wrote one joke. The work is turning the thought into a setup and a punchline.
- Fix the setup first. Maciel and Michael both say a punchline cannot rescue a weak or distant setup.
- Cut every word that is not needed. Carter on Rivers, and Edwards on swearing, are making the same point.
- Write more than you need. Woo, Di Marzo and Boisvert all overwrite and then choose.
- The audience finishes the joke. Salmon, Achkar, Hutchinson and Katz all describe the stage as the place where the writing is completed.
- The laugh is the only judge. Charles, Walsh and Slaughter put it in almost the same words. If people laugh, it stays.
If you are starting from nothing, we made a short video on the first steps.
Not every performer accepts these rules. For the comedian who broke all of them on purpose, read why comedians still talk about Andy Kaufman. And for where the raw material often comes from, see how thirteen comedians turned their worst moments into comedy.
Common questions about writing jokes
How do comedians write jokes?
Most start with a premise, a thought or complaint from their own life, and note it down. They shape it into a setup and a punchline, try it in front of an audience, and rewrite it according to the reaction. Many add tags, which are extra punchlines on the same setup.
Do comedians write their jokes down or make them up on stage?
Both. Nearly every comedian we spoke to writes something first, even if it is half a joke, and finishes it on stage. Jason Salmon starts in a notebook. Krystyna Hutchinson writes half the joke and riffs on the rest. A few, such as Seann Walsh, say they simply keep whatever gets a laugh.
What are the parts of a joke?
A premise is the idea. The setup gives the audience the information and points them in one direction. The punchline surprises them. A tag is a further punchline that needs no new setup. A callback is a reference to an earlier joke.
Is writer’s block real for comedians?
Opinions differ. Lucy Boisvert says it is not real and that the cure is to sit down and work. John Jacobs says he cannot force a joke and waits for it. Byron Bertram says his writing comes in waves, and that when it dries up he spends time with other comedians.
For more conversations like these, see all our comedian interviews.