Joke Farming
Philosophers may debate the meaning of comedy (thankfully keeping them too busy to fall into a life of crime), but the rest of us are more likely to wonder how we can make an audience laugh—or at least, how to entertain our friends and followers. According to award-winning comedy writer Elliott Kalan, we need to stop staring out the window, waiting for hilarious bits to stroll into view, fully formed. What we need is a process to plant their premises, tend to their structure and wording, and ultimately harvest them as funny material. In short, a farm. But for jokes.
In Joke Farming, Kalan explains that it’s easier to write jokes when you have a dependable method for doing so. All jokes, he argues, are built from the same elements: structure, premise, voice, tone, wording, and audience—...
My notes
Explaining a joke is a great way to ruin an already imperfect joke.
But I enjoyed this read on the process of creating jokes. The need to continually examine craft, and to refine based on those observations, is something that I've had to learn over my career. That first draft is not a pure draft. That even if you love a piece, if it's not contributing (or worse detracting) from the whole, you gotta throw it out.
The book does suffer in a few places.
1. Like many non-fiction books, it's a bit long with some folks that were added but don't feel like they needed to be.
2. The conclusion lacks the punch of fiction books, it's more of a summary than a summit.
3. It does explain jokes. Which gets old.
But a nice quick read for those looking to improve their creative work - be it humorous or not.