First let’s examine the one-liner joke. Since this is the simplest type of joke it’s easier to understand the elements and how they fit together. Later, I’ll go deeper into the variations of how jokes work in storytelling.
SETUP AND PUNCH
Let’s begin with what most people already know about one-liner jokes. Traditionally, they contain two parts: Setup and Punch.
Why don’t you use the term punch line?
For one-liner jokes that term works well, but as we get into the non one-liner variations, it quickly becomes apparent that some joke Punches are not always lines. To avoid confusion, we’ll use the term punch.
Let’s examine this one-liner joke:
“I’m on the Drinking Man’s Diet. It really works. I’ve already lost three days”
The Setup and Punch are usually defined in this way:
The Setup is the first part of the joke that sets up the laugh.
The Punch is the second part that makes you laugh.
And that’s great except for one small problem: it doesn’t really explain anything. Let’s see if we can do better.
To help explain the joke structure, I’ve designed a visual device, Greg Dean’s Comic Structure Diagram. When we put the above joke on Diagram 1 (next page) we can clearly identify the Setup and Punch:
You’ll notice that in this diagram I’ve added the words “expectation” and “surprise.” This is a key to understanding the mental processes of humor. Let me unpack that now.
WHAT JOKES DO
Expectation and Surprise
The Setup and the Punch are directly related to expectation and surprise. Let’s keep looking at the same joke to understand the relationship between the Setup and expectation and the Punch and surprise.
Using the same joke in Diagram 2:
Notice how the Setup creates a false expectation and the Punch comes as a surprise. The trick is you cannot be surprised unless you’re expecting something else first.
This understanding of expectation and surprise actually goes back to Socrates. This was an important breakthrough in humor theory because it established that jokes have two parts.
And here they are:
The Setup, which creates an expectation.
The Punch, which reveals a surprise.
So now that you understand this, you should be able to write a joke?
Yeah, but I can’t. So what’s the deal?
The deal is simply this: it isn’t enough to know what a joke does. You need to know how a joke does what it does. And I’m going to explain that right now, just because you’re reading this eBook.
HOW JOKES WORK
Assumptions Create Expectations
It should be clear that what Setups do is cause us to have an expectation. To understand how jokes work, we must understand how the mind builds an expectation.
Here’s how. After hearing a Setup, we imagine a scene in our minds. Since this scene is only in our minds, it isn’t real. We’ve constructed it by making a series of assumptions based on our past experience so that the Setup makes sense to us. Then we accept what we believe the scene means, and then fully expect that belief to be true.
With jokes, making assumptions about the meaning of the Setup is what creates our expectations. Since the expectation is built from a collection of assumptions, it can function as a false expectation to misdirect the audience. This is what allows jokes to work.
What’s an assumption?
I’m sorry, I assumed you knew.
An assumption can be any thought based on remembering, taking something for granted, presupposing, conjecturing, presuming, forecasting, projecting onto, theorizing about, speculating upon, or accepting that something is as it’s always been. If that doesn’t help, try this definition:
Assumptions are everything you know or imagine, but aren’t directly perceiving right now.
That’s deep.
But it’s true. Anything you currently cannot see, hear, feel, taste, or smell exists only as an assumption in your mind. The chances are that it does exist, but since you have no direct evidence that it does, you’re making an assumption.
We do this because sane human beings, as a rule, have a profound need for things to make sense. If something doesn’t make sense, we’ll fill in the information so it will. And we do that by making assumptions based on our past experience.
Take this eBook for example. You know it’s a book because of your past experience with other eBooks. Now, since your perspective or point of view limits the information your senses can experience directly, while you’re reading one page, you can’t see the other pages. This is a fancy way of saying, it’s impossible to experience everything all the time.
But, because you have a mental model of what this and other eBooks are like, you assume the text will not end until the eBook is completed. You assume the writing will continue to be in English. You assume you’ll continue to read from left to right. You’re making assumptions about everything about this eBook you aren’t directly perceiving, right now.
Doing this is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary. Imagine a world without assumptions. You’d have to carefully test each step you took to make sure the floor would hold your weight. You’d have to peek behind everything to find out whether the backs were actually there. You’d have to look in a mirror to make sure you’re still human. You’d have to call the IRS every year to determine if they still wanted your money. Get the idea?
HOW SETUPS CREATE EXPECTATION
Target Assumption
The first joke mechanism I’d like to explain is the Target Assumption. Of the many assumptions you imagined based on this Setup,
“I’m on the Drinking Man’s Diet. It really works, I’ve already lost three…”
at least one will be the Target Assumption.
Here’s the Target Assumption on Diagram 3:
The function of a Setup is to misdirect the audience into accepting the false Target Assumption, he lost weight, as the Setup’s intended meaning.
It’s called the Target Assumption because the Punch targets this particular assumption created by the Setup and makes it wrong. Remember, you cannot be surprised unless you’re expecting something else first.
HOW PUNCHES CREATE SURPRISE
Reinterpretation
The next joke mechanism is the Reinterpretation, which is expressed by the Punch. Just as the Target Assumption creates a false expectation, the Reinterpretation must be an unexpected, yet compatible meaning of the Setup to create surprise.
Here’s the Reinterpretation on Diagram 4:
Here you see the Reinterpretation in action. The word “days” supplies the audience with an unexpected, yet compatible new way to see what it is that the speaker lost. And it makes the Target Assumption, that he lost weight, wrong.
The aim of the Reinterpretation is to shatter the Target Assumption, which creates surprise. When Punches shatter people’s assumptions, they laugh.
Here it is on Diagram 5:
Now we have the mechanism that explains expectation and surprise. The Setup’s Target Assumption creates a false expectation and the Punch’s Reinterpretation reveals a surprise.
Where do Reinterpretations come from?
Reinterpretations come from the kind of mind that notices what others assume, then uncovers or invents an unexpected, yet compatible interpretation. This is done by either going to the opposite or contradicting the Setup’s expectation.
Comedy writers and comedians continuously play the mental game of noticing what others assume, and then searching for an unexpected interpretation. I call this the comic leap.
Playing this mental game doesn’t always yield a funny idea for a joke. But, if you go through this pattern often enough, you’ll hit on a few assumptions you can find an unexpected interpretation for. Then decide if you want to present it publically to find out if it’s funny.
Most funny people aren’t even aware they’re playing this mental game as they have been doing it since they were children. The constant mental repetition of the comic leap eventually becomes the intuitive and spontaneous act of creating humor.
Welcome to the other side of the looking glass.
But what about all those funny comments I laugh at that don’t have Setups? Huh? What about those?
Calm down. I was just getting to that actually.