Set Up, Punchline, Set Up, Punchline: How I Write a Joke

Nothing is a joke with me. It just all comes out like one. ― Lorrie Moore, Like Life

I wish there was a simple way to write a joke. There isn’t. Actually, jokes are easy to write. Getting people to laugh at your jokes is the hard part. And that is the key to writing a good joke.

For stand-up comedians who are starting out, there are usually two types of jokes: long form and short form. Sometimes you have a version of both for a joke and you use one or the other depending on how much time you have on stage.

Long form is when you tell a story. There may or may not be a final punchline, but there are usually funny anecdotes or non-sequiturs sprinkled throughout the story that make people laugh. Maybe you tell a story about how a first date went: how you met through a Craigslist ad, you emailed back and forth for several days, you debated if they were a serial killer, you stalked them on Facebook, you ended up at Applebee’s for dinner after the background check cleared, and so on.

Short form jokes are your typical knock-knock type jokes. You don’t always ask a question and then answer it, but the joke is short and wrapped up in a few sentences.

I’m a good storyteller so you’d think I’d be really good at long form jokes but I’m usually not. I prefer to…