At almost every humor writing workshop I teach, someone eventually says:
“I’m a writer. I don’t do jokes.”
What they mean is that they write humorous essays or stories but don’t consider themselves joke writers.
What I want to say is, “Good luck being funny without jokes.”
Instead, I politely conduct a courtroom-style cross-examination.
The rebuttal begins with a simple question:
“Was Mark Twain a humorist or a comedian?”
The audience confidently answers: “Humorist.”
That’s when I present the evidence.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
It only takes a few Twain quotes to convince the jury that America’s greatest humorist wrote jokes.
And like every successful humorist, Twain understood a simple truth:
The fundamental building block of humor is the joke.
If you want to become a funnier writer, you need to raise your joke IQ.
The first step is becoming a connoisseur of gags.
Fortunately, the internet makes this easy. You can search jokes by topic, comedian, or writer and quickly study the mechanics behind humor.
As you explore jokes, start building what I call a joke bank.
When I wrote Comedy Writing Secrets, I relied on a spreadsheet containing thousands of jokes. A joke bank lets you study structure, timing, and word economy—the essential mechanics behind humor.
Over time, patterns begin to appear. You’ll notice favorite joke structures and start developing a feel for how humor works on the page.
Eventually something interesting happens.
You start thinking in jokes.
And one day you’ll be able to say—without any literary guilt:
“I’m a writer.
And I do jokes.”
