Boost Your LPM Rating at Work

How to Write Killer Jokes

Everyone knows it’s a good thing to use humour in presentations. And since we all agree on the importance of humour, I’m going to go right to the nuts and bolts and show you how to write a stand-up-comedy-style joke.

Stand-up comedy involves a very specific joke-writing format. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the quickest, most efficient way to get laughs. The goal of a stand-up comedian is to get as many laughs per minute (LPMs) as possible. Doing this involves brevity and good, tight editing.

Anatomy of A Joke

So let’s start with an overview. A joke must have at least one of two elements - exaggeration or surprise. A good way to tell if a joke will work is to ask yourself if it contains some sort of exaggeration of reality, some sort of unexpected twist, or both.

A joke also consists of two components. The first is a setup, which is a short statement about your topic. A good setup never takes longer than 20-30 seconds to deliver. By topic, I don’t necessarily mean your presentation topic, although it can be. But your topic can also be anything - airline food, getting up early in the morning, etc. Your setup is also not meant to be funny, because if it is, then the second part of the joke, the punchline, has nothing to contrast to.

The setup also contains your attitude to your topic, either stated or implied. Do you think your topic is weird? Stupid? Does it frustrate you? Bug you? Your attitude is what gives rise to the humour in the punchline. Often your topic isn’t what’s funny, it’s how you feel about your topic that gets the laugh.

The second part of the joke is the punchline, which contains the unexpected twist. The punchline justifies your setup. So if your setup is “It’s tough to eat healthy,” the punchline has to tell listeners why this is so.

Now let’s look at a complete joke:

Setup: It’s tough eating healthy. I’ve been doing the vegetarian thing and I do like a good vegetarian meal.

Punch: But I like it with pork.

This setup is a purely factual statement with an attitude (“It’s tough”) and the punchline contains the unexpected twist.

Remember: In your punchline, the punch word comes last. The punchline to the last joke is “But I like it with pork,” not “Pork is what I like it with.”

Article originally published in Volume 4-4 of Your Workplace magazine