Sally Holloway - The Serious Guide to Joke Writing: How To Say Something Funny About Anything

THE SERIOUS GUIDE TO
JOKE WRITING

SALLY HOLLOWAY

First Published in Great Britain 2010
by www.BookShaker.com

Copyright Sally Holloway

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To Steve, for all the jokes weve
shared and all those yet to come.

This book has been written over two years.

When I talk about the class I actually mean a number of classes I have taught over that time and Im very grateful to all of the participants.

Amused Moose Comedy Writing classes (2004, 2005, 2006) were my early guinea pigs along with the 2007 Jokes Jokes Jokes class held in Hastings.

Paul F. Taylor, Ayad Andrews, Kim Dolman, Maureen Younger Isabelle Tonge, Christine Lawrence, David the mystery man from Hastings , Paul Westwood, Kevin Conn, Sue Lenier, John Kelly, Bea Lacey, Steve Savage, Martin Ansell, Val Lee, Karl Edrik (RIP, hes out there somewhere enjoying the cosmic joke) and Steve Rose from my two 2008 Joke writing Classes. These good people sparked the whole idea of a joke writing book.

Jennifer Allen, Danny Banks, Karl Davison, Anton Hammond, Kara Jeffrey, Bruce Knight, Bea Lacey, Val Lee, Sue Lenier, Clive Osborne, Kaye Quinley and Steve Savage from the 2008 Stand-up Course. They created the Strikes Joke-web in Chapter 3.

Heather Alexandra, Martin Ansell, Simon Cooper, LouLou Cousin, Karl Davison, Jean Kelley, Anton Hammond, Anita Jardine, Val Lee, Sidonie Mitchel Wade, Clive Osbourne, Suzi Payton and Steve Savage from the 2009 Intermediate Stand-up Class. They did the Art-Relationships Double Joke-web in Chapter 5.

Thanks also to the 2008 Amused Moose, Edinburgh Comedy Writing Course as well as the people who attended my workshop at the 2008 British Association of Comedy Writers Conference which the Carol Vorderman exercise in Writing Jokes From Newspapers (Chapter 7) is based on.

Id like to give a particular mention to...

Elisa Roche from the Daily Express who kindly gave me permission to use her article Its sum task to find a new Carol in Writing Jokes From Newspapers (Chapter 7).

Paul Westwood, Sue Lenier and John Kelly (2008 Joke writing Class) who wrote nearly all the jokes in Redefinitions - How Did The Class Do (Chapter 1).

LouLou Cousin and Jean Kelley (2009 Intermediate Stand-up course)who gave me permission to use their homework and wrote the bulk of the jokes in Hadron Joke Collider - How Did The Class Do (Chapter 5).

Piers Campbell (Amused Moose Comedy Writing Course) who wrote the Mohican story in one of my early classes and I have used it as an example ever since. It appears in Chapter 1.

Bea Lacey (2008 Joke Writing Course) for showing me that the Surrealist Inquisition was a viable method of joke writing and for some people its where its at!

Ayad Andrews and Sue Lenier who wrote various jokes featured in several How Did the Class Do sections. Ayad also read the mostly terrible early drafts of this book and gave me encouragement anyway.

Angie McAvoy from whose writing method I developed the Stream-of-Consciousness exercises.

Andrew Jobbins who experimented on jokes with me in the late nineties and with whom I discovered that jokes exist in the ether.

Hils Jago for knowing I could teach joke writing before I knew it myself.

Simon Dowd who is the comic who used to write toppers for my sketches (Chapter 8), and whose Friday afternoon phone calls (Chapter 13) made me reassess what comedy was all about. He gave me endless support writing this book.

Rachel Spring and John Kelly who, along with Paul Westwood (already mentioned above), proof read this book at different stages.

The Illiterati. My local creative writing group who allowed me to read them sections of this book (sometimes over and over again).

Andrea Samuelson for endless support and power chats.

Sue Middleton for being so supportive always.

Dan Evans, whose comments on my manuscript were so insightful that this book is better for him having read it.

Joe Gregory for redrawing my cartoons so wonderfully.

Steve Amos and SATC for kick-starting my comedy courses in Hastings.

Finally, I am very grateful to Tim Vine, Jason John Whitehead and Tiernan Dooyab for letting me use their beautifully crafted jokes as examples in this book.

Who here is funny with their mates? I always ask my new classes.

A few people always sheepishly put their hand up.

Dont be shy, I say. Because if youre funny with your mates you can transfer that skill to doing it for a living. You really can.

People start to look very pleased at this point.

BUT, I warn them, youre going to have to put some work in.

One of the biggest challenges I face as a joke writing tutor is that people want to write jokes without putting in any effort because thats how it feels when they are being funny with their mates.

I would argue that when youre with mates you are actually working quite hard without realising it. It seems easy because youre relaxed, youre confident, youre going over a well worn subject you know and love. The general chit chat of the group gives you numerous potential set-up lines to play off, and even though youre thinking really hard in order to do that, youre enjoying it so much that you dont even notice how furiously your brain is working and how totally focused you are.