Jokes, Humour, Laughter: The Secrets of Being Funny is a textbook intended to help you master your skills in creating, modifying, or telling a joke, or evoking laughter. This textbook provides detailed instructions with follow-up questions to teach you how to improve your delivery of jokes, write comedic work, improve weak jokes, or understand how to make people laugh. This book will empower you with a solid foundation in understanding and exploiting situations to add humour—the spice that makes communication more interesting and entertaining.

Jokes, Humour, Laughter: The Secrets of Being Funny analyzes the structures and patterns of comedic situations. This allows you to see the basic parts of a successful joke. It then teaches you how to create your own original jokes. You will also learn how to use a combination of techniques to craft and strengthen a joke to guarantee thunderous laughter.

Table of Contents
About the Author vii
Acknowledgments viii
PART I: Essentials
1. Introduction 1
2. You Must Build/Construct Your Case 4
3. Use the Appropriate Vehicle for Your Comedic Routine 5
4. Selecting Jokes for This Book 7
5. Developing an Effective Routine 9
6. The Knowledge of a Comedian 11
7. Sources for Jokes 12
8. Background Information 15
9. Joke Analysis—Breaking It Down 17
10. Joke Analysis—Steps in Breaking It Down 20
PART II: Joke Categories
11. Body Imperfections 25
12. Egos Clobbered, Revenge, and Reversals 32
13. Jokes for Clever Folks 40
14. Glimpse Their Thoughts and Unforeseen Implications 47
15. Cute Statements—Poetically Put 55
16. Down the Garden Path 62
17. Targeted Groups 71
18. Misunderstandings 81
19. Puns 90
20. Riddles and Knock-Knocks 99
21. Trick Jokes 103
22. I Can Play That Game Too 108
23. Combining Unrelated Concepts 114
24. Not Applicable 121
25. The Speaker’s Ignorance 129
26. Explanations—Usual and Unusual 137
27. Solutions 147
28. Faulty Conclusions 157
29. Consistency of Behaviour 163
30. You See What I Mean 168
31. Visual Comedy 174
32. Going Deep 181
And Don’t Forget… 187
Conclusion 193


Jokes, Humour, Laughter: The Secrets of Being Funny