Joke Structure

Every joke has a setup and punchline. Heres a clean street joke1 to
illustrate the structure:
A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar and the bartender says:
What is this, some kind of a joke?
(rimshot)
Dont worry, this isnt like sentence diagramming. Its really quite
simple:
1 The Setup Establishes the premise of the joke by providing
the audience with the necessary background info. The setup
should be as tight as possible (new open mic comics tend to
ramble on with unnecessary details).
2 The Punchline Wham! The laugh line. The setup led the
audience in one direction, and you surprised them by suddenly
going off in a different direction. That twist, that element of
surprise, is a punchlines chief ingredient.
3 Tags (optional) Also known as toppers, tags are additional
punchlines. Sometimes they build on the original, sometimes
they twist and snap back and forth in surprising new directions.
Think of a skiier slaloming back and forth, twist, twist, twist
Since comedians are performing for a crowd of strangers, they have to
supply the premise themselves.2

Examples from the professionals

Now lets see how professional stand-up comedians do it with their

original material. Heres a gem from the great Jimmy Carr:
It shouldnt be called the Make A Wish Foundation, should it?
It should really be called the Make Another WishWe Cant Do
Anything About THAT Foundation.
Beautiful. Setup, punchline laugh.
Even so-called one-liners contain a setup and punchline. Heres one
from B.J. Novak (of NBCs The Office fame):
Battered women: sounds delicious.
The first two words are the setup, the second two words are the
punchline. It might be tastelesspardon the punbut its also a
brilliantly concise joke.
Now lets take a look at one of my favorite bits from the late great
Mitch Hedberg.
The setup is about twenty seconds long, which is longer than average
but not so much as to lose the audienceplus, Mitchs laconic
delivery is pretty amusing in and of itself. More importantly, it paves

the way for not just the punchline, but more than half a dozen tags,
for a total of 9+ laughs in under a minute.
To get the full effect, I strongly recommend pressing play and then
following along below (language NSFW):

Were going to the restaurant on the weekends, its busy, so they start
a waiting list. They start calling out names, they say DuFrene, party of
two. Table ready for DuFrene, party of two. And if no one answers
theyll say the name again DuFrene, party of two. But then if no
one answers, theyll just go right on to the next name. Bush, party of
three.
Yeah, but what happened to the DuFrenes? No one seems to give a
shit!
Who can eat at a time like this?
People are missing!
You fuckers are selfish.
The DuFrenes are in someones trunk right now
with duct tape over their mouths, and theyre hungry.
Thats a double-whammy.
We need help. Bush, search party of three.
You can eat once you find the DuFrenes.
Look at all those tags and laugh breaks! On the page its pretty funny,
but Mitchs brilliant delivery are what catapult it into Hall of Fame
territory. (The Dufrenes is just one of the many hilarious tracks on
Mitch Hedbergs Strategic Grill Locations available as MP3s from
Amazon.)

Practice, practice, practice

In an earlier entry I talked about the Top 10 Jokes in America

according to Readers Digest. (Incidentally, the jokes were so terrible
that RD immediately went bankrupt.)
As those jokes demonstrate, simply writing jokes is easy, if you
dont care how funny they are. If youd like to write funny jokes, start
with the structure. The funny will eventually come with time and
experience.