Day 5: Writing Weird and Freaky Jokes
Lillian Stone helps you get freaky (with jokes)
Welcome to Day 5 of the One Funny Line challenge.
Today’s prompt comes from Substacker, humorist, and author.
Greetings, Humor Me readers!
I’m Lillian, and I love freaky jokes. When I say “freaky,” I mean surprising, visceral, intensely specific and often absurd humor. Colin Nissan is the king of this; I also dabble. (See my piece “Just What About the Phrase “Don’t Leave Cameron Alone With the Goddamn Cured Meats” Do You Not Understand?” for more info.)
Don’t get me wrong: Freaky jokes don’t have to be gross, nor must they be related to deli meats in any way. At their core, freaky jokes are about highly specific world-building. I’m a firm believer that even the most grounded humor pieces can benefit from a dash of Freak.
Take Susanna Wolff’s recent Shouts & Murmurs piece, Thanksgiving Itinerary Suggestions From Your Mom. The tone is grounded throughout, but Susanna cranks up the Freak in a few spots that make me laugh out loud. (“The church consignment sale where I found those great snow pants” is so good. She could’ve stuck with “the church consignment sale,” but she took that setting and ran with it to nail one extremely specific joke.)
Whether you’re punching up a script or digging into a grounded humor concept, try these three HOT, SPICY, BEEFY TRICKS to embrace your inner FREAK.
3 steps to embrace your inner freak for joke heightening
Step 1: Write your joke on a literal piece of literal paper.
We’re going analog, baby! When I want to heighten a joke, I write it out on my trusty legal pad. I don’t write full humor pieces in analog mode—but, for whatever reason, physically writing out a joke helps my brain imagine other possibilities. The act of writing it out tells my brain: Alright, time to tinker. Time to do surgery. (Sorry, did I not mention I’m a MEDICAL DOCTOR?)
Step 2: Blow it up 20 times.
The joke, not the paper.
Number your page 1 through 20. Then, reconfigure one element of your joke 20 times. 20 isn’t a magic number, per se, but it’ll get your brain unstuck.
Example: “The billionaire died of pneumonia.”
For this example, I want to freakify the billionaire’s cause of death to get maximum laughs. So I’ll number my page 1 through 20, and brainstorm 20 other, freakier causes of death. They might look like:
The billionaire died from Weird Acupuncture.
The billionaire died after catching a glimpse of the sexy ghoul haunting his Ferrari.
The billionaire died of pneumonia, then came back to life with the help of an arcane ritual, then died again via possum attack.
And so on. Challenge yourself to make each rep freakier than the last.
Step 3: Go nuts on Thesaurus.com.
This might be controversial, but it’s 2023, and my brain is full of global despair and cat pics. I’m not always gonna have the best synonym close at hand.
Once you’ve heightened your joke, comb through the language to see if you can freakify any of the individual words.
Example: “The billionaire died after catching a glimpse of the sexy ghoul haunting his Ferrari.”
Post-thesaurus example: “The billionaire died after catching a glimpse of the voluptuous wraith haunting his Ferrari.”
Nice!
Lillian Stone is the author of EVERYBODY’S FAVORITE, a humorous essay collection praised by Glamour, Vulture, Publisher’s Weekly and, weirdly, Bob Odenkirk. She also writes THE BIG ONE, a weekly Substack about the annoying practicalities of publishing and creative living. (Read: taxes.) Find her on Instagram at @originalspinstr.
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