How to Tell a Joke 101: A few tips for the beginner

Want to learn the secrets of telling a joke at a party or around the water cooler?  It's not as hard as it seems if you follow these simple tips.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

The goal of the joke is to get to the punchline. Eliminate any stray detail  A good boxer  wastes no motion getting to the knockout punch.

SELECT THE RIGHT JOKE

What are the keys to selecting the right joke?

• Did you laugh when you heard the joke? Start there.
• If you're a rookie - and why would you be reading this if you aren't? - make sure the joke is simple.
  
• Only tell a joke you've told before. That sounds like a catch-22, but you should definitely rehearse and refine the joke by yourself or with a trusted friend who already knows you're a dork before you try it out in public.
  
• Don't try to tell jokes you read in a book or online until you build up your repertoire and confidence in your ability to shape the delivery.
• Think of your audience before you launch into the joke. Obviously, don't tell ethnic jokes if you aren't a member of that tribe...unless you're very very very sure you're one of the homies OR you're just suicidal. And avoid jokes about race, sex, ethnicity and politics at work. That pretty much rules everything out, eh?

START WITH MODEST EXPECTATIONS

Telling a joke is not stand-up comedy. Jokes are very short stories with punchlines. Most classic comedians like Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld,  Dave Chappelle don't tell jokes. They perform extended skits and toss off one-liners or impressions that give you a really funny perspective on common situations. Remember the reduced-to-tears-heart-pounding- sweating-can't-breathe feeling you got when you saw your favorite comedian live? That's for the pros. Start small. Hope for a round of appreciative laughter.  Test market the joke in front of a small group of friends and family who will forgive you.

REMEMBER THE PUNCHLINE

This is the secret sauce. I'm telling you the real stuff here. Lots of people don't tell jokes simply because they don't remember them.

 

The key to remembering jokes is by working backwards from the punchline. If you can recall the punchline, the rest of the joke will come back to you. If you try to remember the ins and outs of the story you're much more likely to blow it and forget the punchline. Most folks I know who seem to be able to tell joke after joke tell me that they hear one punchline and it reminds them of another. I knew one guy who had over 40 parrot jokes. I have about  20 doctor jokes. Here are some of the punchlines:

 

•  Oh that? I'm chewing gum!
• For all the good they did me, I could have shoved them up my tuchis!
• I have a fish in de passage. Und iff I effer hef a bebbie, it'll be a mackerel!
• I know. You're too tense.
• If I'm going to be impotent, I want to look impotent.
• The worse news is I've been trying to contact you since yesterday.

Right, the punchlines aren't funny by themselves, but the brain seems to work by filing them away next to each other.

 

I once got into a joke telling competition with Maurice Ostrovsky, may he rest in peace. We traded about 30 jokes about being stranded on a desert island until I ran out. Just to show off, he rattled off three more. It was like watching Tiger Woods birdie the last three holes after he already won the tournament. Maurice was 92 years old at the time.  Me, I have trouble remembering what I had for dinner last night.

BE CONFIDENT

You gotta believe in your joke. If your audience senses any weakness they will laugh politely and go back to their conversation. So be confident. Don't rush to the punchline. 

LEAD THE LAUGH

You have to lead the laugh: cue your audience that it is ok to laugh and now is the time to do it. There are two ways to do this. One is to use pauses to control your audience's attention. Almost all good punchlines ask for a pause just before you deliver it. Another way to lead the laugh is to inflect your voice. The most obvious inflection is to build up a laugh in your voice ... without actually laughing.  You know that feeling iin your chest and then your throat when you're about to laugh but you're not quite there?  That's the feeling you should have and use in your voice towards the end of your joke. Build to it.