Tips for Remembering, Telling, and Making Up Your Own Jokes
from You Must Be Joking!
by Paul Brewer
Cricket Books 2003

Don't you hate it when you hear a really good joke and the next day you try to tell it to someone and can't even remember how it goes? Or worse yet, you start telling the joke, and, and you mess up the punch line? Here are some tips to help you remember, tell and create your own jokes.

1. First of all, you have to want to tell jokes. (Making people laugh is a lot of fun!) It helps to tell the jokes you like the most. The funnier you think a joke is, the more likely it is to stick in your brain.
2. When you hear a good joke, write it down. Start a "Jokes" journal, or create a "Jokes" file on your computer. Organize by types (riddles, etc.) and subjects (sports, etc.)
3. Making up your own jokes is not hard. A typical joke has two parts: a setup and a punch line. For example, in this riddle the setup is obvious it's a question:

   What's Godzilla's favorite sandwich? (setup) Peanut butter and deli. (punch line)

   The punch line will often answer the question in an outrageously different way than you might expect. In this case, peanut butter and jelly is a common sandwich, but Godzilla is a giant monster that eats everything. He would eat the entire deli (short for delicatessen, where sandwiches are made), which rhymes with "jelly."

4. The more fun you have playing around with the sounds and meanings of words, the funnier your jokes will be. List sounds and words that are fun to say and make you giggle (oodles, noodles, poodles, etc.) and make up jokes that use them in the punch lines. Write down words and see what they have in common, and use this as a seed to grow a riddle or a joke. For example:

   Alien + surfing + galaxy = a joke Q: Where do aliens surf? A: In the galax-sea.

5. Knock-knock jokes are pretty easy to make up. Start with a name that sounds like the beginning of a sentence. For example, the name "Isadore" sounds like "Is the doorÉ" Finish up this knock-knock with whatever you think sounds funny, and it might go something like this:

   Knock, knock. Who's there? Isadore. Isadore who? Isadore unlocked? I want in!