Being able to write a good joke can be useful in many situations. Maybe you need a joke for a speech or a witty reply to a co-worker's email. Maybe you need to sound cooler in front of your kids... whatever it is, being able to write and have jokes for the right situation can be very helpful. It's also good if you want to be a standup comic, obviously.

Here are three joke writing exercises to help you warm up or get ideas flowing for specific topics. 

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1. The Topical Word List

Time:40 minutes (10 to make word list & 30 to write jokes)

For ten minutes, compile a word list of all words and phrases associated with a specific topic. You could have a speech at a hospital coming up, so do a word list of hospitals and doctors. If you don't have a specific topic, pick one that you have a lot of experience with. Maybe cars, football, being married... whatever it is, make a long word list of words associated with it. 

For example if you picked being married...

• Wedding
• Reception
• Honeymoon
• Divorce
• Kids
• House
• Mortgage
• Wedding rings
• Vows
• .... and so on

The next step is to take 30 minutes and write as many jokes as you can from words on your word list... for example...

Wedding - I didn't know that every day of marriage would be like our wedding. I mean you are drunk every night, you flirt with my sister and my mom keeps saying that I'm making a mistake.

Reception - A wedding reception is a lot like a tourist town. If the bars aren't open, I'm not going. I don't care how many times my recovering brother gets married.

And so on...

When writing in an exercise, it is important to keep moving, don't get stuck. It doesn't matter if they are funny or not at this stage. This is just to get you writing. When you are done with the exercise and you have a lot of newly written jokes, then you go back and pick the ones that are decent and spend a little time working them out.

2.  The Random Word List

Time: 30 minutes

For this exercise you take an existing word list you find on the Internet and write jokes to as many as you can in 30 minutes. You want to try and write about 10. Good word lists can be things like "funny phrases", "popular slang" or "Top 100 Songs of all time". 

These are more popular sayings and lists and they should be easier to write to. Using this technique can also build up a bunch of random jokes that you could store in your brain, just waiting for the right moment.

Example.

List of funny words - http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/improve-my-writing/a-list-of-funny-words-to-help-you-writing-funnier-stories

Find a good word list and write jokes using the words or phrases.

3. Roasting The News

Time:20 minutes

Find a news article that seems funny or outlandish to you and spend 15 minutes making jokes about the story. Find funny angles, make fun of the people and just write as many jokes as possible in 15 minutes. 

This is a good habit to get into when you are reading the news in the morning or whatever. Just think of funny things to say about the story. Write them down.

If you do this several times a day, you will build up a long list of topical news jokes that could be used in many situations.

Example:

Article - ‘Forget the Facebook leak’: China is mining data directly from workers’ brains on an industrial scale

Jokes

• Breaking - China discovers that 100% of people who know about Steemit think about Steemit 100% of the time.
• China is now reading minds, great, now they'll know how much time Americans think about themselves.
• If companies can read minds yet, when can we start charging publishing fees on our thoughts?

Just write what comes to you. The best ones, take and rework them until you have a good joke.

I hope these help. I use them to get me started when I have a writing session. 

Try them out and let me know what you come up with.

Good luck and keep writing.

Hit me up in the comments with any questions.

Thank you for reading and your support.