How to Make Good Funny Jokes

Writers are always advised, “Avoid Cliches”. But cliches prove to be a highly desired and one of the ,ost successful strategies in writing comedies. Cliches are quite often potential sources from where humour is derived. Some popular cliches can be directly made as captions accompanying cartoons. One can define a cliche as a predictable popular expression that has lost its freshness on account of overuse. Cliches are rampant in daily conversations amidst common people. Therefore it is very easy to understand them and relate them to various situations in life.

Element of suspense is a vital and the most important stimulant of laughter in the arena of comedy. Humorists make use of cliche to lead the listeners through what is familiar and predictable to something that is unexpected and surprising. This ends up creating a heap of laughter. There are some good examples to understand the use of cliche in jokes.

Word play is one of the most popularly established strategies for comedies. Cartoon strips, sketches, stand-ups and TV sit-coms very extensively make use of word-play technique. In fact, there are some words which are inherently funny. For instance, just the saying of words like “geezer”, “fart” or “hippopotamus” can evoke a spurt of laughter.

Yet another type of comic effect can be created by mispelling, misunderstanding or mispronouncing words. In such techniques, the laughter is created by double meanings and the double entendre. In this way, manipulating words is a powerful technique in comedy writing. During many instances, words conjure up images that look funny and result in creating a good joke. 

Humour can be crafted from various cliche tools including oxymorons, puns, similes, metaphors, bromides, jargons, aphorisms and malaprops in addition to some of the famous tiles of movies, songs and novels. 

There is yet another popular word play technique in creating jokes known as taking the literal meaning of a figure of speech. This can also be called as the simple truth or the plain truth. For example,  "call-me-a-taxi" joke is quite popular. Often we find children funny since they speak the truth and end up creating pure innocent humour.

Pun is one another type of cliché that can rather bring about a lower form of wit. Several humorists keep this technique on top of their list. Pun is easily understood and on account of its popular usage and wide association. Puns can give rise to lots of funny ideas. Therefore, unlike writers, humorists never look down upon clichés and make use of them innovatively and extensively to achieve humour.