You want to be funnier on the page? Want to know the funniest trick in writing?
Funny makes readers feel like they’ve found a friend, not just a book.
Here’s the single best trick I know to bond with readers.
Comedy Runs In Threes
The Trilogy is not simply a religious term. Three-peat is gold in writing.
The first mention sets up a pattern. The second confirms it. The third breaks it — and that’s where the laugh lives. Every time.
Why? Because readers love to be surprised, to guess wrong — and laughter is the release of embarrassment.
Here’s a classic example:
“I eat my meals alone. My wife and I take separate vacations. I sleep in the guest bedroom. I’m doing all I can to keep our marriage together.”
Read that again. You were nodding along, checking boxes, and then your brain zigged when it expected to zag.
That’s the joke. Your reader’s brain ran ahead and predicted what came next. You delivered something else entirely. The mismatch is the laugh. Humor only works when the audience guesses incorrectly. They’re smart. You were smarter. That earns their respect.
Two items is a statement. Three items is a joke. It’s practically biology.
PAP is Not Your Mother’s Papa
The technical term for this structure is PAP: Preparation, Anticipation, Punchline. You set up the situation (Preparation). You build the expectation through repetition (Anticipation). Then you yank the rug (Punchline).
The punchline should almost always land on the LAST WORD of the sentence. Write the punchline first, then build backward.
“keep our marriage together.”
bedroom
vacation
meal
The intimacy builds from dinner date, to trip, to bedroom. The expectation is more of the same. What is delivered is contrived love. And that resonates with anyone who knows that marriage takes work. Money helps, too.
Funniest Tricks in Writing
Practice specificity over vagueness. Jokes with precise details land. “An empty chocolate milk carton squashed flat in the school hallway, a brown stain showing how it bled out,” lands better than, “an old milk carton flattened.”
Self-deprecation always works. You are the target of the joke. You are cut low; everyone else is superior. Undercut yourself before the audience can. It disarms them and signals you’re in on the joke and perfectly fine sacrificing your status for their benefit.
Deadpan. Deliver absurd material in a completely straight, matter-of-fact tone. Never wink at the audience. The humor lives in the gap between your total seriousness and the ridiculousness of what you’re describing.
Callbacks. Plant something in the first paragraph and pay it off at the end. The second landing is always funnier than the first. Doesn’t matter what you plant. Simply keep returning to the plant. In time, the audience knows the plant is funny. Even if the plant is a weed.
Try the rule of three in your next scene. Try it in your next blog post. Try it at dinner tonight.
And if you fail? If my advice doesn’t work?
Eat your meal alone in the guest bedroom.