How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

by Scott Dikkers

“Mind if I smoke?” No, do you mind if I fart? It’s one of my habits. Yeah, they’ve got a special section for me on airplanes now. I quit once for a year, you know, but I gained a lot of weight. It’s hard to quit. After sex I really have the urge to light one up. The two things being analogized are Smoking and Farting. Farting is overt, Smoking is hidden. Note how in a shorter joke, the hidden half of the Analogy is sometimes established overtly in the beginning but then never mentioned again. Once he establishes the subject of smoking at the top, Martin only alludes to tropes of smoking afterwards: special section on airplanes, lighting up after sex, trying to quit, etc. He doesn’t say “smoking” again. He only uses these common associations with smoking but applies them to farting. This is a technique called “mapping,” and it’s how Analogy works.