The four-time Emmy Award winner, Peabody Award winner, and two Writers Guild Awards recipient (which just need a little dusting) explains his process for writing comedy without losing his mind. Philosophers may debate the concept of comedy (fortunately keeping them too busy to fall into a life of crime), but the rest of us are more likely to wonder how we can make the audience laugh—or at least, entertain our friends and followers.

According to award-winning comedy writer Elliott Kalan, we need to stop looking out the window, waiting for jokes to walk by fully formed. What we need is a process to plant their suggestions, nurture their structure and phrasing, and ultimately harvest them as humorous material. In short, a farm. But for jokes.

In Joke Farming, Kalan explains that it is easier to write jokes when you have a reliable method to do so. All jokes, he argues, are built from the same elements: structure, suggestion, voice, tone, phrasing, and audience—and these elements can be applied to any comedic form, from stand-up to sitcoms and satire. Kalan analyzes examples from his own career—including jokes he wrote (and rewrote and rewrote...) as head writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—as well as material from a variety of comedians, writers, and filmmakers, highlighting the phrasing, timing, and precise details that make their work so funny.

Drawing from his experiences in professional writers' rooms as well as everyday life episodes, Kalan's guide to jokes will appeal to aspiring writers, their mentors, comedy enthusiasts, and anyone who has to speak at a wedding. Joke Farming demonstrates the direction toward a writing process that reduces stress and anxiety and produces more reliable yields: an unexpected tagline, a funny word choice, and—most importantly—a bigger laugh from the audience, whoever they may be.