How to Write a Good Cartoon Caption

My Comics students and I are about to dive into gag cartoons. In the past I have just jumped straight in to having them brainstorm and draw cartoon ideas. I’ve used various approaches, one inspired by Ivan Brunetti, another inspired by Emily Flake. But this year I decided to back it up a bit. While my students can often come up with decent cartoon ideas, I have found that their caption writing can be lacking. After reading Larry Wood’s book, Your Caption Has Been Selected, I realized that I need to help them dig into understanding what makes a good caption first before we even start thinking about creating their own cartoons.

To start we’ll look at a ton of gag cartoons and talk about what makes them funny and how they work. Then we’ll look at the New Yorker caption contest and think about why we like or don’t like some of the winning captions. Then, I worked up the attached handout that we will use to come up with our own caption ideas for the caption contest. This handout was very much inspired, again, by Larry Wood’s book, but also by endless hours listening to the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Podcast, and, of course, writing hundreds of captions to my own cartoons. Hopefully we’ll come up with some good caption ideas and my students will better understand what makes a good caption versus a bad caption. Then, with that foundation laid, we will move on to making our own gag cartoons.