Writing funny - it’s a serious business
How using humour can add depth and energy to your work
We could all use a laugh, right? But ask anyone who has judged a writing competition, or been a literary editor, and most will tell you there’s a genuine dearth of humour in fiction.
That’s understandable, to some degree. A lot of us writers want to be seen as serious authors, tackling important themes. Some feel like humour is too far out of their comfort zone, or simply think humour is just too subjective, so not worth the effort.
What’s a writer’s breakfast of choice?
Synonym buns.
But I’d argue there’s a misconception about humour in fiction – that it has to result in light-hearted frippery, wordplay-heavy and lacking depth. Or that you have to set out to write a ‘funny’ story or book in its entirety.
Many writers feel they have to produce a comedic narrative that evokes a laugh-out-loud reaction from the reader. Guess what? You don’t. The best stories are not those that end up being forced and artificial in pursuit of laughs, but ones that introduce elements of humour in the service of a compelling narrative, adding richness and resonance to the mix.
Humour enables you to tackle taboo or sensitive subjects. It encourages writers to find a peculiar angle on an established topic, which is refreshing for readers. It provides a way to show the absurdity of the human condition, to integrate the bizarre (even in stories that deal in realism) or make a political comment, without the po-faced earnestness.
What do you get when you cross a writer with a deadline?
A really clean house.
I think it is useful to examine what humour in good writing is NOT. It’s not an elaborate set up for a punchline or twist. It is not stupid character names or forced jokiness. It is certainly not about writing broad, inappropriate humour. And it isn’t anything that dumps good writing to pitch for laughs.
Quite the opposite. Humour, handled well, can add depth. And the more you examine humour in writing stories and books, the more you understand what a complex topic it is. I have mused out a few thoughts below about where and how you can incorporate humour into your work, in the hope that you will be motivated to try it and explore the topic more widely for yourself. Go on, have a laugh…
Characterisation
Characterisation and humour can be a powerful combination. A flawed or otherwise unlikeable character can be made sympathetic if they display some wit. The arrogance or chilling coldness of a character can be undermined by them being inadvertently, or unknowingly, foolish in some way.
Humour can be used as a trigger to reveal the true emotional state or a hidden side of a character. It can deepen the reader’s understanding of a character, if humour is their reaction to difficulty or hard choices. It can give a character an awkwardness or fallibility that the reader is not expecting.
You can also use humorous incongruity to enhance characterisation and character voice, for example a child who has a world-weary, middle-aged cynicism.
As an example, read My Sister, The Arsonist by Meg Pokrass. In one sense it’s a disturbing story. But every character in this short piece has comedic elements, which allows the author to explore family dysfunction in a compelling and resonant way.
There’s also the wry, knowing but also slightly desperate narrator in Victoria McCurdy’s This Is How You Fail To Ghost Him, as she commentates on the awkwardness of modern, app-based dating.
Why was the dating coach jealous of the writer?
They found someone even more knowledgeable about rejection.
Tone and mood
When it comes to tone, humour doesn’t have to be light and fluffy. Tackling a difficult situation or taboo subject in a piece of writing through gallows humour or dark comedy can take a piece in an interesting direction.
You can also use humour as a way of introducing a tonal shift in a story. In Brian Hinshaw’s flash fiction The Custodian, the narrative voice in the first part of the story demonstrates a gleeful humour about a patient in a care home. The second part, when the character understands their own actions, changes to a more stark reflectiveness.
There are also useful tonal shades that many writers exploit regularly, myself included. For example, humour can produce a bitter-sweet tone, where a character’s voice or reactions to a situation contain humour, while also illuminating and underlying sadness.
Style techniques
Here’s just a selection:
Surprise - The unexpected or a shift in perspective produces a humorous result that is funny because of its peculiarity
Misdirection - Adjusting the pace or direction or a shift in tone to produce an effect on the reader.
Incongruous juxtaposition – Putting two or more incongruous elements together causes a friction from which humour can stem.
Escalation – taking a situation and escalating it by layering on further difficulties, or escalating into the bizarre is a useful tool.
Exact timing of inciting and responding – Timing is essential in comedy as we know, so delaying reactions, for example, can produce a surprising effect for the reader.
Word Choice – you can create humour through diction and syntax – just take a look at the Lorrie Moore story How To Be A Writer.
Of course, you can use more than one of these stylistic techniques in a story. For example The School by Donald Barthelme is a classic example of escalation, as things take an increasingly weird turn with each revelation until it spins off, in classic postmodern style into something very strange – and darkly humorous indeed. But there is also incongruous juxtapositions everywhere, between the matter-of-factness of the narrative voice and the increasingly bizarre events being described, also in the way the school setting and the comic-horror come together.
Since I’ve become a full-time writer, I’ve made quite a few sales.
My car, my house, my clothes…
Irony
In general, irony is the expression of meaning by saying the opposite, often to humorous effect. Although there is considerable overlap, there are separate forms of irony often delineated in literature.
Verbal irony is saying the opposite of what is meant. Situational irony is an outcome that turns out to be very different from what was expected. In prose-based dramatic irony, the reader (or narrator), realizes implications of words or acts that the characters do not perceive.
My own story Being The Good Guys, gives an ironic – and bizarre - twist to a realistic situation (along with some escalation, unexpectedness, escalation, incongruity and very specific word choice in the narrative voice) to create something that demonstrates the gap between intent and outcome.
Situation and narrative structure
Set up a situation which has comic potential because it is immediately a bit strange, off-kilter and outside the norm. Quite often this may go hand in hand with discomfort – an underlying truth or pain or quirky situation which the character(s) is trying to cope with.
A classic example I have use on previous courses is Crazy Glue, by Etgar Keret. It’s a short story about a relationship teetering on a knife’s edge (and as a sidebar, see how the humour in the story arguably just about keeps us onside with the husband character, even though his behaviour is very questionable). It’s story that uses punchy back-and-forth dialogue and comically bizarre circumstances we place ourselves in for, and in spite of, love.
Did you hear the one about the pregnant woman who went into labor and began yelling “Couldn’t! Wouldn’t! Shouldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!”?
She was having contractions.