Injecting humour into your work

[John Dean]

I have been working on a humourous piece for an online group of which I am a member and it drove me to recap on some of the rules for creating comedy.

The first thing to remember is that humour is subjective. What is funny to one person may easily leave another cold. The best approach is write in your own style in the way that pleases you, because, if it makes you laugh, then there will be a whole audience out there who will plug right in to what you're offering. Not everyone but enough.

Write humour that will appeal to a wide range of readers by choosing subjects that have a far-reaching attraction – the trials of life, growing old, pompous public politicians, incompetent bosses etc etc. For all it is comedy, humour is grounded in the universal truths.

It is important to remember that your reader must laugh with your characters and not at them. Taking your characters though embarrassing, unfortunate, even dangerous episodes requires that the reader feels sympathetic towards the character whilst at the same time laughing at the situation in which they find themselves (unless savage satire is your thing).

Also, don’t force it - weave the comedy in with your writing. It is not enough to write a good ‘gag’ – the best humour writers also observe the need for strong characters, good plots, vivid descriptions of place etc.

Another golden rule is do a funny line and move on. Don’t labour the point. If the reader does not laugh at your line, they’ll laugh at the next one.

Also, don’t explain why your comic lines are funny – not everyone will get your sense of humour and you’re going to have to live with it!

And finally, even if you are not writing an out-and-out comic piece, it’s worth remembering that humour has its place in all fiction.

Why? For a start, it can create light against the dark. Take an example: you are writing a sinister piece with the tension building as the tale unfolds. You might decide to keep the tension going right to the end, which would be one way of writing it.

However, you might decide that a flash of humour, a single line of dialogue from a character, a light-hearted scene, could momentarily ease the tension, cause the reader to relax slightly and provide an even greater impact when you suddenly strike with the next piece of drama, or horror or fear.

There is another good reason for using humour in your writing; because it reveals things about your characters and can show another side to them that the reader might not have seen before. It does not need to be side-splitting humour, that is not the intention: it has other roles to perform, particularly when developing characters.