Making it funny

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gettingby

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How many of you try to inject humor into your literary fiction? And how do you know if it works? I try to add bits of humor into most of my short stories. Sometimes it works. Other times I have been told to "make it funnier." Does anyone have tips on adding humor into literary fiction? How do you make things funnier?
 

WriterBN

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The bits of humor in mine come mostly from the characters' quirks or behavior. I don't think I've written anything where I started out intending it to be comic--I've been told my writing is depressing, but no-one's commented on the humor as yet :)
 

thehundreds

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Sort of a difficult question. A prerequisite would probably be a sense of humor. After that step, I think one can learn in the same way one learns any technique: read those who have done it successfully, and study their steps.

My book recommendations: Then We Came to the End by Ferris, and Lolita (Nabakov, course). Of course there's thousands out there. I'm sure you have your favorites as well to take a look at!
 

bkendall

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I've tried with using sarcasm as a character's quality. I didn't like the effect it had on me as a reader so I kind of abandoned the forced humor at least for now. For me, it just didn't fit the tone I was going for even though I felt it was realistic. This was very frustrating and forced me to leave the work for a while to just settle.
 

CrawdadJokeSoon

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People laugh when things happen that are unexpected.
This is not necessarily mean that they are funny.

I can think of a few laughs when a character is naive and thankful for something of something insulting to them.
I remember laughing when a Vietnamese-American was called Charlie by his teacher, because the character was happy to have a nickname. It made him feel special.

Maybe irony that is above the character, dramatic irony, that might be one of the tricks.
 

miss marisa

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in the grand scheme of things, it all depends on what kind of mood you want to create for your story. if it's a very serious issue that you want to address seriously, minimal humor is probably best. if you don't want everything to be very serious, injecting some humor into prose is a good idea.

also, forcing humor is not very wise, because the readers will be able to tell when it's not coming natural. whatever works best for your story should be in the story.
 

Bufty

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Agreed, the best humour emerges from characters in situations - where the reader 'sees' the humour for himself.
 

rsa773

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I think humor works best in satirical or tongue-in-cheek type situations. Sometimes humor just clashes with the whole tone of the book and it feels unbelievably forced, and honestly for me it just ruins the whole experience. (I'm referring mostly to my experience with romance novels where some scenes all but needed a 'laugh here' sign)

What I'm saying is, if humor doesn't stem out organically from that scene, it's probably better off that way.
 

J.S.Fairey

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For me, it all depends on the character and the situation. If your character is one who makes jokes, or is sarcastic in a funny way, then by all means add in some humor. If they're a depressed ego maniac who hates his life and everyone in it then he probably shouldn't be making knock knock jokes. Actually, jokes in general are tough in fiction. They work on screen, but in writing not so much. I think if you're going to add in humor, then it should be character based, rather than gags, unless you're actually writing comedy.
 

brasiliareview

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The great thing about humor in literary fiction for me is how the writing can be funny without actually being jokes. The situation sets up a cliche, but then the unexpected happens. Or something tragic happens, but the character is stoic about it.

One thing I like to do in my writing is, if I get stuck, to make the next sentence the most ridiculous thing I can think of. Sometimes its contrast with the preceding is funny, and it gives me a springboard to the new idea. Later I can always take it out if need be.
 

Tripper

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If I try to intentionally add humor, it usually comes out all wrong. But, if I let my characters do it, then it's a whole different ball game. I think it really depends on the character as well. The humor must be natural or it just won't work.

When I'm writing and something funny just comes out, I'll just go with it a while and see where it takes me. Sometimes it won't work, sometimes it will.
 

Rachel Udin

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You can deconstruct humor, but then it becomes less funny afterwards. It's also very individual, based on experiences and tastes, but I think you get that.

Given that, I'll do what people usually hate. Deconstruct humor.

For the purposes of fiction, I think there are two types of humor, there is situational humor, which comes from the plot and characters and there is humor more like where the plot is sacrificed to make a joke or series of jokes.

The first is a bit more like PG Woodehouse or Jane Austen, I think. And the second is more like Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Douglas Adams.

Of course you have different labels on humor, too, such as wet, dry, whacky, physical, etc.

The majority of stories inserting a joke into the story put it in as *situational* humor. Which comes from the characters. You usually can test this by trying to explain the joke to a friend and they won't get it until they watch the characters and episode. Whereas if you say something about the other type of humor it will come through right away. (Marvin is a depressed robot with pain running up his diodes). Also, situational humor tends to have more in-jokes running through it, such that if you discuss it, then others immediately get it it who've watched it, but others that haven't seen it won't understand you.

42!

The best you can do if you want it funny overall is to mix up your humor. Some of it high brow, low brow, some puns, wet, dry, parody, etc. (BTW, with parody never make it critical to the plot unless it's *that* popular.)

With situational humor, too, I'd also try to blend it in so it's not obvious it's a joke and screaming at the person. Either they get it or they don't and move on.

Now jokes themselves tend to have features: such as reversals, the unexpected, the overly exaggerated, socially outlandish, etc. You can find some examples online. Never steal jokes though. If you do take one with permission, at least save and give credit later.

Figure out why it made you laugh will mean it won't be as funny later. =P And you'll be laughing less often, but making people laugh more. (This is a joke comedians say about other comedians. Seinfeld had an episode dedicated to it.)

Also, you should be aware that jokes tend to be double-edged, as Chapelle pointed out on Oprah a few years back. Often with social parody, there are people who will immediately get it and those who won't. Those who won't will laugh and find solidarity with the other people who won't get it and often run opposite of your aim in making the joke in the first place.

So for example Chapelle had a black-faced fairy in stereotypical black faced clothes making fun of racists, but he was offended when one of his staff members laughed the wrong way because they didn't get it was against racists. And Chapelle didn't know what to do about that.

Personally, though, if you're not going to run social commentary at all, I think bad and worse puns, while universally hated, are safe from all of that. People either really groan and like it, and you're laughing your butt off about how horrible it is and they use them again, or they ignore you or they simply don't get it and gloss over it.

Bad puns such as what country likes eating cat dumplings? Katmandu. <--made that one up myself. I have a love of interlingual puns too. Especially the triple interlingual puns.
 

Old Hack

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You can deconstruct humor, but then it becomes less funny afterwards.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.

When I was at university I wrote a few essays about humour in fiction and analysing the works didn't make them any less funny to me: if anything it make them funnier, as I appreciated the jokes more. And when I was at secondary school, studying Shakespeare for the first time, I didn't understand much of his wit and humour: having his jokes explained and put into historical and societal context allowed me to see just how funny and sharp the work was.

For the purposes of fiction, I think there are two types of humor, there is situational humor, which comes from the plot and characters and there is humor more like where the plot is sacrificed to make a joke or series of jokes.

The first is a bit more like PG Woodehouse or Jane Austen, I think. And the second is more like Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Douglas Adams.

I used to be very good friends with one of the members of the Monty Python team and I remember talking to him about this.

He described the very great pains they all took to make their characters believable on some level, to give them some way that viewers could identify with those characters' behaviours, because without that moment of recognition--provided by the characterisation--the viewers wouldn't see the humour.

They didn't "sacrifice [the plot] to make a joke or series of jokes": that wouldn't have worked for them. Their humour was situational and linked to their characters, just as Adams's, Austen's and Wodehouse's was.

The alternative is providing your audience or your reader with a series of gags, like a stand-up comedian, along the lines of "A man walks into a bar...". I don't think that works terribly well on the page. One of the funniest books I read was Martin Amis's biography of his father, which frequently made me laugh, properly out loud: that depended on anecdote based again on character and situation, and was brilliant. It's worth reading, if you haven't already.

Of course you have different labels on humor, too, such as wet, dry, whacky, physical, etc.

Wet humour? There's such a thing? Could you explain it, please?

Figure out why it made you laugh will mean it won't be as funny later. =P And you'll be laughing less often, but making people laugh more. (This is a joke comedians say about other comedians. Seinfeld had an episode dedicated to it.)

When I used to hang out with comedians and comedy writers I don't think I ever heard a single one say that. They were mostly UK-based so the difference might be one of location (although several of the people I knew then have moved to America and now work on some very successful sitcoms, and one of my friends won an Emmy for one of his shows, so the humour must travel); but the ones who spent time trying to understand the structure of humour (and not all of them did) all seemed to enjoy jokes more once they knew how they worked, just as I did with Shakespeare.

Also, you should be aware that jokes tend to be double-edged, as Chapelle pointed out on Oprah a few years back. Often with social parody, there are people who will immediately get it and those who won't. Those who won't will laugh and find solidarity with the other people who won't get it and often run opposite of your aim in making the joke in the first place.

To claim that people who don't get your joke will "often" end up with them laughing at the very thing you didn't want them to laugh at seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Personally, though, if you're not going to run social commentary at all, I think bad and worse puns, while universally hated, are safe from all of that. People either really groan and like it, and you're laughing your butt off about how horrible it is and they use them again, or they ignore you or they simply don't get it and gloss over it.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make here.

If "bad and worse puns" really are "universally hated", how come "People ... like it"? Aren't you contradicting yourself there?
 

Rachel Udin

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I don't think that's necessarily the case.

When I was at university I wrote a few essays about humour in fiction and analysing the works didn't make them any less funny to me: if anything it make them funnier, as I appreciated the jokes more. And when I was at secondary school, studying Shakespeare for the first time, I didn't understand much of his wit and humour: having his jokes explained and put into historical and societal context allowed me to see just how funny and sharp the work was.

That's not the same as deconstructing a joke. That's analyzing the works and giving the joke context, but it's not deconstructing how the joke works and why it appears to be funny.

If you're talking about deconstructing a joke, it would be more on the realm of, "unexpected" "reversals" etc.

Historical contexts is historicism. That's *literary* analysis. Different area.

I used to be very good friends with one of the members of the Monty Python team and I remember talking to him about this.

He described the very great pains they all took to make their characters believable on some level, to give them some way that viewers could identify with those characters' behaviours, because without that moment of recognition--provided by the characterisation--the viewers wouldn't see the humour.

They didn't "sacrifice [the plot] to make a joke or series of jokes": that wouldn't have worked for them. Their humour was situational and linked to their characters, just as Adams's, Austen's and Wodehouse's was.
Often the jokes came before the plotline in Adam's case... but this may be more subjective. It often jumped from here to there, and there wasn't really a centralized part to his humor. Everything was used to set up the jokes and the series of jokes rather than plotline and then jokes. The plot didn't go much of anywhere and Arthur never really grew much as a character--neither did the other characters. And they never really figured out what the meaning of 42 was. Adams died before he actually got there, but the pointlessness was the point.... which doesn't really work in inserting humor into something that's not supposed to be a comedy novel.)

Same with Monty Python as well. Some of the humor was silly or the plots went nowhere. For example, in the show, the transitions often didn't relate to the sketches that much. The show was more like a series of sketches with interruptions such as "The Larch" and "Let's get on with it." Monty Python and the Holy Grail also ran a bit more like that too.

Yes, characters are important to setting up jokes. But at the same time, for a story, you need the events to go somewhere, reach a point and create character change. Characters alone don't make plot. Events which create change in character and characters influencing and changing events make plot. The events and the character change was often sacrificed in both cases for the sake of a joke. (Or why Marvin barely got an upgrade).

It won't float as much for a novel to do that sort of humor, unless you need it to be a humorous novel.

Make a bit more sense?
Wet humour? There's such a thing? Could you explain it, please?
Piss jokes... wet sex jokes... blood jokes... It's more in the Japanese realm. It has a little crossover with potty humor, but more deals with liquids. Japanese tend to say their humor is "wet" versus what they view American as "dry". Though that would make British humour the Sahara.

When I used to hang out with comedians and comedy writers I don't think I ever heard a single one say that. They were mostly UK-based so the difference might be one of location (although several of the people I knew then have moved to America and now work on some very successful sitcoms, and one of my friends won an Emmy for one of his shows, so the humour must travel); but the ones who spent time trying to understand the structure of humour (and not all of them did) all seemed to enjoy jokes more once they knew how they worked, just as I did with Shakespeare.
See Seinfeld. That was the joke in the episode. You took it too seriously. I labeled it as a joke too...

If "bad and worse puns" really are "universally hated", how come "People ... like it"? Aren't you contradicting yourself there?
They are universally hated by the people recieving them. But loved by the people who collect them, who groan at them when made, and use them later and cackle with glee at the badness. =P I guess you've never run into someone who loves making bad puns before.

I do have to point out that you're being contrary and it kinda seems like you're being contrary for the sake of it...
 
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Torgo

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One of the funniest books I read was Martin Amis's biography of his father, which frequently made me laugh, properly out loud: that depended on anecdote based again on character and situation, and was brilliant. It's worth reading, if you haven't already.

One of the funniest books I've read that I'd describe as literary fiction is Amis's THE INFORMATION, which contains some brilliant running gags. Our hero is a writer of very highbrow li-fi and has a book coming out, 'Untitled', which is so impenetrable that everyone who tries to read it succumbs to migraines and worse. And you have the increasing desperation and resentment of the protagonist as his 'friend' and rival author's meteoric rise mirrors his own decline.

The particular species of funny we're talking about here is satire, which in my mind always means moral comedy. We are taking the piss out of moral failings - here, it's pride and envy. Watching the protagonist trip over this stuff over and over again is funny because he's an ass, which makes it satisfying, but also because we identify with him, which makes it painful. It's partly that cognitive dissonance that makes us laugh, I think. You can see him about to do something stupid, and it hurts, but it's delicious too, because it's not us.

I don't think you can just inject this stuff. THE INFORMATION is all of a piece. It has a viewpoint and a voice. The things that catch Amis's authorial eye are sometimes darkly comic and sometimes daftly cosmic (there's a motif of smallness in the universe that he keeps returning to, which is again about pride, but which doesn't always come off, IIRC.)

One thing I'd say, though, is that a realist novel is going to have to contain some laughter, because life does. It's a rare day that goes by in my own life when I don't laugh really quite a lot (and that goes for the darkest of them, too.)
 

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I don't think I've ever sat down and said to myself, "Okay, I'm going to be funny now." But sometimes I've produced things I've laughed at or, more often, have had others tell me they found things funny.

However, I do believe humor is a powerful hook in longer works of fiction if you can pull it off. Moby-Dick has a reputation for being a stodgy tome, so I was surprised I was actually laughing within the first 50 pages at the situational humor. That hooked me. Likewise in Don Quixote.

I agree with a lot of what Rachel said. I have to be careful about reading PG Wodehouse in public. I have also found that a strong metaphor can be very effective.
 

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I have a good sense of humor. I love to read humorous books and I watch and listen to a lot of comedies and stand-up. Most of my writing, while it's not laugh-out-loud, hysterically funny, has an element of satire or humor to it. I don't know "how" to write it; it's just part of how I write and express myself. Even when I was writing poetry, a great deal of it used humor or had a satirical approach to a subject. Maybe it has to do with what I choose to read and expose myself to in my regular life. I love humor, and I'm pretty sure it's saved my life on more than one occasion.

My current WIC started out being a lightly funny chick-lit novel, so there are a lot of humorous elements to it--mostly because the MC is so blunderingly self-destructive--but now it's taking a somewhat dark turn. I don't think you can have a good sense of humor without a firm grasp of the darkness of life, though.
 

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Usually the sadder or darker the content of the story, the more zingers I wind up putting in, if only so as not to overwhelm the reader. Also, if you write something that's purely sad from beginning to end, it may very well start to feel like you're inviting the reader to pity your characters, and the moment that happens you're dead. So some comic relief is necessary, I think.

It's hard to know whether or not the stuff is funny--even if you have a couple of readers who think it's funny, there might be a lot of people who won't get it, or (even worse) will and won't find it funny.

Luckily, I go to a school where I can workshop pieces, and if I have a piece that's intended to get a few laughs out of the reader and nobody mentions the parts that were meant to be funny, I generally know they haven't worked.
 
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arabajyo

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Also, if you write something that's purely sad from beginning to end, it may very well start to feel like you're inviting the reader to pity your characters, and the moment that happens you're dead.

What's so terrible about readers pitying your characters?
 

jerrimander

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some people are just born to funny. like me.
i'm humble too. but I work hard at that.

two things I refer back to whenever I write humor.
it's funny, because it's true.
we laugh, because it hurts.
 

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I like what jerrimander said:

"it's funny, because it's true.
we laugh, because it hurts."


As to making something funnier, that's tough. If it doesn't come naturally, it can be really painful to read. Have you ever thought that maybe the people who have told you that - are just wrong? That is always a possibility.
 
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Wilde_at_heart

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some people are just born to funny.

I disagree and think it's something you can cultivate (unless you have zero sense of humour already). Basically if you read or see things and think they are funny, then you can be funny too.

It's a matter of practice. As a not terribly attractive teenager (at least in my own view) I decided to deliberately cultivate a sharp wit. There were plenty of things I said that probably lost some friends as I tinkered, for years, with what flew and what didn't.

Oddly, I still have plenty of friends :D

Later, at one point I knew a fair number of comedians, starting out in the small club circuit and so on and one hangout of mine had an open mic every Saturday. Many of them honed their skills over time, mostly through trial and error, gauging audience reactions for each joke, the way they timed it, etc.

I also think there's a mind set you get into - the more humour I read, etc., the more I tend to see the world from that perspective.

While I agree that you can't just wake up one day and 'make something funny' I don't think it's something people either have or don't have.
 
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