Writing with humour

[Naomasa298]

I agree, though I would say the target is a lot smaller with humour.

It depends on the kind of humour, I think. Jane Austen's Emma is a romantic comedy, so the humour doesn't come from punchlines, but from social and intentional mismatches, which builds up across scenes and arcs. So it's much slower and wider than, let's say Douglas Adams or Pratchett. In my Jack Vance pastiches, the humour often comes from the difference between what is said, how it is said, and what is actually meant. Sometimes the reversal comes the next line, sometimes it comes at the end of the conversation. It's the difference between, let's say, Tim Vine's delivery of one-liners or other comedians who build up a joke.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

It depends on the kind of humour, I think. Jane Austen's Emma is a romantic comedy, so the humour doesn't come from punchlines, but from social and intentional mismatches, which builds up across scenes and arcs. So it's much slower and wider than, let's say Douglas Adams or Pratchett. In my Jack Vance pastiches, the humour often comes from the difference between what is said, how it is said, and what is actually meant. Sometimes the reversal comes the next line, sometimes it comes at the end of the conversation. It's the difference between, let's say, Tim Vine's delivery of one-liners or other comedians who build up a joke.

Yeah, I'd not disagree with any of that. I still think there's less margin for error in writing humour. That's not to say other themes are easy, just maybe a little more forgiving or recoverable than humour.

 

[JLT]

Dark humor can be great, as long as the emphasis is on the humor and not the dark. It can be tricky to do right. As I grow older and hopefully more mature along with it, I find that a lot that's peddled as dark humor is just unfunny and in very poor taste, but there are ways to make it very dark and also very funny. Dark humor is a wide spectrum and it certainly has its place.

True dat. Your comment got me thinking about why Vonnegut's dark humor worked while other writers' work didn't. It occurred to me that when he used it, it was always accompanied by a twinge of sympathy for the character who was beset with trouble. It was that sympathy that made the connection, and Vonnegut was so deft at making that link.

 

[Night Herald]

I really enjoyed your description. Thanks for that! I want to add more humour in the rest of my writing too and you gave me some ideas. It's interesting you like to mix humour types. Do you find that clashes at times?

Happy to help! I think it doesn't usually clash, no, though of course what constitutes clashing is going to be subjective. I want to make sure it's clear I don't mean creating new hybrid strains of humor, like for example slicing Slapstick and Sarcasm in half to create Slapcasm™ and Sarstick™ (though that could perhaps be a first experiment). It just means I put many different kinds of comedy into a given work, and make sure my characters are capable of different kinds of funny depending on the situation, ideally in ways peculiar to themselves.

On that topic, I think a gentle kind of humor naturally arises when characters are very clearly defined yet not constricted by that definition. At a certain point the reader will be so intimately familiar with their habits of thought and action that they'll go "Yeah, I knew you were going to do that, and I can just about see how it's going to come back and bite you in the behind. Dumbass." It may not be ha-ha out loud type funny most of the time, but an exasperated chuckle and head-shake can be just as rewarding. Character consistency and knowability is of course important in any case, but it's pretty easy to skew that towards the funny. Later, you can employ shock-and-awe humor when the character goes against their own grain and does something totally unexpected, but in a way that still makes a twisted sense for who they are, revealing new and contrasting facets to their character.

Were you thinking of the saying, "don't look into the sausage factory" (or a variation thereof) when you wrote that? Hopefully it's not too relevant... Swain's Creating Characters is actually on my to-read list. I've got his Techniques of the Selling Writer coming up first though.

Something like that, yeah. That's just my personal philosophy when it comes to writing, or any kind of creative expression for that matter. I've historically tended to be a pretty logical and analytical thinker, always looking at nuts and bolts, but in applying that to writing I lost something vital. For many years now I've leaned heavily on intuition instead, in life and especially in art, following the feeling of the thing rather than stress the mechanics; I look at a thing and sense if it works, rather than picking it apart to see why it works. I like to preserve a bit of mystery for myself. I don't engage much with my mind at all when I write, not for most of the stages of the process anyway, but that's just me. I'm wired to overthink and overanalyze, and when I brought that mindset into writing it always resulted in stilted, bloodless, cramped fiction. What I produce when I write from a place of feeling-first is far more juicy and vibrant. I gradually bring more "mind" into it as I do revisions, because there is of course a time and a place for that. The feeling-first approach is especially useful when it comes to humor, I find. There's no better way to ruin a joke than to explain it, after all, and I don't think I could be bothered to write humor if I wasn't making myself laugh along the way.

Different strokes for different folks, of course. I think it can be a great thing for a beginner to look at the anatomy of humor, same as any aspect of writing. And I don't see anything wrong with taking a more, hmm, engineering approach than I do. I'm sure there are many veteran humorists out there who do just that, to hilarious effect. As long as it works and produces the funnies.

Hey, I've actually just started rereading Techniques of the Selling Writer! I did read a bunch of these how-to-write books back in the day, and although I praise my intuition for doing most of my creative heavy lifting now, it wouldn't be what it is without all the study I did years ago.

True dat. Your comment got me thinking about why Vonnegut's dark humor worked while other writers' work didn't. It occurred to me that when he used it, it was always accompanied by a twinge of sympathy for the character who was beset with trouble. It was that sympathy that made the connection, and Vonnegut was so deft at making that link.

Good point, I think that's just the right ingredient. Without sympathy and compassion dark humor can so easily devolve to thinly veiled schadenfreude or just wanton morbidity. I haven't read any Vonnegut, but you see something of the same in Mervyn Peake's work. There's an underlying humanity and dignity granted to even the most wretched, grotesque, and pathetic characters, and a sympathy for the victims of darkly humorous happenings. It's subtly done and not something just anyone can pull off.

Could you perhaps recommend me a Vonnegut or two, specifically some where his handling of dark humor is prevalent? My curiosity has been tickled and I suspect I could learn some things.

 

[JLT]

Could you perhaps recommend me a Vonnegut or two, specifically some where his handling of dark humor is prevalent? My curiosity has been tickled and I suspect I could learn some things.

Almost all of his earlier stuff is great. My two favorites are Cat's Cradle and Mother Night, although most people would probably mention Slaughterhouse Five as his best work of the period. I really urge you to read his stuff as soon as you can, because life is short and you wouldn't want to miss out on it. In my humble opinion, he has never been equaled in the genre of dark humor. I'll also put in a good word for Galapagos, which tones down the dark humor but has a great view of humanity's destiny.

Mother Night and Slaughterhouse Five have both been made into pretty good movies, although like most such things, they are not the equal of the books. (The movie Mother Night also has a cameo of Vonnegut himself as a face in the crowd.) There's also a movie version of Breakfast of Champions which wasn't very good, showing that his humor is hard to adapt to the screen. As for Cat's Cradle, I think it will have to wait until Terry Gilliam gets around to it. He's the only director who could pull it off.

 

[Tallyfire]

Almost all of his earlier stuff is great. My two favorites are Cat's Cradle and Mother Night, although most people would probably mention Slaughterhouse Five as his best work of the period. I really urge you to read his stuff as soon as you can, because life is short and you wouldn't want to miss out on it. In my humble opinion, he has never been equaled in the genre of dark humor. I'll also put in a good word for Galapagos, which tones down the dark humor but has a great view of humanity's destiny.

I’ve also never read Vonnegut but I’ve heard his name thrown around so much. I had no idea his books had dark humour. Thanks for the suggestions!