Top Five Tips for Using Comedy in Your Writing

Author and editor Mary Hargreaves shares her top tips on how to use humour to enhance your writing.

Have you ever had one of those moments? You’re at the dinner table with friends, you land a joke at the perfect time, and everyone loses their minds laughing. You have? Well, my friend, that’s because you’re hilarious. You’re a veritable comedic genius. Channelling that conversational humour into good comedic writing, however, requires a slightly different approach. Let’s look at five tips for using comedy in your writing.

1. Identify what makes your characters funny

Exploit your characters’ unique traits for comedic value. Perhaps they have a sharp inner monologue borne of a tumultuous upbringing, or are oblivious to their own glaring faults. Maybe they take everything too literally, or assume everyone’s trying to trick them.

For demonstration purposes, I’m going to use one of the best one-liners from one of the best characters in literary history: Mrs Bennet from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Mrs Bennet is an anxious, interfering woman with absolutely no social tact or self-awareness, and this makes her dialogue joyous to read. She’s not making jokes; she’s being entirely herself, unaware of just how funny she is.

‘Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.’

2. Use contrast and surprise for impact

We often find things funny when they subvert the path we thought we were being led down. It’s how a lot of stand-up comedy works, and we can use it in our writing in many different ways. Perhaps characters under-react to huge events, or overreact to small ones. Maybe a character ends up in a situation that’s deeply out of their comfort zone. In our Mrs Bennet example, the contrast comes from the comfort she takes from the thought of Jane’s hypothetical death, particularly as she claims to put her daughters’ happiness above all else. Even though we know her character well by this point, we’re still surprised into laughter by the absurdity of her priorities.

3. Control timing

Delivering the payoff at the right moment matters. This could be as simple as giving a humorous internal revelation its own line for emphasis, or building up crossed wires during a dialogue scene, so that by the time two characters realise they’re talking about different things, the impact is that much funnier. Austen’s genius line is timed to perfection: we have the set up, ‘My comfort is…’, which engenders an expectation of something reassuring, followed by a shocking idea, ‘Jane will die of a broken heart’, raising the melodrama, before the payoff of ‘and then he will be sorry’. Experiment with the order of the information you give your reader. Sometimes the funniest place for a punchline is where it’s least expected.

4. Don’t explain the joke

This seems like it goes without saying, but it’s surprisingly easy to assume that your reader might not have quite got something, and thus needs it explaining. As a rule, readers are much savvier than you might think, and it’s worth risking a joke sailing over the head of ten percent rather than irritating the ninety percent who did get it by driving it home unnecessarily.

I hope you’ll forgive me adding something to Mrs Bennet’s quote here, as an example of what not to do. Austen, of course, would never.

‘Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.’

Elizabeth stared at her. ‘Mother, that is hardly a comfort. You have just suggested that Jane’s death would be tolerable as long as Mr Bingley feels guilty for leaving her. That’s rather morbid, don’t you think?’

As you can see, we’ve killed the joke by doing the reader’s work for them.

5. Edit, edit, edit

People often think it was Stephen King who coined the phrase ‘Kill your darlings’, but it was actually Arthur Quiller-Couch, who instructed writers to murder their darlings in 1914. Whoever said it, it’s good advice. Look at what comes before and after a funny moment: is it setting up the joke unnecessarily? Is it taking the joke beyond its funniest peak, so that it loses its impact? And does the joke belong there? If it doesn’t fit the emotional tone of the scene or the personality of the character making it, give it the chop. After Mrs Bennet’s exaggerated claim, Austen has Elizabeth remaining silent. The joke lands; nothing further is needed. As tough a pill as it is to swallow, not all your comedic genius can (or should) make it to the final draft.

Using comedy in your writing might use different skills from making your pals laugh at the dinner table, but if you already have a nose for what’s funny, you’re halfway there. Bring out the natural humour of your characters, surprise your reader, pay attention to your timing, trust them to get the joke and chop ruthlessly. Remember: sometimes the funniest writing comes from what hasn’t been said.

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