Seriously Funny: 7 Ways To Add Humor To A Novel
By Guest | September 26, 2017 |
Please welcome novelist Marilyn Simon Rothstein to Writer Unboxed today!
Marilyn Simon Rothstein is the author of Lift And Separate, the story of a woman forced to restart her life when her husband of thirty-three years, the Bra King, leaves her for a perkier fit. It was released by Lake Union Publishers in December 2016 and is available on Amazon.com. Her second novel, Husbands And Other Sharp Objects, appears in early 2018.
For more than twenty-five years, Marilyn owned an advertising agency in Connecticut, but then she realized she could make a lot less money by becoming a novelist.
Now that’s funny.
You can learn more about funny Marilyn and her novels by following her on Facebook and Twitter.
Seriously Funny: 7 Ways To Add Humor To A Novel
- Start with a sense of humor.
All novelists are people who observe things. For example, here’s an observation. Have you ever noticed that when two people are married a long time they often start to look like one another? Their dogs look like them too. Cats? Not so much.
To be seriously funny, you need to see what most people don’t even notice and bring it to the world’s attention by finding the humor in it. In short, nothing is funnier than the truth.
(So, warning: If the only way you can get a laugh from your friends is by reciting a joke that is as old as a saddle shoe, this article will be of no help to you.)
- Find comedy in every day situations.
They say most car accidents occur minutes from home. Humor takes place in your home—or in your car, grocery, business meeting. I had a lot of humor happen to me while talking to other mothers at the middle school bus stop. Also amazing? What you can pick up just by listening to the people at the table next to you in Starbucks.
Cull your humor from things that happen to you or people you know. Nothing starts out as comical as something that actually transpired. Add bells and whistles. Edit out irrelevant and dull details. Polish it. Hone it.
Here’s an example of my version of a situation in which my character discovers her daughter on the couch with a boy. I wasn’t feeling well so I came home early, middle of a school day, from my office. I walked into my family room and found my fourteen-year-old daughter with a boy. They were on the couch in front of the fireplace, wearing matching outfits–they both had nothing on. His name was Mother’s Hell.
- Utilize humor to express feelings
Don’t save humor for happy emotions. Great wit is a great partner for relating the feelings that make you wish you had a gin martini in a large jug or a freezer full of ice cream to down the pain. Equal time here for drinkers and foodies.
Were you feeling depressed? Or, were you so depressed that you would have been happier if you spent a month with your mother-in-law, who you dislike because she never called you when you were deathly ill, but you’d rather die than speak to her in any case. Were you decimated when your husband left you? Or, did you cry just one tear because even your tears were alone now? My debut novel, Lift And Separate, is about a woman who is forced to restart her life when her husband of thirty-years walks out—since when is that hilarious?
- Utilize humor to describe professions, places and things.
In Lift And Separate, the protagonist is Marcy. Her husband is Harvey, the Bra King. He owns a business called Bountiful Bosom. From this came the title, Lift And Separate. From the title came the cover, brassieres—lots of them. Marcy’s brother
Max is a scam artist. In high school, he was voted most likely to go to a white-collar prison. All occupations provide abundant material. Meet any lawyers, lately?
In every generation, we are surrounded by opportunities to be funny. Places we frequent now–Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Starbucks, the Apple computer store, Home Depot, a cosmetics counter, an all inclusive resort, a cruise ship–can be described in a way that makes a reader smile in recognition.
Then there are objects. Take my aunt’s vinyl see-through purse with the zipper. She opened it once. My uncle had a hearing aid, but he refused to buy a battery. My aunt and uncle were pretty tight. They were married fifty years. And they looked just like each other.
- Always surround the humor.
Marcy Hammer’s life has been turned upside down. Her husband, the head of a global brassiere empire, didn’t think twice about leaving her after thirty-three years of marriage for a 32DD lingerie model. Now Harvey the Home-Wrecker is missing in action, but Marcy’s through thinking about what a cliché he is. What she needs now is a party-size bag of potato chips, a good support system, and a new dress.
In a novel, humor must be a part of the story. It cannot just sit there all by itself—like a Jewish mother. Humor has to be there for a reason. Is it moving the story forward? Showing the personality of a character? Building on a relationship? Describing a place or location? Take time rolling out a laugh. Setting it up slowly. Surround it with actions and descriptions.
- Timing is everything.
Pace yourself. Continuous chuckles pale, and subtract from the seriousness of your writing. A novel is not a comedy act. Too much laughter and the reader won’t have time to care about your characters.
- Read your work to a writer’s group.
How can you tell if you have written something that makes people laugh? Unlike most kinds of writing, you can tell immediately by the reaction of others in your writer’s group. What if you don’t have a writer’s group? I recommend finding one. Almost everything they say will be good for a laugh.
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
I tend to only use humor in happy scenes, but I need to figure out how to work it into sad scenes too. Any advice for making humor work in those instances? I worry that it’ll seem disrespectful or mean to have someone crack a joke right after something bad has happened.
Humor that works in bad situation often comes from the people suffering or sad — gallows humor for example. As such, it can reveal a lot about the character that’s making the joke.
For example:
“I have to hang you in morning, Steve. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m the one that put my neck in the noose. And you tell Ma that. Tell her it wasn’t her fault.”
“I will.”
They stood silently for a moment, Steve studying the gallows through the small window. “Terry, what’s the rope? Hemp?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Could it be cotton? Can you arrange that?”
“I can try. Why?”
“Hemp makes my skin itch.”
My writers’ group tends to laugh at material I’ve written that I did not intend to be funny. Why?
One thing you see a lot in comedy shows is the repeated gag. Someone will say something and then it will show up later in the show in some other form.
I also use it in my WIP, my band of protagonists stops at an inn and introduces themselves as archaeologists. However, the three guys in the group are really buff and don’t look like scholarly people. The inn remarks “You must do a lot of field work.” Later in the novel when they are introducing themselves elsewhere they get strange looks and one of the guys adds, “We do lots of field work.” as a way to break the ice. The same guy also cracks a joke later as they are captured by the antagonist.
Thanks for posting!
#5 really hits home – the funny has to fit. This maybe explains why PG Wodehouse continues to amuse. His stories ooze absurdity, but the humor is mixed into the plot, not served on the side.
I agree. The humor must slide in there.
The best humor comes from the darkest places, and is never forced. (When you think about it, life is just one big dark comedy—nobody’s getting out of here alive and yet we find ways to laugh every day.)
That’s why I devour novels by the likes of Vonnegut, Heller, Dunn, Welsh, Ellis, Palahniuk, et. al. It’s also why I write comedic/satirical novels—stories that center on such lovely topics as terminal illness, euthanasia, serial killing and even human trafficking. When asked WHY in a recent interview, I replied, “It’s a survival tactic.”
I don’t use dark humor to offend—I use it to DEFEND. Humor is a magnificent weapon, one that, instead of destroying, keeps us from being destroyed. Nietzsche said, “We have art in order to not die of the truth.” I feel humor serves the same purpose. In fact, humor—when deftly wielded—is art.
Great tips–especially to keep humour germane to the story and the reminder that a novel ‘is not a comedy act’. Thank you for them.
Thank you.
As Clive James says, humor is a special, valuable way of knowing and revealing the world.
My wife and I left a cocktail party, at which for something like two or maybe twenty-two hours a great deal was said about recent breakthroughs in “cyberknife” prostate surgery, treatments for dementia, and foreign language software. The experts on these topics were smart people, and this complicated things. It meant we had not only to look interested, but also offer up the kinds of questions that demonstrate active attention. The talk also veered off several times to the more subtle distinctions between cell phones. We reached our car, I opened the door for my wife. “My small talk battery is drained,” she said, thereby summing up the whole thing.
I agree so much with Greg Levon’s comment here. Humor keeps us from being destroyed. I can’t imagine life without a sense of humor.
I enjoyed your post very much. Thanks for the wonderful tips. I think humor is essential when you cope with great sorrow–I find that I can laugh and cry easily at a given situation, esp. if it’s tragic. Alas, this means sometimes I’m caught laughing at inappropriate times.
Great post! I have written a humorous YA novel, and tend to write more humor than serious fiction. Loved all these tips and have bought your book which sounds hilarious!
Thank you for an interesting article. I agree with what you say and I especially agree with Greg Levin said about humour being a defence mechanism.
As Terry Pratchett said, funny is not the opposite of serious.
Your book sounds hilarious. I love the title.