{"id":1054,"date":"2019-09-24T17:02:52","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/refiction.com\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2022-05-30T15:41:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T15:41:19","slug":"humor-in-writing","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/refiction.com\/articles\/humor-in-writing","title":{"rendered":"All Jokes Aside: Using Humor in Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s a great feeling to be the creator\u2013or the recipient\u2013of a piece of genuine funniness. Using humor in writing can do so much for us: it can help deliver a difficult message, turn a dull story into something everyone wants to hear, or even serve a serious moral purpose, as you can see in the work of great satirists from Swift to Jonathan Coe. As the sometimes-very-funny Martin Amis has said, \u201cLaughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the flipside of all this is that laughter and humor are elusive things that don\u2019t like to be pinned down or explained away. Humor is subjective; what\u00a0you\u00a0<\/em>find funny isn\u2019t always what others find funny. Humor is fickle; if you work too hard at getting laughs, people don\u2019t find it very funny. Also, variables that you can\u2019t control come into play for your reader, such as their state of mind.<\/p>\n All this means that using humor in writing is a real challenge, and one always dogged by the risk of failure. But here are some thoughts on how to improve your chances of getting it right.<\/p>\n There are many kinds of laughs: the throaty guffaw, the silly giggle, the derisive snort, the big belly laugh, the hysterical paroxysm, the dirty chuckle. All of these reactions are quite different, and each can be associated with a different approach to humor.<\/p>\n Think about what kind of reaction would be right for you, your characters and your story\u2013and work out from there. If by nature you have a gentle, playful, whimsical sense of humor, you may struggle if you keep trying to force dirty belly-laughs from your work.<\/p>\n The biggest laughs are usually the highest-risk ones, and also not necessarily the most suitable for fiction. Once the reader has heard the punchline, they don\u2019t need to hear it again, and there can be something tedious about a writer who tries to systematically shoehorn a joke into every paragraph.<\/p>\nWhat Kind of Humor Works in YOUR Writing?<\/h2>\n
Fiction Writing Is Not Stand-Up Comedy<\/h2>\n