You gotta laugh

One of the short stories that came into the Global Short Story Competition

this week was a very deftly written humorous one, and that got me thinking about some of the rules about writing comedy.

The first thing to bear in mind if you going to write a humorous book/story is that you still need the basic rules of writing. You still need structure and you still need a strong sense of place. You also still need characters who come over as real - humour is just about the only genre where stereotypes can work if they are over-the-top enough but by and large, good humour has real people in real situations.

Humour tends to rest on one basic idea and the rest flows from it. It might be ‘nothing is as it seems‘, it might be ‘nobody understands the main character’ or ’I see things that no one else sees’ etc etc but good comic writers hone in on that single idea and let things flow from it. Good comedy writers know that you develop humour within the situations that ensue from the idea. And they are disciplined when they do it. They realise that the humour should flow from the ideas and the situation, not that they should come up with funny lines and try to shoehorn them into the wrong story. I wrote a humorous children’s book years ago and right up until the final edit my favourite line was still in there - until I realised that it was a good gag in the wrong story and out it came.

To write good humour, a light touch is needed. Write with pace, write your funny line then move on. Don’t go back to the same gag and re-tell it. Once told it is done. If the reader does not get it, then they’ll get the next one.

Oh, and observe. Comedy writers, like all writers, derive their inspiration from real life. They are constantly jotting down funny things, witty lines, strange dress senses, things people do. After all, there’s nowt so funny as folk.

You can enter June’s competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk