I'd hate to disagree with Cogito above, but some things can be translated. You just gotta find the right context. I can't think of a context for, say, facial expressions, but given the right circumstances, somebody has the ability to make that funny. Of course, there's no such thing as a sight gag in writing, but.... Anyway, like someone said, what one person finds funny, others won't. Same with suspense, horror, entertainment, etc. I laughed my balls off at This Is the End and my wife hated it. Same with any "stupid" comedy, but we both liked Zoolander to a degree, so there's some crossover. A friend of mine loves puns, and I'd say they're horribly unfunny, but I caught myself inserting them into my writing without noticing until later. Not the really obvious ones--I still find those painful--but subtle ones. So who knows? But there's a certain timing to humor in writing, too. Do you put the punch line before or after the dialog tag? i.e. Do you wait a beat or deliver it all at once? Is it good in the middle of a sentence or at the end? My experience is usually at the end, but some jokes are best in their subtlety, "hidden" in the middle. Do you give the punchline its own sentence or put it at the end of the previous one? Even its own paragraph? It's a case-by-case basis, but there is an element to timing in writing humor. And, yup, like you covered: the unexpected is another way. But humor is part of the human experience; try summing it up. Good luck. And then there's this. See, I found this funny--might have even LOLed--even though it had no timing and it wasn't unexpected. It had that unknown. But then again, I'm simple.
You clearly have an excellent sense of humour which is beyond reproach, the level of which all forum users should strive to achieve.
So jealous. I've wanted tabby normal most of my life! I finally figured out it ain't hap'nin' so I just learned to live with myself. At least I'll never be lonely. But, if we get in a fight, how can I tell who wins? Love those names.
Just chiming in to also suggest Calvin Trillin. (Edited to add: Though he also has some serious books. He can produce emotion across the scale, so I'd hate to set anybody up to expect to laugh and have them end up crying.)
My brother and his wife had decided on the name "Abbey" for their, as yet unborn, daughter (years ago). I am not even kidding... his wife offered up the middle name "Normal". At that moment I completely understood why he married her. She is so clearly one of us!
Text is a medium. It works in a specified way. It has conventions. But like most things humans invent and do, it relates to other things. We're humans no matter what medium we're currently indulging in, and we have the same references. Slapstick works on page too, but like the screen has to show a person falling, a book has to spell it out with letters. That's how it works by definition. Witty remarks about amusing goings-on in written stories have tickled audiences' funny bones for ages, and it will continue to do so through the skill and effort of talented writers. Humour is an element the same way romance, magic, mystery and character development are. Use it or don't, do it well or not, and be prepared for the consequences; fame or failure, laughter or irritatrion.
I would have to say one of the best ways to invoke humor in a story is with the characters. As mentioned in a post above, some of the funniest parts of Hitchhiker's Guide are the ridiculous characters (especially Marvin the depressed robot). As with lots of humor, you take something and exaggerate it (but not too much, it has to still has to make sense and be believable). Once you have a strong character, especially one with exaggerated traits, think of the most entertaining/ridiculous situation you could put him in because of said traits. I wrote a story once about a chef who was possibly the most self-centered jerk in the world, and I made him the one human being aliens abducted to see if Earth was ready to interact with the rest of the universe. I thought it was funny, but hey, even if no one else laughed, you can't beat laughing to yourself while writing a story.
JJ, as you can tell from the various opinions on humor in writing there are many ways to create that humor. And all of the opinions here are wrong... and right. No one approach will work for everyone or in every situation. And what might work for you in one situation won't in another. That's the ambiguous art of creative writing. Do your characters have a certain personality that would readily lend itself to pratfalls or comedic interactions with other characters? Are they, by their very nature, designed to do foolish or silly things or are they prone to malapropisms? Every book, every situation must be weighed on its own merit to determine what may or may not work for this book at this particular place.
I think unpredictable random stuff makes us laugh. The book, Hunger Pains, a parody of Hunger Games, made be laugh a lot because I remember the elements from the original book, which Hunger Pains is making fun of. In one part, Katness was about to be kill by a girl, until out of nowhere, a black retarded kid named Smash grabbed the girl to hug her to death while yelling, "Pretty girl!" That part made me laugh very hard because it was unpredictable. Comedy is like horror. Instead of scaring your readers, you make them laugh at unpredictable humor. If they can understand the subject and laugh at the un expecting humor, then it works.
If only Id taken that humor in writing class I saw... then I would have had an answer for you. Irony makes for decent humor most of the time. I think the key to humor in writing is in the techniques, not just the timing. You have to know what is culturally funny to the audience you're writing towards. Shakespeare's people must have really valued puns. As I said, irony is another good one. Character foils work well. Try looking at certain literary devices to see what you can make into comedy.
i like to write humour into to characters, when you have a serious character do something vaguely funny and out of his norm it can make more of an impact and is probably easier to write than actually writing punchline jokes. I try to write funny insults like the interactions you would have with your mates when your taking the piss out of each other. Make the characters more interactive with each other.
My characters definitely work best with a straight man to accompany them. Someone to provide the scene or the "straight line", is crucial.
It is indeed one of the best ways, and one of my favourite methods. A fish out of water story can be hilarious, thought-provoking and thoroughly engaging at the same time. I believe it's part of why crazy characters, urban fantasy, time travel and ridiculous scenarios are so common, popular and somehow oddly relatable.
And travel humor. You can't even reliably cross the street, feed yourself or find the bathroom, in a foreign country, without help. You become a sentient two year old. Endless opportunities for humor!
One thing I really enjoy about Chuck Palahniuk is his ability to make nearly every sentence both disturbing and funny. I like that sense of not taking extremely serious topics too seriously. I think Kurt Vonnegut is good at that, too.
If you read Dickens. HILARIOUS! Seriously. It is so toungue-in-cheek. Patrick McManus has this same style.
Well, apparently people find my writing funny and witty, even though all I'm doing is telling the truth - the ugly truth. Maybe there's a correlation there?
Off topic, yes, but I had to chime in when you said you tell the ugly truth. I was flipping through this month’s Psychology Today and read an article that explored humor from the viewpoint of male vs female comedians. The gist of it: In the stand-up world, male comedians can laugh at/make fun of males and females, but female comedians can only laugh at/make fun of females, and usually target themselves. Personally, I find female comedians hilarious because they are usually telling the ugly truth
First of I all I have to say a joke is different with a humor story. If it is noticed, in most of the jokes, the funniest part of them is those last sentence, where the joke is finished. While the other parts of them may seems serious. Because the last sentence is the best unexpected location that you can laughing people with an unexpected and unusual word or event. A humor story is different and writer has to laugh people alternatively by a series funny words or events and it is dependent on his/her mood and talent. In most of the funny stories, the MC is a person that does unusual works and says unusual funny words. Basically, people sometimes love to travel to a humorous world from this serious world and a writer has to create such world for them and as I said it dependent on his/her ability, experience and talent.
I actually find some of the Hodor ones pretty funny. Because Martin does it with such commitment and such straight face. “That wasn’t his true name,” said Gilly, rocking. “We only called him that, Sam and me. His hands were cold as ice, but he saved us from the dead men, him and his ravens, and he brought us here on his elk.” “His elk?” said Bran, wonderstruck. “His elk?” said Meera, startled. “His ravens?” said Jojen. “Hodor?” said Hodor. Generally though I tend to like humor that is in the description rather than in the dialogue. Like if an action or object is described by over the top comparisons. I'm not sure I would feel comfortable using it in my own writing though. I don't think I would be able to do it without it being satirical.
Life is bursting with humor, if you are open to seeing it. As a writer, your most important skill is to present your observations of reality to highlight the same features that strike you. You are an impressionist, painting the essentials of a scene in an economy of brush strokes. Humor is generally subjective, so conveying the emotional context, or evoking it in the reader, is the key skill for a writer of humor. It's not a skill every writer can achieve, as evidenced by how few top writers manage to succeed at humorous writing.
