Writing Humour

Em Thompson

As they say, one man’s meat is another man’s poisson. Or to put it another way, humour is in the ear of the beholder.

I’ve always enjoyed humorous writers like Tom Sharpe and James Thurber. Agatha Christie has a lot of humour in her wryly observed characters; think Poirot. Even Shakespeare liked to introduce humour to leaven the dramatic dough – remember the Jester in King Lear. Indeed, this is maybe the point of a splash of humour in an otherwise serious work; it brings the reader/viewer back from the dramatic brink, makes them examine him/herself and provides a means of saying or observing something that would be difficult in dramatic prose. Our greatest novelist, Charles Dickens, is a master of using humour as a mirror on society . . . Oliver Twist and Gradgrind from Hard Times have become cultural stereotypes that define certain universal human and situational truths.

Humour can take many forms. Farce, dry ‘English’ humour, situational, bawdy belly-laugh-out-loud, character driven . . . there are as many formats as there are for drama, suspense, tragedy or any other genre.

One of the main themes of my Prendergast of The Yard series is that the protagonist, Heather Prendergast, has no sense of humour; vain, opinionated and ambitious, she takes herself deadly seriously, making her an unwitting figure of fun for many of those she encounters. I guess we all know people like that, and this is important; characters must be relatable to be real. Time after time, Heather misreads situations and people, with amusing consequences as, for example, she is persuaded to don outrageous disguises to go undercover. This creates opportunities to put her into farcical but believable situations where the reader can see that she’s transparently embarrassing, heightened by her belief that her disguise is convincing. Of course, subtlety is all. I know her character intimately, so can anticipate her behaviour and reactions in any and every situation, and above all (hopefully) make the scenario believable. But what is equally important is that she also has her moments of genius and brilliance. Let’s face it – Charlie Chaplin always had the last laugh . . . he was far from just a clown, which is why we find him so endearing,

Many writers, such as PG Wodehouse and my favourite comedic author, Tom Sharpe, create what might best be described as caricatures – cartoonish figures who’s exaggerated and outlandish behaviour in chaotic situations create an element of farce. This is a rare skill; the line between genuine humour and crass slapstick can be very, very thin. All too often, I have seen a book described as ‘laugh out loud’ to sit there, po-faced, as I read what is more often than not a string of cliched, adolescent quips. No – a humorous novel must be as real as any other novel; the reader must relate. The humour must be ORGANIC. In other words, not forced, always relevant and consistent with the plot and characters. A habit I’ve learned, and which I recommend, when writing a humorous passage is to let it simmer, then dial the humour back leaving a suggestion rather than a blatant statement; let the reader find the humour for themselves rather than smacking them full in the face. It really can be a case of less is more. In other words, insofar as possible, let the reader see the humour in a situation or the barb of a quip rather than spell it out too clearly. OK, so sometimes the humour might be too subtle, but better this than that a joke or amusing situation is too laboured. If the reader gets the character and the situation, he or she will get the joke. Some of my favourite lines are so subtle that I’m sure a lot of readers won’t see the joke, but so what? Some will. As a recent review of Elliefant’s Graveyard said, ‘It’s not the laugh out loud type, but where you read a sentence and halt saying, “Wait, what?” to yourself.”

An example is a passage from Elliefant’s Graveyard where the protagonist, Heather Prendergast (‘the humorously flawed yet persistent rookie cop,’ as one reviewer described her) is trapped in a pothole. She tells herself to ‘try, try again like Spiderman the Bruce,’ to escape. My editor, Philippa Donovan, highlighted this as something that didn’t make sense, but several reviewers got the Robert the Bruce allegory straight away. Another example, from the same book – and one of my favourite quips – is the alcoholic character who complains . . . ‘And as for Alcoholics Anonymous – who the fuck do they think they are?’ I assumed this would pass readers by, so was chuffed when a successful author (chic lit) picked up on the line in her review.

There are many other humorous devices we can employ. A character with no dress sense (leg warmers, leather miniskirt, dyed blond perm one day, flared slacks, platform shoes, knitted sleeveless pullover the next) if done subtly raises a smile whenever she (or even better, he) appears; what will they be wearing today, the reader asks? Hey – let’s surprise them when the character enters stage left wearing a twinset and pearls or a Teletubby costume, with some ridiculous story about why. (‘I came home from a fancy-dress party and got locked out my flat by a Chiwawa.’)

In my Harper series, I struggled to give one of the two main characters a strong identity until it struck me that she was whacky – a dizzy blond despite being hyper talented and intelligent. The penny dropped when I was describing her boyfriend, Monk Harper, collecting her at a station.

Bella sat back, clunk-clicked her seat belt, said, ‘try first, honey . . . that’s reverse,’ lit a cigarette and pointed to a roughshod man leaning against a lamppost. ‘Guess what,’ she said. ‘I’ve been chatting to that wanker over there. Don’t give me one of your looks, honey, he’s really is a wanker. He’s a whatchamacallit – you know, one of those artificial inseminator thingies. Honestly, you would not believe the stuff he gets up to. I totally get why he didn’t want to go into all the gory details but I insisted. I’ll give you a demonstration tonight if you want.’ She adjusted the passenger seat, kicked off her sandals, stretched her long legs and examined her face in rear view mirror. ‘Like my hair?’

‘Suits you.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Bella gasped. ‘I told Marcel to give me a pixie-cut not a sodding poxy-cut. I look like a choirboy with tits. You’re a lawyer honey . . . can you sue him for defaming my face or something? Pleeease?’ She tilted her head one way then the other and fussed with her fringe. ‘So, what do you think of this dress?’

‘Isn’t that the one I bought you for your birthday?’

‘Yes, but do you like it? I’m not sure . . . oh, that reminds me – I got you something,’ Bella said as she rooted through her shoulder bag.

‘What is it?’

‘Haven’t a clue, but the girl said I could take it back if it doesn’t fit . . . watch out, honey – red means stop.’

Having found the key, not only did Bella take on a life of her own, her strong personality allowed me to introduce humour into her relationship with the other protagonist, Theo – indecisive, always preferring to avoid issues and shirk hard work in contrast to his girlfriend’s hyper-energy and efficiency. It added greatly to my pleasure writing these novels. Yes, Bella lights up the page whenever she appears.

It is important to avoid parody wherever possible. Always make a character human with human strengths and weaknesses and make situations believable, even if they spiral into the absurd – as my life frequently does. Once more I’ll quote a reviewer; ‘I found it curious how (Heather Prendergast’s) enthusiasm and determination often clashed with her lack of experience, leading to some humorous yet intense moments. The contrast between her lofty aspirations and her clumsy off-duty investigations gave the story a quirky charm.’

So, humour can engage readers, keep them wondering ‘what next?’ and stimulate their phagocytes (as George Bernard Shaw said in Doctor’s Dilemma, an amusing examination of a far from humourous life and death dilemma). And that’s the narrow line we have to tread. My advice is always to UNDERCOOK rather than OVERCOOK humour – rely upon your reader to get the punchline. Indeed, the best humour is something that hits you five minutes after you’ve read it. I think (hope) much of my humour falls into that category.

First published on em-thompson.com