They say write what you know/what you love to read, and some of my favorite authors (Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Judith McNaught) can move me to tears. When I first started writing seriously—emphasis on seriously—I penned tragic contemporaries full of loss, post Civil-War historicals in the devastated South. Real laugh a minute stuff. A critique partner finally informed me that my books suffered from multiple-personality disorder. "I want to buy into these tear-jerker scenes," she said, "But then your hero's brother makes a joke at an inappropriate moment, and I can't tell if you're being funny on purpose or not."
I then realized those same authors with the ability to make me weepy also wrote scenes that made me laugh. Comedy, like angst, is still tapping into a reader's emotion, just a different one. Looking at the smiley-faces contest judges had written on my manuscripts and considering my string of rejection letters, I decided it was now time for something completely different: romantic comedy. Panic ensued. What if no one got my sense of humor? What if I tried too hard to plot a humorous story, and it came off as implausible and contrived?
Writing comedy is not for everyone (which is good, because neither is reading it. Some prefer stories that are more gut-wrenching, more erotic or more suspenseful). But if you'd like to try your hand at being funny on purpose, whether it's in a screwball mystery or sexy romantic comedy, here's what I've learned:
The premise doesn't have to be hysterically funny. While some story foundations (opposites attract, "fish out of water") lend themselves to humor, comedy is more about execution than situation. "Emotionally detached man comes to the city and gets involved with a prostitute" could describe either the movie Pretty Woman, generally considered romantic comedy, or the bleakly grim Leaving Las Vegas. Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, with their body count, explosions and range of creepy suspects, could have been written as straight suspense. But because of running jokes, Stephanie's quirky family and the wry first person narration, the series is funny in spite of the murder and mayhem. If the basic plot of your book doesn't sound funny when you boil it down for a summary in a query letter or editor pitch, don't be afraid to use a note of sarcasm or exaggeration to demonstrate your voice.
Internal dialogue is your friend. Even a funny romance needs emotional conflict and a "big black moment," so how do you write those believably without making any scenes too jarringly dark? One way is through a character's thoughts. A quick one-liner can help alleviate the tension just enough to keep things from getting too heavy. I've tried to do this in my Harlequin Flipsides. Those of you who have seen the movie Pretty Woman may remember the argument after the polo game. The man knows the woman is ticked, but when he asks her about it, all she says is she's fine. He requests a word other than fine, and she gives him an unflattering expletive. He mutters to himself, "I think I liked fine better." It's a simple line that doesn't diminish the emotion of the scene but injects a brief moment of humor. Another place this principle has been well-demonstrated time and again is in the syndicated Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, when Oz, Xander or any other character tosses out a quip in what is actually a dangerous high stakes or very emotionally tense situation.
Just because it would be hilarious on-screen or in real life, doesn't mean it works on page. You may be a very visual person and "see" a great comedic situation in your mind's eye. Remember that everything takes longer to happen in a story because whereas we can glance at the television screen and take in the full physical layout in a second, we sometimes have to read entire paragraphs to get that effect in a book. In the movie While You Were Sleeping, there's a random scene of a quiet neighborhood on a snowy winter morning and a paperboy who slips on the ice. It's so unexpected that it's quite funny, but trying to describe that same thing in a book wouldn't work as well. That doesn't mean there can't be physical or visual humor in your writing, but the longer you take to set up the joke, the more you reduce the humorous impact. That's why "one-liner" is standard comedy vocabulary; seven-liner, not so much.
Play on the audience's expectations. Even though the falling paperboy gag might not work on paper, there's still a lesson in it—the unexpected. Jokes the audience doesn't see coming are the funniest. This can be a major plot turn (again I cite an example from Buffy, the season one episode where they play unexpectedly off of the audience's inherent expectation of a creepy ventriloquist's dummy) or a much simpler play on words. Twisting a familiar phrase to create an unlikely metaphor can be funny. In my first book, the heroine is a maid-of-honor at a wedding she tried to stop. Her friend, the bride, isn't in love with the groom, and, worse yet, the heroine is. When the maid-of-honor goes down the aisle toward the front of the church (and the end of her dreams), I draw a parallel between how it would feel to be headed for your own execution with the line, "Dead maid walking." A tiny detail, but something numerous readers have commented on.
And it is in the little details as much as the elaborate setups. I once attended a workshop given by best-selling funny ladies Karen Hawkins and Elizabeth Bevarly where they imparted the following piece of advice (which I now share with you): Consistent smiles are just as effective as one big laugh out loud moment. "Big" jokes can take so long to arrange that you lose the punch-line, and moments where the reader laughs so hard she sets the book down to share the anecdote with others in the room actually jar her out of your fictional world. Making a reader smile throughout the story, whether it's with a small character quirk or turn of phrase, will leave her at the end of the book feeling happy and looking forward to your next story.
The fact is, you're probably funnier than you realize. While we have to think fast in real life to be funny—cracking the joke before we lose the moment—the beauty of writing comedy is you can always go back three days later and add in the perfect punch-line. There are many shades of comedy, and if you find your "voice" and love writing it, chances are, people will love reading it.
