humor in writing

Things are tense these days. I hope I’m not shocking anyone by saying that. There’s a lot of negative emotions going around, and people deal with them in different ways. One of the healthier ways is to engage with a good movie, game, book, or other form of media and get lost in a story. As a person empathizes with characters, they achieve catharsis as they experience their emotional journey together with the characters they empathize with. People enjoy dramas to release their sadness, they enjoy action to feel power over a world which often shows them to be powerless. Some enjoy horror for the endorphin rush, or to release pent up negative emotions in a more healthy way than going to the hardware store and looking for a chainsaw that’s light enough to chase someone with, yet not so light that it can’t get the job done.

Um, for example.

First, I didn’t set out to be a humorist. And I’ve only got one sci-fi comedy novel so far, Where the Hell is Tesla?, so I’m not sure I qualify as anyone you should listen to. But I’ve always loved funny sci-fi, like Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or John Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars, or Pratchett and Gaiman’s Good Omens, and I love the process of writing humor. It seems like a fit. I’m sticking with it.

Along the way, I’ve learned a ton from great writers, and great teachers, and from screwing up in every conceivable way. So here are a few of my favorite little nuggets that you might find it useful in your own writing:

1. Exaggerated Contrast.
Imagine you move into your new apartment, and you go next door to ask if they signed for a package you were expecting. You’re invited in, and you find yourself in the middle of four adult males playing Dungeons and Dragons. With costumes on. Hmm. This might make a funny story to tell your friends later. But let’s exaggerate the contrast more by making all four of these guys over-the-top-crazy-smart scientists who revel in everything tech and sci-fi. Now what’s your story? The Big Bang Theory. A huge comedy hit, in its ninth season. A classic fish-out-of-water story pitting poor Penny against the ultimate geek squad.

Or take Dortmunder, the cat burglar hero from the old Donald Westlake novels. He’s literally the only sane person in an insane world filled with incompetent crooks, bungling cops, and inept villains. The result? He had so much comic potential he starred in twenty-five novels and short stories.

Why does fish-out-of-water work? Because the greater you can make the gap between the normal person’s perspective (Penny, Dortmunder) and the crazy world’s perspective (the four scientists, incompetents in general), the richer the vein of comic possibility. And science fiction can be even better, as your worlds are only limited by your imagination. Just look at Hitchhiker’s Guide’s hapless Arthur Dent, thrust into insanity on a galactic scale. And in my novel, the “fish” are two regular joes who find themselves trapped inside an “Interdimensional Transfer Apparatus” ““ where each dimension they visit is strange, and rife with comic opportunity.