How to Use Humor in a Novel: 5 Tips for Making Your Novel Funnier

Whether it’s the slapstick pratfalls of clowns or the dark satire of political comedians, humor has a way of bringing people together. In many ways, humor cannot be taught; it’s something you develop an intuition for over a lifetime—and some people seem to have an especially heightened natural sense of humor. That’s why not everyone is as funny as Tina Fey, Mark Twain, David Sedaris or Jerry Seinfeld. However, there are certain writing techniques you can employ—and writing advice you can heed—to add comedy and levity to your writing.

Humor is the quality of being funny or comedic, and humor writing is any piece of writing that aims to make people laugh. While some humor does indeed make people laugh out loud, other humor pieces may simply be amusing or satirical without necessarily being laugh-out-loud funny.

If you’re a freelance writer authoring a guest post on a blog or an ad executive trying to liven up some copywriting, a good sense of humor is invaluable; for novelists, the ability to be funny is an especially important skill. It enables you to engage readers and make your book feel more alive. Here are some writing tips and techniques to help you incorporate humor into your own writing:

1. 1. Identify your own style of humor. Everybody is funny in their own way. Writing comedy requires you to identify your own sense of humor, as well as what kind of humor you find the funniest. Which movies, TV shows, sitcoms and stand up comedy specials make you laugh the hardest? You might find that they share a similar joke style or comedic point of view. Now think about how you make people laugh. Do you do so through observational or situational humor, in which you find the comedy in mundane, everyday situations? Do you employ self-deprecating humor by making fun of yourself in a lighthearted way? Or does your humor come from clever word choice, wordplay, hyperbole or understatement? Figuring out what makes you a funny person will help make you a funnier novel writer.
2. 2. Play with genre cliches. Good comedy comes from the subversion of expectations, and the conventions of different genres can serve as building blocks for writing humor into your novel. Whether it’s a thriller, science fiction, a high school coming-of-age romance, or children’s books, you should know the tropes of the genre well enough to subvert and upend them. Humorists know how to use cliches to their advantage, placing a clever twist or joke just when the audience expects a big scare or romantic scene.
3. 3. Mine material from real life. Oftentimes, the funniest jokes and situations come from everyday life. When funny things happen to you throughout the day, start writing them down in a journal or the notes app on your phone. Do the same thing when you hear funny stories, a good joke, or anything else that tickles your funny bone. After a while, you’ll have a notebook filled with laugh-out-loud material that you can incorporate into your creative writing when you’re experiencing writer’s block.
4. 4. Use the rule of three. The rule of three is a common rule employed by humor writers and one of the most common comedy writing secrets. It involves establishing a set pattern with two ideas and then subverting that pattern with a third, incompatible idea. The third idea serves as the unexpected punchline, using the element of surprise to catch the reader off guard and make them laugh. For example: “Can I get you anything, sweetheart? Coffee? Bagel? A divorce?”
5. 5. Choose humorous moments carefully. Whether you’re a stand-up comic or a comedy writer, the golden rule still applies: Timing is everything. In the same way that a well-placed joke in a short story or novel can add much-needed levity, an ill-timed joke can derail your story or deflate a scene’s tension. If a scene feels like it’s working perfectly fine without humor, don’t try to force it in there. In fact, sometimes it’s better to leave stretches of your novel humorless because when you finally do add a joke, it will be all the more unexpected and impactful.

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