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Ten tips for writing Comedy

by

Heide Goody and Iain M Grant

We have been writing comedy together for over six years now, and we’ve learned a lot about technique in that time. In this guest post we wanted to distil some of the most important lessons, so here are our top ten tips for writing comedy:

1. Challenge your characters. Any kind of conflict can drive comedy, but you need to create a mixture of characters and situation that will drive lots of conflict. This is why “fish out of water” works well for comedy.

2. Have an agent of chaos. Somewhat related to the previous point, it can be very helpful if your cast of characters includes someone who can be relied upon to always do the thing that is unthinkably bad. In A Spell in the Country, one of our witches has an invisible imp, who is an agent of chaos.

3. Your first idea is almost certainly not your best idea. If you think of something funny, whether it’s a situation or a joke, you can usually stretch it. If you make it more extreme you can steer clear of cliché and make something that will genuinely startle your reader. For example, when the witches in A Spell in the Country embark upon their training, they are set a task to find an amulet. We wanted one set of witches to fail the task, by bringing back the wrong thing. They might have brought back a stone, a plant or even a cow pat and it would have been funny. Instead they go through a set of thought processes that ends up with them bringing back a live cow. 

4. Specifics are funnier. Whenever you can, name specifics. Gorgonzola is funnier than cheese. Hobnobs are funnier than biscuits. Antique Wedgewood is funnier than crockery.

5. Words containing the letter “k” have a pleasing, often amusing sound: Knickerbocker Glory, spanking, Kettering.

6. Compress the timescale. This can drive the narrative by putting extra pressure on your characters. If your character has to spend a million pounds, that might be a tough challenge, with lots of comedic opportunities. If they have to spend it by the end of the day then it pushes them even harder. What will they do in their desperation?

7. Compress the setting. If your characters have plenty of conflict between them (and they should, if you’ve created a good cast of characters) then forcing them to be close together will heighten the conflict. If they hate each other and want to be apart, put them in a trapped lift together. This was one of the reasons that we put our witches into an isolated country house for A Spell in the Country.

8. Outlandish similes can be fun. Let’s say you want to describe an untidy sandpit. Your first thought might be to say that it’s scattered with old toys. Why not go further? The sandpit looked like an open grave for the victims of a serial killer with a penchant for Barbies. You can probably think of something better if you let your mind run wild for a moment.

9. Consider funny combinations to replace or embellish swearing. The tweets directed at Donald Trump from (primarily) Scotland were a revelation. The very best of them combined some relatively innocuous words into spectacular new ways of swearing. See cockwomble, jizztrumpet and shitgibbon.

10. Watch sitcoms. Obviously, it’s enjoyable, but if you deconstruct some of the jokes and scenarios you will find that they inspire ways that you can have fun with your own characters.

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Introducing…

A Spell in the Country

“Dee is a Good Witch but she wonders if she could be a better witch.
She wonders if there’s more to life than Disney movie marathons, eating a whole box of chocolates for dinner and brewing up potions in her bathtub. So when she’s offered a chance to go on a personal development course in the English countryside, she packs her bags, says goodbye to the Shelter for Unloved Animals charity shop and sets a course for self-improvement.

Amazon.UK | Amazon.US 

Caroline isn’t just a Good Witch, she’s a fricking awesome witch.
She likes to find the easy path through life: what her good looks can’t get for her, a few magic charms can. But she’s bored of being a waitress and needs something different in her life. So when a one night stand offers her a place on an all-expenses-paid residential course in a big old country house, she figures she’s got nothing to lose.

Jenny is a Wicked Witch. She just wishes she wasn’t.
On her fifteenth birthday, she got her first wart, her own imp and a Celine Dion CD. She still has the imp. She also has a barely controllable urge to eat human children which is socially awkward to say the least and not made any easier when a teenager on the run turns to her for help. With gangsters and bent cops on their trail, Jenny needs to find a place outside the city where they can lay low for a while.

For very different reasons, three very different witches end up on the same training course and land in a whole lot of trouble when they discover that there’s a reason why their free country break sounds too good to be true. Foul-mouthed imps, wererats, naked gardeners, tree monsters, ghosts and stampeding donkeys abound in a tale about discovering your inner witch.”

About the authors:

Heide Goody is the stupid one in the writing partnership and Iain Grant is the sensible one. Together, they are the authors of seven novels, two short story collections and a novella.

The ‘Clovenhoof’ series (in which Satan loses his job and has to move to Birmingham) has recently been optioned by a Hollywood production company. Their latest novel, Oddjobs 2: this time it’s personnel, was published in August 2017.

Heide and Iain are both married, but not to each other.

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Adding comedy to your manuscript whatever the genre

By

R.J. Crayton

Whatever genre people write in, there has to be a touch of comedy somewhere in the manuscript. Why? Because in real life, people try to make things funny. They do it because that’s their personality, or to break the tension, or to entice a lover, or because that’s what the situation calls for. Every person you have ever met has told a joke and had someone laugh at it. The computer nerd whose jargon everyone else ignores has friends who will laugh hysterically at some jargon-filled joke very few would find funny.

 So, if you want to infuse humor into your books in appropriate places but don’t feel you’re particularly humorous, don’t worry. There are a few things you can do to try to see the humorous side of things.

1. Try to look at things in a different light. The best comedy often comes from looking at things from a fresh perspective. My six-year-old daughter, for some reason, was looking at the milk carton, and turns to me with a look of utter horror on her face. “Mom, why is it only one percent milk? What is the rest of it?”  Yikes. She’d be right if the one percent referred to the milk content, not the milk fat content. (Sadly, in a bad mommy moment, I laughed hysterically at her question, causing her to look at me like I'd been conspiring to feed her 99 percent bat sweat for many years.) Regardless, a fresh look at something can often provide a wealth of comedy.