How to Use Humor In Your Writing

Despite what some people say, you can absolutely learn to be funny. No one is born with it any more than you were born with the ability to write. And it’s something I can teach you right now.

I’ve been a newspaper humor columnist for over 21 years, and have written several humorous radio plays, stage plays, and short stories. I’ve also had long discussions with other humor writers about different humor techniques, and my father was even a humor researcher as a psychology professor many years ago.

Bottom line: I know humor writing. I know it can be learned, because I learned how to do it. I wasn’t funny in high school, but it’s pretty much the only thing I can write with any confidence.

If I can learn it, you can learn it. And I can give you three quick lessons for you to start on with your own writing. Pay attention to funny things you read the next few days, and see if you don’t recognize these three humor techniques.

Keep in mind, when I talk about writing humor and I talk about “jokes,” I’m not talking about writing standup or coming up with a “two guys walk into a bar” joke. It refers to the setup and punchline of a funny piece of text that makes people laugh, but the concept works whether it’s in a short story or essay, something a standup comic performs, or that thing your racist uncle is going to tell next month at Thanksgiving.

1. Surprise

Not only is this one of the chief elements of the Spanish Inquisition, it’s the foundation principle for most humor.

It’s based on the principle set forth by Victor Raskin, a linguist at Purdue University in Indiana, that all humor is based on a lie. The joke teller is deceiving us: when they’re starting the setup, our brain immediately fills in where we think they’re going. But the switch it up on us, and we’re caught off guard by the punchline, and it gets a laugh.

For example, think about Henny Youngman’s famous line, “Take my wife, please.” In our minds, when we first heard this, we all thought he was going to say, “Take my wife, for example.” Except he lied to us. What started out in our minds as a request to consider his wife was instead a plea for deliverance.

You can do this in your writing by putting people in unusual situations, describing what’s going on in seemingly normal terms, and then hitting them with something unexpected.

2. Recognition

Monty Python fans, did you catch that line about surprise being one of the chief elements of the Spanish Inquisition? That’s Recognition. And if you got a good chuckle out of it, you understand why it can be so powerful.

Recognition is the other side of the Surprise coin. That is, you can be surprised by something, but you can also get a laugh when your readers recognize something. It’s that inside joke, that thing you recognized from before.

This is why jokes about things we already know about — NPR pledge drives, writer’s block, that sense of existential dread that comes whenever you meet a writer more successful than you — are so funny. We may not be surprised, but we sure can relate to whatever it is the writer is talking about.

One form of Recognition is something comedians call the callback. It’s a second or third joke that relates to an earlier joke. It gets a much bigger laugh the second and third time around, because we recognize it.

3. Incongruity

A close cousin to Surprise is Incongruity. It’s when a situation is so unusual or exaggerated that it catches us off guard. Frequently, it relies on the double meanings of certain words or expected situations.

Two fish are sitting in a tank. One of them says to the other, “Do you know how to drive this thing?”

In this example, we’re stuck on the word “tank.” The two fish make us think this means a glass box with water in it. But when one fish says “drive this thing,” we realize it meant the war machine.

Two muffins are sitting in an oven. One says to the other, “Boy, it’s sure hot in here.” The other muffin screams, “AAAAH! A TALKING MUFFIN!”

Again, we’re caught off guard by the incongruity of not one, but two talking muffins. It’s odd that one of them talked, and it’s even more odd that the other one was not only surprised by it, it could talk as well.

You can use incongruity to help deal with characters in unusual situations. Douglas Adams was a master at this in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, putting his characters in weird places that almost but never quite seemed to make sense.

A Few Notes on Humor Writing Techniques

1. Don’t rely on joke names, like an infectious diseases doctor name E. L. O’Fever. That’s cheap humor. It may good for a polite chuckle, but it’s beneath you.
2. Puns in general are also not good elements of humor. Sure, they’re great if you’re a dad and you’re trying to embarrass your children, but again, they’re a cheap device.
3. Keep it short. Get people through the setup quickly and the punchline even more so. If you drag things out, it takes away from the surprise.
4. The funny bit goes last. Never step on a punchline with “he said” or “she said.” You ruin the surprise if you can’t end the sentence or paragraph with the funny word. Rewrite your sentences so you can make this work.
5. Never, ever, EVER make fun of the Other. If your joke relies on a physical characteristic to be funny — race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc. — this is a terrible joke, and you deserve any and all scorn and shame you receive.
6. Never, ever explain a joke. If you worry your reader won’t get it, don’t bother with it. The surprise will be gone, and so will the opportunity for the laugh.

Humor writing is much, much different from writing comedy. For one thing, comedy is meant to be heard, whether it’s standup comics or TV sitcoms. Humor is meant to be read: Dave Barry, Christopher Moore, Patrick McManus, and Robert Benchley are and were masters of the craft. And with a little work, you can add humor to your writing just by using these (or some other) techniques.

I’ll be leading one of the breakout sessions at the Florida Writers Conference this month on humor writing. If you can attend, I’m sharing 12 Humor Techniques to Get a Laugh from Your Readers on Saturday morning, expanding on these three techniques and adding nine more to your toolbox. I’ll also be in the Who’s Laughing Now? Being Funny is Serious Business panel discussion on Friday morning.