Injecting Humor in Writing

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, injecting humor can add entertainment to your work, often providing welcome relief from tense situations. Plus, laughter is therapeutic. By injecting humor, you are improving the health of your readers!

Several types of humor can be incorporated, and I often inject the self-effacing kind. People love to read about the misfortunes of others in a funny way, especially if the end result doesn’t cause serious injury.

In writing a travel book for the University Press of Florida about kayaking the wild Big Bend Florida coast, I decided to begin the book with my first exposure to the coast as a boy. I was on a Boy Scout survival campout on a barrier island in late summer. Besides the heat and bugs, the main problem was that we were to survive on raw oysters, and being a recent transplant from Chicago, I had never eaten an oyster before.

Here’s how I describe wading into Apalachicola Bay with our scoutmaster, Ken, to retrieve lunch. The other boys had already made me nervous by telling me that oysters tasted like big boogers, and Ken told me not to chew—just swallow:

Ken opened a palm-sized oyster and handed it to me. The wet meat jiggled in its perfect natural container. Somewhere inside this humble creation, I knew there was a beating heart.

“Now remember, don’t chew until you get used to them,” Ken reminded.

I looked at the oyster, glanced at the many eyes upon me, looked back at the oyster, then brought it to my lips. I tilted my head back. The slimy meat slid into my mouth and throat. It was worse than a booger! Far worse. I gagged. That brought the oyster back into my mouth. Panicky, I chewed. The oyster squished between my teeth. I thought of those oyster organs—the still-beating heart, the stomach, live, and intestines… With those scrutinizing eyes upon me, however, I refused to spit it out. Not then. With strength I didn’t know I possessed, I willed myself to swallow my first oyster.

I could not breathe.

“Want another one?” Ken asked.

That was a rough weekend, but I did get over my squeamishness about eating oysters—after several years.

Of course, you can’t talk about writing humor without bringing up travel writer Bill Bryson. His classic A Walk in the Woods, about hiking the Appalachian Trail, is a hilarious read from start to finish. He launches into his trek with a partner named Katz who is as clueless as they come, and I’m sure Katz had to sign some kind of release form or get paid a lot of money or both (or his name was changed) to be shown in such a light. Here is a description of Katz on their first day of hiking after Bryson had to backtrack to find him:

Finally, I rounded a bend and there he was stumbling towards me, wild-haired and one-gloved and nearer hysteria than I have ever seen a grown person. It was hard to get the full story out of him in a coherent flow, because he was so furious, but I gathered he had thrown many items from his pack over a cliff in a temper. None of the things that had been dangling from the outside were there any longer.

What followed were several four-letter word exchanges when it was realized that most of their trail food had been tossed. The humor helps to carry the reader along on the journey, but factual information about the trail and its history is also conveyed, and I’m sure that was one of Bryson’s motives.

In writing fiction, there’s no better time to inject humor than when showing a nemesis get his comeuppance. In Seminole Freedom, a novel about an escaped slave girl joining the Seminole Indians in the early 1800s, I describe how my lead character, Jenny, is captured by her former overseer, Dirk. But I wasn’t ready for Jenny to rejoin the plantation picking cotton, so I devised a unique way of escape, and the outcome is funny:

It was near the big sweetgum tree, the one she and Cato once tried to reach around with outstretched arms and hands, that Jenny first heard the vaguely familiar buzzing sound, a high-pitched whir. She glanced down to see yellow jackets covering Mister Dirk’s pants; he had stepped on their ground nest. As if by some agreed upon signal, the formidable yellow and black wasps began stinging in unison, like a well disciplined army thrusting bayonets at their enemy. The resulting screams of Mister Dirk were heavenly music to Jenny. Wild-eyed, he released his grip on her and ran into a shallow pool ringed by cypress trees, all the while screaming and stripping off clothes. Jenny watched in astonished amazement. Only two yellow jackets had stung her, but the swarm followed Mister Dirk.

The alligator was a small one, but when Dirk stepped on its tail, it swung around and latched onto his boot with surprising quickness and power.

“Ow!” Dirk screamed again, hopping in the water on one foot and swatting yellow jackets with his arms.

Humor can surprise and delight your readers, and you can use it through flashbacks, vivid descriptions, and dialogue. It is part of life, and it can be part of your writing, too.