How to Write Romantic Comedy Page 2

  Good observational comedy has the interplay between humour and truth. It makes the everyday different (which is kind of what writing is all about, when you think about it) and it’s usually the sheer unexpectedness that makes your reader laugh. Or smile. We’ll settle for smiling.

  2. Character Based Comedy

  This can either take the form of characters who are intrinsically amusing because of who they are, their role in life or their appearance (ditzy type sidekick who always wears high heels however unsuitable they are for what she is doing, because she thinks they make her look taller) or because they are prone to saying amusing things. Again, the humour in the unexpected comes here. Try not to create characters simple in order for them to be ‘the funny one’, this can lead to horrible examples of stereotyping, think, for example of that often overused trope of “gay best friend”. Even your ‘funny’ characters should have a believable role in your novel and not simply stagger on to be funny and then vanish only to reappear when you need them to come and be funny again.

  Our favourite comic examples come from the interaction of characters in comic situations (we’ll get to that bit later). Character based comedy works well in partnership with observational comedy, the way a particular person looks at the world and verbalises it is the starting point of most novels, after all.

  3. Dark Comedy

  Some of the funniest people I have ever known have been those who work in the professions that cause them to see some of the most awful things. Nurses and firemen spring to mind (and not just because I like the uniforms). They joke about death, disfigurement and injuries – things that you wouldn’t think could be funny (but, as you will find as you write more comedy, there is nothing that can’t be funny). They joke to relieve tension, they joke to bring light into really tragic situations, and also because the human brain can only bear so much awfulness before a coping mechanism cuts in, which is often humour. In a dark place, people will laugh. The humour tends to be subtle of course, nobody is ever going to fall about laughing about the fact that their leg is hanging off, but it human nature dictates that, wherever there is some big awfulness going on, there is someone else making a joke about it. Also bear in mind that, if you are writing a big tragic scene, a little lightness can make that dark seem even darker.

  4. Situational Comedy

  Situation Comedy, or SitCom, is the name given to those comedies on TV, where a lot of the laughter comes from the viewers’ familiarity with the setting, which remains the same from week to week. The comedy comes partly from them being in a particular location that is integral to everything they do. Now, that can be a space station (where you can, apparently, get quite a lot of giggle-mileage from something as simple as two people in space suits running out of air) or a hairdresser’s, or two people sharing a flat.

  In books, situational comedy is very similar. However, it is your characters that your reader will be identifying with and laughing (hopefully) with, so the situation is usually funny because of the people you put into it. Here we have scenarios like the city couple who are forced to go and live in the countryside. The countryside is not, intrinsically, amusing. I know this, I live in it. It’s generally just like everywhere else only with more smells and fewer shops. However, when you people it with those who have no idea what silage is, it becomes funny (at least, it does to all of us who do know what silage is).

  Situational comedy can also be transient. You can have one scene where the set-up leads to the comedy, just take the ‘meeting the parents’ scenario. It’s not humour based on the location in this case, but on the fact that this is a situation that most people can relate to. ‘Going shopping’ is a situation, as is ‘finding a dead body’. Although we’d hope that most people can’t relate to that last one, they can still imagine themselves in that situation. Again, although the situation may or may not be amusing in itself, it is your characters that will give rise to the humour, because of the way that they interact, both with each other and with the situation in question. Often a comic character will react to a normal situation in an unexpected (even bizarre) way that is entirely in keeping with their character. For examples, see Father Ted.

  5. Physical Comedy

  Now, this is one of the hardest to get over in written format. Pratfalls, spilled tea, and sudden unexpected coughing fits can all be very funny in real life, but once you take them to pieces to describe them for your reader, they lose a lot of the humour. It’s a bit like a car. Seeing a beautiful Audi (other manufacturers are available) is one thing. Watching it stripped to its component parts is quite another. You lose the view of the overall object and its working parts are visible, which is often what happen when writing physical comedy. You know that thing with two men and a plank? When one is swinging round and catching the other man with the end, and sometime he ducks and the plank does something unexpected? It’s very hard to describe that in words and still make it funny.

  So much of humour is planting a small idea in the mind of the reader, and then they do the heavy lifting work of laughing. If you successfully put that tiny idea in – say with a brief description of your scenario – then their minds will go to work on the detail, and they will, almost, make their own humour. Physically, falling in a cow pat is uncomfortable, and sometimes painful. However, if you describe a field of cow pats, put your character in there and then mention that they are crossing that field, you don’t have to over describe what is happening to them, a simple ‘ow!’ or ‘whooooooaaaahhhh!’ will be enough, because your reader will be putting the actions in for themselves. So, yes, physical comedy can be an element in your novel, but be careful how you handle it, or it might blow up in your face (with hilarious consequences, naturally).

  6. Pun Based Comedy

  Puns can be very, very funny. But they are like salt in cooking. They add a certain something to your writing, but only if used sparingly. Overdone, they can make your reader sick. They do work well in the written format, but beware using a pun that is based on pronunciation, ‘It’s National Book Day, why are you making a clown outfit?’ ‘I just thought I’d make the jester’ (gesture ... see my books for other feeble examples). When it’s said, it’s funnier than it is written down and although your reader is reading it, your characters are saying it.

  Conversely, beware of the pun used in conversation that is only funny when the words are seen (any bridle/bridal gags). If you say it, it’s not funny, but your characters are using it in conversation. It’s things like this that can pull your reader out of the book. You never want them to remember that what they are doing is reading a book – you want them to remain so immersed in your world that they feel they are part of the action. And when someone says ‘do you want a bit for that bridle outfit?’ and everyone falls about because it’s so funny, your reader may just roll their eyes.

  There’s also the risk that the reader may not ‘get’ the pun. While a pun is difficult to unsee once you’ve seen it, sometimes it can take a while to work it out. You don’t want the reader to pause and think about what they just read because, as we mentioned before, we don’t want them to remember that they’re reading a book. So puns. Use sparingly.

  7. Gross Out Comedy

  Now, I’ve never found gross humour funny, but I am aware that I am not truly representative of the human race, so feel obligated to cover it here. Whether it is actually ‘funny’ or whether due to the human tendency to laugh in the face of shock, is debatable, but it exists, so, here we are. Gross out humour is more often deployed in books (and films) aimed at younger readers, the late teens and early twenties. By later life we’ve often grown out of the ability to find humour in others’ misfortunes, although there is still a tiny pleasure in Schadenfreude, and watching a villain get their comeuppance in a particularly unpleasant way can find a receptive audience.

  The line between dark humour and gross out humour can be a fine one to tread; both often rely on the shock value to create laughter, but whereas dark humour can be employed in romantic comedies, gross out humour doesn’t cross into our kind of fiction quite as readily. If you are a huge fan of American Pie films you may beg to differ, of course. Anyway. Gross out humour relies on a suspension of subtlety as well as disbelief, and can be funny if used sparingly.

  Since gross out comedy is about breaking a taboo, we should probably mention swearing. Sometimes swearing is ****** funny. But there are people who are offended by words like ******* or *&$*! Or even, ££££$£ (gasp!). You know your readers better than we do. Use your judgement with the swearing.

  8. Parody

  You don’t see parody very much in rom com. The main problem with writing a parody is that you don’t know whether the reader knows about the original thing that you’re parodying. People who’ve seen/read the original might find the book hilarious, but those who haven’t would be left mildly bemused. If you really want to parody something, make sure it’s so well known that everyone will get what you’re trying to do. In rom com you might be able to get away with a scene or two of parody, but it would be difficult to sustain over a whole book.

  Chapter 4: Uses of Comedy

  Why bother with comedy in your novels? Would a good joke make your searing novel about ambition and hubris more memorable ... well, it might do. It’s all very well putting jokes into a narrative, but it’s even better to realise that they’re there for a purpose.

  1. Use humour to reveal character

  Humour is subjective. A joke that makes you laugh like a drain may not even raise a smile from someone else. What you find funny depends on who you are and what moulded your sense of humour. The same is true for your characters. You can use this in your writing, by asking why.

  If you have a joker, one who always has to make a joke... you have to wonder why. Are they using humour to deflect attention from themselves? To make themselves easier to like? It’s no accident that a lot of comedians say they were bullied when they were young. Perhaps they used humour to deflect attention from their vulnerabilities. This basic self defence mechanism, learned as a child as a way to avoid being bullied, would stay with them into adulthood. Me, I’m very short and chubby. At school, I knew someone would make a dig about my height, so I used to get a height joke in before they did. Generally, it meant that people didn’t bother making any more comments about my height and we could get on with more normal conversation instead.

  They could be using humour to distract themselves from painful thoughts. Humour and pain are related. Laughter is known to reduce physical pain. When they said laughter was the best medicine, they weren’t joking (See what I did there?). That character who is incapable of being serious may be doing that so that they don’t have to feel the inevitable pain that being serious would bring. As with all things - think about how you can use this in the story.

  Some people make jokes when they’re nervous. Why is your character nervous? Are they cracking more jokes than usual? Are they distracting themselves or others by making people laugh. Why?

  Perhaps they don’t want to reveal something. Making a joke can be a good way to stop having to talk about something. If this is the case - what is it they don’t want to talk about? What can you do to force them to talk about it? How does the hiding (or revelation) of the secret affect the other characters?

  Do they have a particularly unusual sense of humour? One laced with a hint of cruelty, perhaps? Or humour that displays a lack of real empathy? The things people joke about and how they react when someone doesn’t laugh at their jokes can reveal a lot about a character.

  2. Use humour to gain reader sympathy

  Giving a character a sense of humour can be a great way to make a character ‘sympathetic’. Who doesn’t like someone who makes them laugh?

  The object is to get the reader to be on the side of the character. Throw a difficult situation at them (the character, not the reader) and have them resolve it with good sense and good humour. The reader will always end up on their side by the end of the event. This is how we end up on the side of the lovable rogue - like Flynn Rider (Tangled) or Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean).

  In old style romcoms, heroines were given character traits like clumsiness, or not being able to stop talking, even when they were digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole - the idea was that the reader would feel that character’s embarrassment and cringe on their behalf, and from then on, they’re on the protagonist’s side. Done well, this works. Done less well, it’s annoying and makes the heroine look like a fool. Readers even have a term for it ‘Too Stupid To Live’. You don’t have to be as obvious as this.

  3. To contrast with darker scenes

  You can use funny scenes next to darker ones to accentuate the dark scene and make it more poignant. In the same way that a white object stands out against a black background, the contrast between the humour in the scene before will make a sad scene feel much sadder. If you’ve been smiling along, reading the story and you hit a sad scene (which has been foreshadowed), you will feel it more keenly. Try it.

  In a darker book, a bit of humour can give the reader a little breathing space and stop the book from becoming unrelentingly bleak.

  Similarly, a joke in a sad situation, can make the whole scene feel more poignant.

  4. To make unpleasant statements palatable

  ‘There’s many a true word spoken in jest’ - proverb

  The best comedy has a basis in truth, or even pain. Humour is often used to soften the blow when making an unpleasant point. For example, there’s the now famous sketch where Donald Glover makes the point about domestic abuse: ‘Everyone has a crazy ex-girlfriend story. Why are there no crazy ex-boyfriend stories? Because if you have a crazy boyfriend, you gonna die’.

  There are truths that people find difficult to hear and wrapping it up with humour can get it past their defences and make them think about it.

  Be careful not to take things too far though. You don’t want to stray into the territory of bad taste with your home truths. Some statements will never be palatable. See Ricky Gervais for examples that skirt the line between acceptable and not.

  5. To see the familiar in a different light

  Humour is often the by-product of seeing the world from a different angle. Satire relies on this. But you can use humour to make your reader see something in a different light. Or make a joke where the punchline actually makes you think about something you’d taken for granted. How many times have you heard a comment on a satirical program that first made you laugh... and then made you think?

  Pretty much all topical satire does this. If you need a current example, see the latest episode of Have I Got News For You. Or if you’re in the US, Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show.

  6. To make things more memorable.

  People remember jokes far better than they remember facts. This is a fact.[3]

  A good joke can make a scene memorable. Or you can use a joke to draw attention to something you want the reader to remember later.

  I bet you’ve learned more about politics by watching political satire than by reading newspapers. I know I have.

  7. To have fun

  We all know that writing a book is hard work. It’s fun for about 5000 words and then it’s a just a slog to get the first draft done. Since you’re spending 70 to 80 thousand words with these characters, you may as well have fun with them. If you enjoy what you’re writing, you’ll feel better and it will show in your writing. With mentoring newbie writers, I’ve read books where, even if the plot was a little bit loose and the book wasn’t quite ready, the sheer joy of a writer having fun shone through. Fixing a plot is easy. Injecting a sense of fun into writing when it isn’t there already is hard. Not impossible. But hard.

  Chapter 5: Different types of jokes

  No, this doesn’t mean funny and unfunny. There really are different ways of ‘structuring’ your humour to give it more impact or, in other words, to make it funnier. Warning – this section may contain examples ...

  1. The Rule of Three

  Less of a rule, more a sort of guideline, to quote Pirates of the Caribbean, things are funnier in threes. The first example sets up the scene, the second reiterates the normality, and the third confounds expectation, to put in in a more scholarly fashion. Think of all those ‘an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman go into a bar’ jokes, that’s rule of three. The Englishman sets up the joke, the Scotsman continues the pattern, giving rise to the expectation of what comes next, and then the Irishman turns it all around – and that’s what makes the laugh.

  So three is the minimum number of examples you need in order to complete the joke. Two examples doesn’t give the opportunity for the normality of the situation to be properly established and, again to quote, Monty Python this time, four is right out.

  Here’s another example of the rule of three, this time in dialogue:

  “What shall we watch tonight? Newsnight are doing a searing indictment of poverty in the clothing industry, or there’s that documentary on the effects of fracking on the wildlife of New Zealand. Or there’s Strictly.”

  Your first two program choices set up the character as an intellectual who likes to watch documentaries which go in depth into current events. The third reveals the reality, that they actually like lowbrow popular entertainment, but rank them on a par with the more esoteric programming. Having been led to believe that your character is this deep thinking academic, the final example turns your expectation on its head and reveals them to be just as prone to celebrities in twirly frocks as everyone else. And it’s this surprise, this juxtaposition of ideas (or ‘thingies’) that makes your reader laugh.