4 tips for writing funny fiction
BY Kirsty Eyre
18th May 2023
Kirsty Eyre is the inaugural Comedy Women in Print winner (2019) who also writes under the pseudonym, Ginger Jones. Her debut, Cow Girl, was published by Harper Collins in 2020, after developing the novel on our three-month Writing Your Novel course. She has gone on to write more novels as Ginger Jones, and her latest book baby, What the Focaccia! was published by Zaffre Bonnier on 11 May.
Today, we are delighted to share Kirsty/Ginger’s top tips for tickling a reader’s funny bone.
Why is humour such a tricky beast?
One reader’s funny is another reader’s cringe and comedy is as subjective as it is personal. Humour also rarely translates – something I learned when my last book, You Had Me at Halloumi, came out in Polish, the title itself becoming ‘Love tastes of Halloumi.’ Get it right, and making people laugh is hugely rewarding. Addictive even. Get it wrong, and you feel as cringe as your readers do.
Understanding your Comedy genre
When crafting your laugh-out-loud masterpiece, it’s important to know what kind of comedy you’re aiming for. Maybe you are writing dark comedy (think My Sister, the Serial Killer) in which case you’ll need to pepper your plot with some seriously dark turns that allow you to channel your gallows humour. Or maybe you’re writing satire (think The Confederacy of Dunces) in which case it’s all about the narrative voice. Or maybe you’re writing romantic comedy (think Bridget Jones’s Diary) where your romance arc is made up of a series of amusing mishaps and witty will they, won’t theys.
Whatever your writing style, you’ll need to invest time in crafting your comedy. Here are my four top tips.
1. Have fun with your characters and get them to step outside their comfort zone
Characters, and more specifically their flaws, play an enormous part in comedy. I love creating characters with strong opinions out of whom I can squeeze the comedy pips by putting them face to face with their adversaries or throwing them into uncomfortable situations. Culture clashes, language barriers and miscommunication are all great devices that allow you to eke out humour (Dial A for Aunties is a masterclass in this), but perhaps the best comedy writing comes from the characters themselves. How are they going to react? And what if they responded in a totally different way than you, the writer, would expect? Play with dialogue. Write it, then flip it on its head and get your character to say the opposite of what you intended, and you might find something special.
2. Pace Yourself
We’ve all been told a long, sprawling joke that takes so long to get to the punchline that we’ve lost interest by the end. The same goes for comedy writing, but you also have the added responsibility of making sure your plot doesn’t get too serious in order that the story doesn’t jar tonally. I find that my earlier manuscript drafts tend to be less humorous because I’ve maybe gone down a rabbit hole with description or dived too deeply into interior thought, the whole thing becoming heavier and more earnest which in turn slows the pace. Coming back to the manuscript afresh allows me to nip and tuck areas that are lacking that lightness of touch and slowing the pace where it shouldn’t dip.
3. Allow your reader to find the comedy
This goes back to the old adage, ‘show don’t tell.’ In the same way that you should never tell your readers that something is amazing or dreadful, you can also never tell anyone what’s funny. Words like ‘hilarious’ and ‘side-splitting’ will hopefully end up in your reviews, but are off limits in a manuscript. Characters are rarely funny in their own right, but the things that they say or do might be. Having your character say one thing whilst hypocritically doing the exact opposite will often delight a reader whereas narrating that they did something hysterically funny will not. Another way to eke out comedy is to off-set interior thought with contradicting dialogue, showing the reader that your characters are lying. Be playful.
4. Find muses for your dialogue
Having written for the stage, I absolutely love writing dialogue. To bring an authentic voice to your characters, why not base them on someone that you know and love? The Grandma character in Cow Girl is based on my own Grandma, a Yorkshire-born no-nonsense woman with a keen sense of smell and a strong sense of purpose. I can hear her voice clearly when I write and find that her phrasing and choice of words brings an added humour, especially when she’s in conversation with her octogenarian sidekick, Beatrice.
I love reading comedy too. My influences are Caitlin Moran, Nora Ephron, Helen Fielding, Sue Townsend and Sharon Horgan. Check them out if you don’t know them already. You’ll learn tons.
Get your hands on a copy of What the Focaccia!
You can catch Kirsty/Ginger on Twitter @KirstyJaneEyre or @GingerJ53270983.
And on Instagram @eyre.kirsty or @redhotscribbler.
Giveaway
We're currently running an exciting book giveaway on Twitter (@cbcreative). We've got three signed copies of What the Focaccia! by Ginger Jones to giveaway!
All you have to do to enter is retweet and like to competition post. Comment with your favourite fictional fashion moment. And make sure you're following @cbcreative and @GingerJ53270983. The competition is open to UK entrants only. Closes Mon 22 May at 10.59am.
Learn more about writing comedy into romance books on our six-week Writing a Romance Novel course with bestselling novelist Jenny Colgan. Next course starts 22 June.
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