The most basic kind of humor is mockery. Poke fun at things. It's a great way to relieve tension and bring a smile to your reader's face, even if the overall tone of your story is serious.
There are plenty of different varieties of humor that you can use in your stories. Here are a few:
- Irony (see previous lesson)
- Grim Comedy - making light of subjects that are usually somber and serious, like death.
- Parody - making fun of other fictional works. Parody is so great, we should probably do a whole lesson on it later in the year.
- Slapstick - pain is funny. No, seriously, it really is.
- Puns - poke fun at the language, create a juxtaposition of meaning. For good puns, timing is everything. You want the reader to realize it's a pun a split second after it hits. For bad puns, timing doesn't matter. There's no good time for a bad pun.
First of all, in general, if your characters are laughing at the jokes, your reader is not.
Some stories are just plain silly and funny. "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" tends to fall into this category. Other stories are epic but also have funny parts. We all agreed that "Avatar the Last Airbender" fell into this category. As a whole, we prefer epic stories with lots of funny parts.
If your main character is always joking and never takes things seriously, that makes it very hard for the reader to take the story seriously. So what do you do? Assign the job of funny man to a side character, commonly known as the comic relief.
Also remember that humor is a cultural thing. Different groups of people find different things funny. You have to target your audience with the right kind of humor.
Make your readers laugh. Make them cry. But you don't want to make them cry when you were trying to get them to laugh.
Keep writing!
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