An earlier version of this article was first published on The Romance Bloke’s website which is no longer available.
In any romance novel, it is vital that readers root for the protagonists’ healing of emotional wounds and resolution of conflicts that serve to keep them apart for most of the story. Only then can they achieve that happy-ever-after ending. But with a comedy, how they get there needs to be a thoroughly entertaining journey. This article is based on the writing of Love & Pollination.
‘The book itself is everything you want in a rom-com. From the light-hearted moments, to the heart-pulling romance, all the way to the moments of laughing out loud at the pages.’ Reader Review
Humour is subjective. Even people from similar cultures and backgrounds can vary in what they find amusing. This is partly because we relate to jokes depending on our past life – if something that has happened to us happens to a character, we might find that far more amusing than someone who lacks that experience.
In the UK, faith schools are exempt from an obligation to provide Relationship and Sex Education so there is potential to send young people out into the big wide world without a clue about… certain things. My heroine, Perdita, in Love & Pollination has more than a clue because she did read the biology text book at her Catholic convent school as instructed. But what information it yielded was a far cry from what she actually needed to know – which is the premise of Love & Pollination.
Unspoken contract with the author
I believe a writer promising a funny story should deliver that as part of the unspoken contract with the reader. The reader should get the measure of the book they are choosing and be open to the set-up by suspending their disbelief to allow the author to entertain them. If a potential reader of Love & Pollination is not put-off by finding Perdita hiding under a dining table in the prologue, I guess they’re good to go.
Choose your characters and situation well
Humour can be derived naturally through the characters and their personal journey. I chose an extremely naïve heroine, put her in a situation that was out of her comfort zone and mentally watched to see what happened before I set the scenes down on paper.
Perdita’s serious but just keeps getting it wrong. Her best friends are Luke and Gavin. Luke is mature and responsible; Gavin is a joker – and not very bright.
Disbelief
In Chapter 8, Perdita is having a takeaway with Luke and Gavin while telling them about her momentous day. The reader knows what happened to Perdita and so it’s funny when her friends do not believe her.
‘Were you actually kidnapped today?’ Gavin asked, taking a slurp from his glass. ‘Or has losing your job upset your mental balance?’…
…She told them what had happened in the department store and, later, in the car park.
Luke looked at Gavin before saying, ‘I believe we can confirm that is definitely called kidnapping. What kind of Neanderthal is he?’
Perdita was thinking that if Saul were a Neanderthal, he was a very attractive one. And weren’t Neanderthals the original cavemen? She wondered what his Ice Age cave would have looked like.
Note how Perdita responds inappropriately to having been kidnapped by Saul which taps into the humour of the unexpected/inappropriate reaction – there are further examples of this comedic tool next.
Giving an unexpected or inappropriate answer
Humour through dialogue is, I think, funnier if the speaker does not intend it to be funny and does not realise they are being funny. Not giving the expected or appropriate answer is a great tool of comedy. Here are some more examples from Chapter 8.
1.
Luke and Gavin discover that Perdita had no human sexual education from the nuns other than being told to read the relevant chapter in their biology book. Luke is very troubled by this.
‘No practical information was given, was it?’ Luke said… ‘It couldn’t have been.’
Miserably, she shook her head. Catholic education clearly had drawbacks.
‘What are you going to do?’ Luke asked.
‘Practise?’
Luke had expected Perdita to give insight as to her plans regarding her unplanned pregnancy – she wasn’t in a relationship and had just lost her job. Instead, she was concentrating on righting her ignorance of sexual acts which should be low on her priority list considering her predicament. The joke is even funnier because she doesn’t have anyone with whom she could practise.
2.
Perdita has told Luke and Gavin that Saul has forced her to move in to look after Violet – but he hadn’t asked her a single question about herself.
‘What do you mean by,’ Gavin asked when she finished, ‘he should never have invited a stranger into his home? Do you intend to bump them off?’
‘No, that would be illegal. Besides, I really like Violet…’
The expected answer should have been a swift denial in a shocked tone. Instead, Perdita answers in a cool, analytical way by considering only the legality – and implies that she would be quite happy to dispose of Saul if she could get away with it. This is a shocking, unpredictable response from sweet and gentle Perdita which is why it might be considered worth a chuckle.
3.
Luke and Gavin want to know about the two men in Perdita’s life that they’d not known about until today. They ask about Saul’s looks.
Wistfully, she said, ‘He’s absolutely gorgeous. The most attractive man I have ever met.’
‘More attractive than this Tony guy?’ Gavin asked.
‘Yes,’ she said dreamily and thought again of the time when she was in the back of the Merc with Saul…
…‘How can you say that,’ Luke demanded, ‘when he’s been such a bastard?’
‘Mm?’
A giggle might be wrought from Perdita’s, ‘Mm?’ as she is clearly still fantasising about a man who’d behaved badly towards her. But she knows Saul’s motivation and understands why he’d crossed such a well-defined boundary of conduct in a way that Luke could not appreciate. It might be difficult for a reader to accept Saul’s bad behaviour at the start of the book but as it’s a whacky comedy some outrageous behaviour from characters could be expected and romcom films make use of this licence quite freely.
4.
Luke and Gavin are trying to help Perdita work out whether Tony had been wearing protection the night she lost her virginity.
Gavin said, ‘You didn’t touch him, did you?’
‘Touch him? Well, of course I touched him.’
‘Down below,’ Luke said. ‘Did you hold him, touch his private parts?’
‘Of course not!’ Then, more softly, she said, ‘Was I meant to?’
The unexpected answer highlights Perdita’s ignorance.
A dim character making a dumb comment
This is one of my favourite one-liners (again in Chapter 8):
‘Next time,’ Gavin said, ‘let’s hope it’s with a man who appreciates the gift of virginity.’
Of course, Gavin knows you can only be a virgin once but his brain hadn’t caught up with his mouth before his words tumbled out – and Luke soon puts him right.
The man with a gun and the rule of three
I’d like to mention two very well-known writing tricks. The first is the man with a gun – I have heard it said that Raymond Chandler once wrote, ‘If your plot is flagging, have a man come in with a gun.’ So, I asked myself what were Perdita’s “guns”? The second is the rule of three. I decided to combine these tricks to bring humour into a previously flat chapter. (Now Chapter 18.)
Saul takes Perdita for an Italian meal. I brought in three characters that create an ascending level of embarrassment in Perdita, that are unknown to Saul, to successively raise the stakes. We see what happens with the first two characters (or “guns”) and so we perhaps expect a third event to take place as we are familiar with the rule of three. Also, we might expect Perdita’s third reaction to be different to the first two which were subtle and tame as with the rule of three the third event is usually different in some way.
The joke here is the surprise that it is so very different to her previous reactions coupled with behaviour undertaken by an adult generally considered to be out of place in a restaurant. When the last person does come in, Perdita is so mortified she dives underneath the table. (It also foreshadows the kind of behaviour we can expect from Perdita when put in a difficult situation which makes the dive under the next table mentioned in the prologue funnier.) After she has ducked under the table the humour is strengthened when Saul tells her that the napkin she claims she is seeking is safe on the table meaning that she has no further reason to hide.
When Perdita regains her seat and Saul asks what has been going on with the third diner, we can’t wait to see how she reacts. We know from her predicament that she can’t possibly tell the truth, and Perdita is renowned for being scant with veracity these days which strengthens this belief – making us ready for some humour. It does come albeit tinged with much sadness. This is her reaction:
Her face burned with shame, and she covered her cheeks with her hands. ‘I can’t explain about her as I might spontaneously combust from mortification and that won’t be fun for anyone here.’ As an afterthought, she added, ‘And if I weren’t to spontaneously combust, I’d have to go into deep hibernation, and no one would see me ever again.’
The restaurant piece had been boring but now, thanks to the rule of three and bringing in the guns, it is one of my favourite scenes.
Do you want to write funny stories?
There are many tools of comedy and I’ve only mentioned a few. If you’d like to learn how to get people’s diaphragms contracting involuntarily in a burst of laughter, take a look at some of the books at the end of this article—and perhaps read my Love & Mishap series?
Watch and read as many humorous plots as you can. Analyse the jokes. What made them funny? Why did they work as a joke? Sometimes you can identify an intended joke but you just don’t appreciate it. Why is that? Could it have been made better or was it irretrievably not funny for you? Do some jokes work in particular genres but would not cross to the one you’re interested in writing? Why not?
By analysing funny books, films and TV series (from a variety of cultures), you will understand what kind of humour you like. Talking of films, this is one of my favourite reviews for Love & Pollination:
‘Honestly, I couldn’t put it down, which is rare for me. If you enjoyed Love Actually, Bridget Jones or Notting Hill, you will really get a kick out of this book.’ Reader Review
Make up little sketches in your head to fit the same kind of jokes you come across but with a fresh slant. You might find that your characters naturally begin to behave in new ways giving an extra dimension to your work.
Books on writing comedy
The Eight Characters of Comedy: A Guide to Sitcom Acting and Writing – Scott Sedita
The Secrets to Writing Great Comedy – Lesley Brown
The Hidden Tools of Comedy: The Serious Business of Being Funny – Steve Kaplan
How to Write Romantic Comedy – Jane Lovering & Rhoda Baxter
How to Write Funny – Scott Dikkers
Mari Jane Law www.marijanelaw.com
Love & Pollination: amzn.to/3KbgbbE
Mari Jane Law 