I suck at comedy... help?

If you really wish to be humorous in the literary world, one must have wit. Wit, however, is a mule that only plows forward on the right and favorable conditions. If you wish to get to your word count, I would avoid satire in literary endeavors. What you need to do is just start writing random inside jokes you and your friend's share. Now, this may not get you published or well notarized. But, you will have a novel to which all your friends can laugh at. Next, if you wish to employ wit just copy down some quips but add your own zest to them. A good quipper is Oscar Wilde. Pick up any book or play by him, read just a few pages, and you will have enough quips that can be dispense amongst your characters. Never, under any circumstances, try to make quips or use self manufactured wit yourself. You will often come up with phrases such as: I know that you are humble, but I heard the ox call his master pale before. See you are trying to call the person ox, but it then ends up as this strange allusion to non-existent fable that you probably never heard of. So, lets review now how to be satirical and humorous and as you refer to "The state of being funny" (though whether this state be judicial or a body temperament it should be ill advise to visit or infect yourself with it):

1. Don't use wit, it just slows you down.
2. Do inside jokes that you and your friends can laugh at later.
3. Use others quip.
4. Don't use self-manufactured wit.
5. Don't be funny yourself.

And if all else fails, make a fart joke. Those always get a laugh.

"Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreames truths; and fables histories."
-John Donne: The Deame

Meh! That sucks. Good luck!
PS maybe imagine something that makes you want to cry, and then write about it as if you are that bastard of a bully who laughed at everyone who cried in first grade. Jerks are often funny. And it'll give you a different perspective.

I'm having trouble deserning whether this is an actual question or one of the driest forms of deadpan I've seen since Bob Newhart. Either way I supose I'd have to agree with the last entry. A good formula is tragedy + time = humor.

Okay, my PERSONAL definition of humor is something ironic, off-the-wall, or just plain out hysterical.

For instance, let's say you're writing a, oh let's say a book about Vampires. NOBODY would laugh if they saw a vampire, at least if it was a run-of-the-mill-dracula type and ready to extract blood from their jugular. HOWEVER a reader might laugh if you had the Vampire dressed as a court jester. Or if you had the victim be a Hippie who would be telling them off even as they killed them.
Comedy, as I see it, is a sort of defiance. Defiance to let outside forces get you down. I'm going to put on an outdoor performance! It's raining? So what?! We'll put on umbrella hats and laminate the scrolls!
Here's a great quote from a GoodEarth teabag: 'Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.'
Hope this will be of some use! Good luck!

Grab life by the throat before it bites you!

Okay, my PERSONAL definition of humor is something ironic, off-the-wall, or just plain out hysterical.

For instance, let's say you're writing a, oh let's say a book about Vampires. NOBODY would laugh if they saw a vampire, at least if it was a run-of-the-mill-dracula type and ready to extract blood from their jugular. HOWEVER a reader might laugh if you had the Vampire dressed as a court jester. Or if you had the victim be a Hippie who would be telling them off even as they killed them.
Comedy, as I see it, is a sort of defiance. Defiance to let outside forces get you down. I'm going to put on an outdoor performance! It's raining? So what?! We'll put on umbrella hats and laminate the scrolls!
Here's a great quote from a GoodEarth teabag: 'Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.'
Hope this will be of some use! Good luck!

Grab life by the throat before it bites you!

'Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.'
That's actually a quote from Horace Walpole...

"Humor: 1: A normal functioning bodily semi-fluid or fluid (as the blood or lymph) 2: in medieval physiology : a fluid or juice of an animal or plant; specif. : one of the four fluids entering into the constitution of the body and determining by their relative proportions a person's health and temperament. 3: that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous"

According to Mr. Webster, all you have to do is work some phlegm into your novel. That or else something absurdly incongruous.

Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like an apple.

If you suck at comedy, then write bad jokes and, after each one, berate yourself for your spectacular lack of wit (in the novel of course - self-deprecation = yummy words). Be an author with an inferiority complex. It works for me. B-)

I also agree with Ennaleahcar Arus's post. There's always room in a humour novel for the ridiculous and the implausible. I usually have at least one crazy person in my novels, so that no one (including myself) ever knows what is going to happen next.

Failing all that, have your story stopped in its tracks by the God of Comedy, who puts your characters on trial and finds them guilty of crimes against humanity for their poor humour, sentencing them to five centuries of clown college in His Eternal Kingdom.

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NaNo '05: Sunny Hill University For The Psychologically Impaired - 50,036 words
NaNo '06: Dread Claw - 101,273 words
Script Frenzy '07: Rue Britannia - 20,224 words
NaNo '07: Untitled (Something About Greengrocers And Knickers) -

Well, it's true, if you're not so great at comedy in the first place, trying to dash off a humorous novel in a month is most likely not a good place to start.

I find my most successful comedies have been pieces written on subjects that would normally be tragic - but turn it around, inject little dry witticisms here and there, and HEY PRESTO! we have a comedy. For instance, one piece I wrote was based off the extremely irritating fact that small children say "why?" WAY too much. I took that theme, added a few ridiculous subplots, and added some dry wit, and there you are! Oh, yes, Oscar Wilde is the king of this technique. He spends a lot of time in his plays scoffing at human folly and making you laugh at something that, in any other context, would hardly be laughable.

However, I feel that writing a comedy that is objectively funny is impossible. Something that's hilarious to you may be irritating or stupid to somebody else. That's why writing comedy is such a tricky and difficult thing to do. So unless you're a total natural and really good at it (which, from your 'I suck at comedy' subject line, I assume you're not) I'd probably try to avoid writing an entirely comedic piece. There's nothing wrong with scattering jokes plentifully through a novel, but setting out to write a humorous novel might be a mistake.

So there's my two bits - take it or leave it! :P

If a man speaks in the forest and his wife isn't there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Comedy is, oftentimes, a contrary 800 pound gorilla that tends to march very obviously into a scene and then sits around between two characters glaring hatefully at you for dragging it all the way out to this little monologue where it was wholly unnecessary and likely ill-received. Try to push it around where it doesn't really belong, and it's just going to wreck your story and likely throw feces at you (or readers will).

The best way for someone who is unfunny to be funny is to write situational comedy.

A lot of humor is placing perfectly normal people into situations that are completely ridiculous and well out of their element - a long suffering stodgy grocery store owner in the midst of a candle lit séance instigated by his batty wife and the well meaning neighbor who happens to "dabble, dears, there's really nothing to it" in the occult is already ripe with comic possibility. Add in the accidental summoning of a ghost (Mr Wilde, mayhaps? Mrehehehe!!) who won't leave the shopkeeper alone from there on out, and you have the makings of a screwball comedy (shoot, now I want to write this novel, instead of my spaghetti western. Curse you). Small tragedy which is not happening to you is always funny, be it a slip on some soapy floor in the aisle of a super market, or banter between two characters who are obviously not fond of each other who trade insults on a regular basis.

Humor does not have to be the ultimate drive of your novel for it to be funny. A character does not have to be smart, witty, or quoting Oscar Wilde (whom I find rather droll, anyway) to inject humor. All they really need, sometimes, is to be very unlucky at the right time.

Well, as a former actor, I can tell you that in improvisation at least, we were told not to try too hard to make a joke. If you just let it happen, it will happen. Have you ever heard the quote "It's funny because it's true"?

My entire novel is a parody/satire fantasy novel about a Barbarian Hero. The MC wants to be a Barbarian Hero because he's terrible at magic and his father, the Headmaster of the Wizard's Collegium, desperately wants his son to be a wizard.

Eric, my MC, faints at the sight of blood.

So, the humor here is that he's obviously not suited to his chosen profession, but he's so determined to do it well... Well, you get it. There's also a flying horse who's deathly afraid of heights.

Still, humor is just as much about timing as it is about having a good joke. For example, I most likely won't introduce Henry's fear of heights until it absolutely necessary that Henry carry Eric somewhere. I won't introduce Eric's blood-phobia until he and Ronan (his Barbarian mentor) get into an actual fight.

In conclusion, all I can say is don't try too hard. Just let it flow!

NaNo '07 - Mythfits - WON
WIP - Fostering Hell
Screnzy '08 - Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies

I once read a hypothesis that humor has, at its root, someone having a bad time. Every mother-in-law joke, every crotch kick, every sitcom has at its root someone upset, angry, or hurt.

My kids are watching a Bill Cosby video, and he is talking about a horrible airline trip he is taking. Little Jeffery is tormenting everyone on the plane. They are hating life. We are laughing our butts off.

Take the Vampire situation. While he's at the bar, waiting for the victim to get ready to leave, he spots a toothpaste ad on the TV. The warning signs of gingivitis. "Do your gums bleed" Vampire mumbles to himself "How in the hell am I supposed to know?"

OK, that sucked. Let's try another one. The victim works for the IRS. As the Vampoire strikes "From one bloodsucker to another..."

That sucked too. The victim holds up a beer as the Vampire tries to take a bite. "Nipped in the Bud"

Last one: The vampire gets a hemophiliac. Lots of situational comedy there as he is trying to get a 'doggie bag', or calling his bro on the cell phone to get over here before he has to throw it out.

Good luck! Remember, comedy is someone having a bad time, far away.

Bill Patterson
Scrivener ordinaire

There are those things which are inherently funny and will add humor to any situation. Ducks. Mimes. Elvis impersonators. Anything to do with pants that does not involve merely wearing them. Kumquats. Be cautious, however, and use this power which has been given unto you with care and wisdom, for it is not to be abused!

Best line so far:
"So, what are we going to do with the pink elephant?"

My definition of humour is something that makes me laugh. If it makes me laugh, others with my sense of humour will also laugh. Done deal.

No cheating though - it's not screamingly funny just because I wrote it, so I use a test: would I still laugh if someone else had written it, or would it be lame?

Simon Haynes, programmer of yWriter
Author of the Hal Spacejock series
Also on Myspace!

To me, humor is the space between A and B where A and B are near one another, but cannot be united because their nearness is deceptive: A is not from the same world as B. They do not belong together, and are not in fact 'together', but appear to be together. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Say, you have a "nice guy" with no sense of fear who lives with a poorly-socialized hitman. They can have conversations, but they'll never be on the same plane mentally.

"So I whacked two people today."

"That's nice. Whatcha want for dinner?" or "You also tracked blood on the nice, clean floor."

To not understand, that is the very essence of humor. Of all existence! Which is pretty damn funny if I do say so myself.

-Saint Savin

Muhammad Ali said "My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world."

Why not?