If You Give a Reader Humor...

Hello my lovely writers and welcome back to my blog!

Today, if you've already guessed it, we're going to be talking about humor—specifically, adding humor to your book.

So without further ado, delay, or dilly dallying, let's dive in.

Why should you add humor to your book?

Humor is a very important part of writing.

When you write, you want things that are going to evoke emotions in your reader. You also want things that are going to make your reader want to continue reading your book.

Especially in a book filled with lots of action, humor is one of the best ways to do this.

It also gives your readers a break from tension, whether the tension is suspense or romance related.

Even if your book is extremely serious, there has to be at least one spot where you add a joke or something that will make your reader chuckle.

What are some ways to add humor to a story?

There are practically a million ways, and I can't list them all today, but I'm going to give you the main few that I thought of.

1. Banter

2. Inner dialogue

3. Vocabulary

4. Situations/actions

5. Comic relief characters

These are the main ways to add humor to a story.

Let's go over them, shall we?

Banter.

Dialogue between characters that's particularly entertaining is a great way to add humor to your book.

It's also a great way to show your characters' relationships with one another and give your readers a glimpse into each character's personality.

Banter is basically a back and forth conversation between characters that's teasing or humorous.

It should be entertaining to read and will probably give your readers a good laugh.

If you don't have banter between characters at some point in your book, you might want to think about it and figure out why you don't. It's a natural thing to add in, especially if you're writing about siblings, family, or good friends.

Banter adds humor, but it also helps give your reader a glimpse into characters' personalities and relationships, and makes your characters less flat. You can showcase a strong familial relationship or friendship easily with it, or even build romantic tension between two people.

It's a must for writing.

Inner dialogue.

Does your character have a quick wit? Do they have a sense of humor (good or bad)?

Inner dialogue is a great way to add humor to your book.

Often times, people don't say what they feel. And people think strange things sometimes.

With inner dialogue—your characters' thoughts—you can show what's happening on the inside and, often times, characters have pretty entertaining thoughts.

Vocabulary.

This one might not be as straight forward, but often, to make things funnier or add humor to a situation, I use fancy words.

Sometimes, saying something in a certain manner just makes it funny.

That's where vocabulary comes in.

If your character is talking to another in a joking way or thinking a sarcastic thought, you could always add to the sarcasm and use old English or fancy words.

Sometimes certain words in certain situations just strike a funny chord.

Situations/actions.

This is the most obvious.

Put your characters in a funny situation or have them do something laugh-worthy.

In a romantic comedy book, this is especially prevalent.

And it doesn't have to be that the situation they're in is blatantly hilarious. It could just be something subtle that makes your reader grin or chuckle.

Comic relief characters.

This might be most used in an action novel or something with lots of suspense.

This is when you add in a character with one of their purposes—or their only purpose—being to add some humor to the scene(s) you're in and break up the tension.

I've written a character like this and, honestly, they are some of the most fun characters to write.

I'd encourage you to think about writing one sometime in your writing journey.

Before I end this post, I'd like to give you guys a little reminder.

Remember, there are different types of humor.

Slapstick, sarcastic, teasing, and witty.

Those are the main types of humor.

They are pretty self explanatory.

Each of your characters, depending on their personality, may prefer one type of humor to another or constantly use one more than the others.

For example, one of my characters is extremely—and I mean extremely—sarcastic. She uses sarcasm quite often—you could say it's her "go-to".

When characters make jokes, they often lean towards a certain type of humor.

A character who's extremely wise and booksmart might lean towards witty or sarcastic humor.

A character who's rarely serious and always joking may lean towards teasing humor.

Slapstick humor is more for actions or events rather than dialogue or thoughts, so it mainly goes with the type of book you're writing.

This post is just dipping its toes into the subject of adding humor to books. If you want to see another one that dives into this further, just let me know!

And if you have any questions or comments, feel free to message me in the contact box below.

Happy writing!

-Jocelyn