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11 Tips for Writing Humor and Parody

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11 Tips for Writing Humor and Parody

Anybody Can Write a Novel

Chapter 2 “Genres” – Section 9 “Humor and Parody”

With Links to Supplementary Material


Humor and Parody are of the most beloved in story genres, and yet are also two that are of the most difficult to accomplish. There are a number of factors—ranging from how a story is composed, to the many types of humor that exist, to the particularities of what people find funny—that make this such a difficult genre. Today, I'm going to give you some tips for making your humorous story a success. Please note that I will try to avoid the word “Comedy,” simply because I do not want it to become a source of confusion, as I have used it to describe the type of story that is opposite of Tragedy.


Tip 1: There must be a genuine story with genuine characters, in order for humor to gain the most power.

I would rather read a book where I managed one belly-chuckle per chapter, as well as a charming and well-crafted story, than to be forced to endure paragraph after paragraphs of jokes that contributed to a bad or non-existent story. If an audience wants just concentrated jokes, they will read a joke-book. But they are choosing to dredge through the murky waters of story in order to find the humor, and will only find it if you have created a clear enough journey and characters that they can invest in.


Tip 2: Good parody stories function on their own, even without the original source material.

Remember “Austin Powers” and compare the trilogy to the “Scary Movie” franchise. Sure, some of the jokes in some of the Scary movies were funny—but not in an of themselves. In fact we aren't really laughing at “Scary Movie” when we watch, we are laughing at the cliches and flaws present in the original source material that they parodied. Like with “Austin Powers,” the audience should be able to appreciate the jokes and the story, even apart from having watched the parodied “James Bond” films—making jokes, at the expense of the source material, a sort of bonus, and your parody all the more timeless.


Tip 3: Humor always comes at a cost.

Whether we are laughing at somebody slipping on a banana peel, at how silly someone is acting, or about very critical and sensitive issues in the world, humor always comes at the expense of someone. All humor is dark humor, it's just a matter of how far your audience's comfort level goes. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with this, perhaps we laugh because we too remember how silly we felt at slipping on the same metaphorical banana peel, or are thinking of how silly we would feel. However, it needs mentioning because every joke in your story must come at the expense of your audience, yourself, your characters, or something else altogether—otherwise it is not funny. Also, the higher the stakes of the joke, the higher the potential for humor.


Tip 4: Discover the source of your story's humor.

When crafting a funny story, there must be a consistency in why the humor is present, otherwise you'll seem like you are desperately trying to milk the humor from anything you can get your hands on (you perv). Avoid this by analyzing the origins of humor in your story's World. Is the world simply absurd, with unseen gods of chaos just dropping coconuts on people's heads for pure amusement? Does the humor come from a specific character? A group of funny people living in a serious world that they must learn to cope with through humor? A funny narrator with a unique perspective on life? Figure out the source, and then make your story uniform and purposeful.


Tip 5: Use the scale of high to low humor, in order to find your targeted audience.

I talked about this on my chapter about Story Types (and I highly recommend looking at it to go into more depth on this step), but high humor simply means that you are writing for a highly specified group of people (political jokes, for example), and low humor means that you are writing more universally (like fart jokes). Both humor types can be performed artfully, it is merely a matter of identifying your target audience and determining how exclusive you want your humor to be.


Tip 7: Mark every line that is supposed to be funny, and make sure that it is.

Nothing detracts from a story or from a spirit of jovial humor so much as an obvious joke that falls flat. In a personal copy, mark every joke for analysis of whether it is actually funny and if it serves to empower the story. Then, ask your editors, test-readers, and Writing Partner to circle every point that they genuinely found funny. Be sure to pick test-readers who fall into the niche you are writing for, as well as those who do not. If nobody but you marked a specific joke, then you need to cut it—period.


Tip 8: Write within your own expertise and authority.

This does not mean that you can't laugh at things, and poke fun at things that are outside your realm of expertise, so long as you have done your research. But consider the power of an insider making a joke about something they are a part of, vs an outsider doing the same. It would be like the difference between me calling most writers narcissists (as... I am one, and know that it is, in part, true) and a politician making a joke and calling writers narcissists. I mean, what right does that asshole have to judge us, even if it is true?


Tip 9: Humor is at its most powerful when it is self-critical.

Along the same lines, humor reaches its maximum potential both for funniness and for societal good when it makes fun of itself. I think about South Park when I say this, or even many stand-up comedians. The ones that audiences adore are not the ones who makes fun of others, their exes, their community, their audience—but the ones who make fun of themselves. We put our trust in them, can experience the humor more fully, and empathize with them—drawing us deeper into their funny stories. If you want your story to be truly funny, craft it to make fun of itself and to be down to earth—instead of being pretentious, high-brow, nonsense that points its fingers at others so that we don't see how weak it is.


Tip 10: Avoid dating yourself.

Though humor at the expense of pop-culture is a fun ploy of high-humor, it seriously dates itself. There's nothing ethically or artistically wrong with this, but you will sabotage your story, or at least the humor in it, so that it will lose all potential funniness within ten years. I recommend creating a work that stands the test of time, instead of one that will so quickly become obsolete.


Tip 11: No matter how dark your humor, make sure it serves to help others, not to tear them down.

There is no such thing as taking humor too far, so long as it serves for the good of others. The darkest of humor is more ethically sound, and will receive a better audience reaction, if it is decrying societal or personal evils, or challenging people to do better, than humor that praises mediocrity or evil behavior through humor that is less dark. As a writer, you should really look at the point of your humor—what it seeks to accomplish—and assure that those intentions are not mindlessly destructive. Otherwise, you end up creating a Joker-like sense of humor, where laughing is just the only alternative to breaking down in tears.


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Humor and Parody are of the most beloved in story genres, and yet are also two that are of the most difficult to accomplish. There are a number of factors—ranging from how a story is composed, to the many types of humor that exist, to the particularities of what people find funny—that make this such a difficult genre. Today, I'm going to give you some tips for making your humorous story a success. Please note that I will try to avoid the word “Comedy,” simply because I do not it to become a source of confusion, as I have used it to describe the type of story that is opposite of Tragedy.


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hanareader's avatar
Hi, I love all your posts on tips on writing and have been reading them in a frenzy without sleep!! Still, please excuse my ignorance, I was just confused on when you mentioned that the higher stakes of the joke - the higher potential for humor. I guess you support that with when you say there is no such thing as taking humor too far... I just always thought humor to be a hit-or-miss?? Are you saying the more dark, the better?
And do you think you could elaborate on tip 10? What do you mean by avoid dating yourself? I guess my first thought is what would be the difference between making high humor political jokes of current time versus making jokes on (presumably modern) pop-culture? Wouldn't that make some political jokes also obsolete with time?