Ha-ha-How to Create Humor in Writing

“A man walks into a bar…”

Almost all of you would instantly recognize the above opening phrase as the beginning of a joke. No, I’m not going to let you in on the joke right away—but I promise to finish it at the end of this how-to piece.

We all appreciate humor, don’t we? We are more likely to remember a piece of writing for the wit or humor it contains than for the other boring or ‘heavy-duty’ stuff.

But there’s one problem with humor—we tend to like it as long as it’s “our kind.” Like “my music versus your music.” Different people laugh at different jokes. The things they find funny could be as different as chalk and cheese. One person may find a guy slipping on a banana peel sending him into peals of laughter (the pun just slipped out), while another would chafe at those who laugh at such everyday tragedies. There are some communities who like poking fun at themselves, and there are those who threaten to sue you if you “hurt their sentiments” by cracking a joke or two at their expense.

That’s why before getting into the mechanics of how to inject a few doses of comic relief into your write-up, it’s important to understand who your audience is—the people you are writing for—in the first place. You must keep a few things about your audience in mind and tailor your write-up to suit their particular tastes: their age group, their social milieu, their tolerance toward things like religion or fashion (if your write-up involves religion or fashion), or any other trait you can associate with the desired reader group. This will not only save you from embarrassing or difficult situations, it will also optimize the impact of your writing.

Having said that, most people do exhibit a sense of humor and really like to read more stuff by a writer who has made them smile or laugh through their writing.

Here I’m assuming that you already are a good writer and can turn out prose that makes for compelling reading. Now, what you aspire for next is to make it even more interesting by using bits of humor here and there—and I can never tell you exactly where, because that must occur to you in the course of your writing and should never be forced on the reader. What I can tell you, however, is about a few tools that you can practice using in your writing and give it that elusive touch of humor you’ve been wanting to all along.

Shared everyday experiences

One of the best ways to connect with your audience in a humorous way is to bring up things that we all share with each other in our everyday lives—as dads or moms, as pet-lovers or dog haters, as harried shoppers standing in long checkout queues, as ordinary coworkers persecuted by a stupid but wily boss (remember the Dilbert cartoon?)…in short, as any imagined group that shares some commonalities, often with sympathetic undercurrents.

Erma Bombeck, one of the world’s best-known and most-read syndicated humor columnists, used this technique to a wonderful effect. Here’s a sample of her writing, in which she speaks on behalf of all those hassled moms who know not what all their kids do in the bathroom:

The bathroom should have been called the Children’s Playroom. It was their social watering hole. They became aware of it around the age of two, and barring major holidays and occasional stabs at education, didn’t leave it until they got their own homes.

What did they do in there? They floated light bulbs in the bathtub and shot at them with water pistols. They wrapped a dead horned toad in a flag and buried him at “sea.” They decorated the toilet seat like a cake, using Dad’s shaving cream for the lettering.

And when I pounded on the door and shouted, “What are you doing in there?” the response was always the same. “Nothing.”

A child doing “nothing” is a signal for parents to dial the emergency phone number. While he is doing “nothing” in the bathroom, a dog is barking, water is running under the door, a sibling is begging for mercy, and there is a strange odor of burning fur and the sound of a thousand camels running in place.

Reading this elaborate comic experience, a lot of moms out there would easily imagine themselves pounding on their own bathroom doors, wondering what took the kids so long in there!

Through such shared experiences there’s an immediate recognition by many in the audience who visualize their own selves in place of the protagonists and smile or laugh at the situation they are so familiar with. But remember: it’s not just the sharing of a situation; it’s also the power of verbal imagery that creates the humorous impact on the reader.

Let’s see how Jerome K Jerome, in his classic Three Men in a Boat, uses the all-too-familiar situation of packing stuff before a journey and creates laugh-out-loud hilarity through his superb verbal imagery: 

They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to show me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When George is hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, etc., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting. 

It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they could do, and to get you interested. 

Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon. 

And then it was George's turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn't say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn't find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in. 

They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn't go in, and what was in wouldn't come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room. 

In order to use this tool, all you need is very keen observation of what’s happening around you all the time and pick out instances that you think can be converted into a funny tidbit or bite of humor.

Lampooning, parodying or mocking

Much of the humor that gets created in the world occurs in some satiric form or the other. Humorists, like philosophers, are said to have this gift of keeping themselves at a safe distance from what’s going on around them—and come up with remarkable commentary that mocks, parodies or lampoons something. So, in order to use mockery as a tool, you should practice the art of seeing something from a distance and find out the lighter aspects of different situations. I know it’s not easy—but whoever said creating humor was going to be easy!

Consider how George Mikes, the celebrated author who’s lampooned all things British, takes a stab at how the English language is used, in this sample from his book, How to be Decadent:

If you want to sound truly English, you must learn to speak the language really badly. It will not be difficult, there are many language schools where they teach you exactly that. Remember that everything is a “situation” or a “problem” nowadays. In the old days a man was traveling, today he’s in a travel situation. In the past he got married, today he finds himself in a marriage situation. In the past he went bankrupt, today he has a liquidity problem. In the old days he was impotent, today he has a virility problem.

In our economic plight rationing has already begun. This is being kept a secret and for the time being only the letter r is rationed. The modern Englishman has a certain number of rs at his disposal and no more. He—and that applies to some radio announcers—uses them foolishly. He will speak of Indiar-and-Pakistan and of Lawr-and-order, only to find that he used up his r-ration, frittered it away, and now he has to save madly where he can. So he will speak of a Labouh MP and of the Fah East.

Do we really have a serious r-problem? Or are we just in an illiteracy situation?

The good thing about lampooning is, the list of people, places and events you can lampoon is virtually unlimited. You just need to figure out the lampoon situation at hand!

To take another shining example of the art of comic parody, here’s what Darrel Bristow-Bovey has to write about the zillions of Feng Shui freaks who never tire of rearranging their furniture at the slightest excuse. This excerpt is from his book, I Moved Your Cheese, which, certainly enough, pokes fun at self-help books like Who Moved Your Cheese:

Everywhere you turned, people were hanging mirrors in their hallway, or taking mirrors down from the hallway, I forget which. I met a woman who covered the edges of her coffee table with small blobs of putty because—and I am not making this up—“it makes the corners rounded, which enables the energy to flow freely through the house.” If there is energy flowing freely through your house, you need an electrician, or an exorcist, or a lightning conductor over your mantelpiece, not four blobs of gray-looking putty.

Based on some very common observations, the writer has picked on what many people who follow Feng Shui do in their homes. To make his mockery more effective, he inserts certain well-timed phrases (“I forget which”, “and I am not making this up”) that add more punch to the satire or heighten the reader’s expectation of what is to come.

Comic characterization

Whether you are writing about real-life people or cooking up characters for your fictional work, a very effective tool for inducing humor is to describe them using comic words, phrases, or analogies. 

Let’s go through a few writing samples wherein we can see comic characters striking a funny chord with the readers.

We’ve all heard of the phenomenal success of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books. However, while most people recognize the wizardry and imaginative prowess displayed in the books, few seem to realize that their appeal owes much to the humor strewn across them. Of special note is the way the writer introduces most of her characters. For instance, notice how she describes the Dursleys (Harry Potter’s relatives with whom he lived) in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors.

Notice how Rowling plays with the idea of how much neck a person usually has. And how she credits Mr. Dursley with possessing “a very large moustache”—as if the existence of a largish moustache would somehow compensate for his lack of neck!

In the same book, she introduces Headmaster Albus Dumbledore with another dose of strong comic characterization, taking full advantage of the old man’s meandering mane:

Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore.

So go on and indulge yourself with amusing accounts of protagonists in your plot or blokes in your backyard. But be careful, especially when writing about real people, in case they don’t feel flattered by your portrayal and sue you for libel. Or, worse, do something to your nose that makes it look like Dumbledore’s!

Playing upon words: Pun-fun

Almost all people with a humoristic bent of mind have a liking for puns (using a combination of similar-sounding letters, words or expressions with the intention of creating a comic effect. Veteran punsters have even technically defined various types of puns.) However, only a few are able to deploy puns in their writing in an effective and sustained way. While puns make for relatively easy humor (at least to those whose mind is an oven full of pun-cakes), overusing puns or failing to avoid “bad puns” (puns that don’t rhyme well or seem misfit or too crude) can spoil the fun. There are some who think pun to be a low form of humor—but there’s little justification to this criticism. Used cleverly to engage immediately with your audience, punning is a pretty effective tool. 

Celebrated comedian Ed Wynn (of The Perfect Fool fame) at once gives a good example of pun and silences those who criticize punning. Reacting to the criticism that “the pun is the lowest form of wit,” Wynn is said to have given this retort (which, incidentally, is a pun on the criticism itself):

“I know it, and they can be used to prove it. A man goes into a bakery and asks for buns. The baker says, ‘I wouldn’t have them around the place because the bun is the lowest form of wheat.’”

Here are a few samples of puns (compiled from the Internet) for you to chew on: 

Have you heard of the guy who swallowed a spoon? Well, he can’t stir.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Have you heard of the thief who turned into a successful actor? He stole the show.

Which country’s capital has the fastest-growing population? Ireland. Every day it’s Dublin.

He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how the Mercedes bends.

Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

Compared to other tools for creating humor, punning is relatively easy—both for the writer to use and for the reader to understand. But as in the case of food, there’s no accounting for people’s taste for puns, so just watch out for offensive ones or an overdose of them.

There’s a huge repository of puns on the Web that you can check out. That’ll give you a ‘pun’oramic view of how playful and wide punning can be. But, more important, create your own puns as often as you can and practice them regularly in your speech and writing. Creating new puns and trying them out—on expecting as well as unsuspecting listeners and readers—is a lot of fun. Like somebody said, “A good pun is its own reword.”

Using exaggeration

One of the most effective tools used to create and build upon humor in a piece of writing is to overplay or exaggerate the comic aspect of the subject matter. Successful stand-up comedians and humor writers have been constantly using this tool with hilarious impact. For sustained results, the trick is to tickle the funny bone with gradually increasing but controlled pokes of the finger, delivering a one-two punch of laughter here and there (again, don’t ask me exactly where), with each successive punch slightly more powerful than its predecessor. It’s also important to keep the readers’ interest levels high in tune with your hyperboles so that they don’t feel bored or irritated as they struggle to follow your words.

Let’s see how Paul Reiser does it in this excerpt from his book Babyhood. The context is how parents choose to name their kids.

Some people don’t agonize at all about finding the perfect name. They simply give the kid their name.

“He’ll be me, but Me Junior. To be followed by Me the Third, and his son, Me the Fourth.”

Certainly moves things along. Of course, if you’re really pressed for time, do what heavyweight champ George Foreman did—name all of his kids George Foreman. God bless him, a great fighter, a fine humanitarian—not, apparently, the most creative in the naming department. An entire family named George Foreman. It’s not like they’re of successive generations, overlapping only here and there for a few years…No, this is almost half a dozen guys, with the exact same name, all living in the same house.

“This is my son George Foreman, his younger brother George Foreman…this one here is five and a half, say hello to George Foreman, and the little ones…where are they?… George Foreman? George Foreman? Come over here…okay, now, say hello, this is George Foreman and George Foreman…Why don’t you all sit down on the couch over there—the couch, interestingly enough, I call George Foreman.”

Notice how the writer has tried to keep the readers’ interest alive by treating them to a variety of expressions. He has also been creative with his imagination by fabricating an engaging situation involving all the George Foremans together. What’s more, the writer brings the episode to a climactic end by presenting—just when the readers thought the stock of Foremans had run out—yet another George Foreman. And guess what? This one is a couch!

Now, let’s look at another humor piece, by columnist Melvin Durai, in which he overplays the pain-in-the-neck flight delays that an increasingly airborne world has come to suffer as part of the overall cost of traveling.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Thank you for flying British Airways Flight 324 nonstop from London to New York. We are still awaiting our security clearance from U.S. authorities, but it's safe to assume that we'll land in New York sometime in the next month or so.

If you look to your left, you will see a landmark that attracts more than one million tourists every year. It's called Heathrow Airport. Yes, we haven't yet taken off, as a few astute passengers have noticed. Needless to say, we would rather wait on the ground than in the air—it's so much easier to get a refill. You won't believe how fast we go through our liquor cart.

The weather in New York is cold and breezy, with a 30 percent chance of snow. But why am I telling you that? By the time we get there, it might be summer.

Of course, there is still a possibility the status of this flight will be changed to "delayed indefinitely" from its current status of "delayed definitely." If that happens, you may be asked to disembark immediately. With that in mind, I would advise you not to get too comfortable. You may recline your seat and stretch your legs, but please don't change into your pajamas.

By making the captain of the plane speak up the anguish of harried passengers and exaggerating their travails (the aircraft remaining stationary and passengers waiting for months rather than hours, for instance), the writer has made the humor even more hard-hitting.

The unexpected, unusual, or uncanny

Umm, too many uns there—understandably! Hey, don’t dwell too much on the last sentence, it’s just un aside.

But then, the point I wish to make here is, you go on and on trying to write something funny and people wouldn’t just notice. Unlike a stage comedian, you can’t make faces or let out a scream or do some of the weird stuff that comedians do. So what’s a poor writer like you gonna do?

This is where the next tool in our arsenal comes into play: surprise, amaze or shock your readers with something out of the box. It could be a different writing style or jargon, something people aren’t familiar with or don’t expect in the normal scheme of things, or something that simply seems extra-terrestrial.

Douglas Adams, in his widely read book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, comes up with some amazing stuff in this league. (Needless to say, his best-selling success was due as much to his comedic skills as to his sci-fi acumen.) Sample this:

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.

See how the writer, besides coining funny names, describes the weird—or shall we say gut-wrenching—outcome that maudlin poetry can have.

To cite another example of humor created with the unexpected or the unusual, The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson begins thus:

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.

When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there for ever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can’t wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there for ever and ever.

The writer throws up a very unusual but curious mixture of two sentences in the very first para—and hooks the reader for good. Through the misadventures of the local residents of Des Moine in seeking a living out of the city and yet ending up within its confines, he further builds upon the comic portrayal in a rather unusual way.

Which brings me to the end of this how-to post that, I hope, will help you with some comic relief in your articles, scripts or books. And while I have laid out some humor tools here, to be honest, many more of such tools can exist, depending on how you cut it. But if you were to consider this article as a humor toolbox or Swiss Army knife, you’d probably find that it contains some of the most-often-used screwdrivers, pliers, cutters and spanners, all right.

Now, how you wield each of these tools separately or how you use a combination of them (you must have realized that the samples of humor write-ups given above often take advantage of more than one tool) will decide the contours of your own piece as you chisel it out. So, happy writing!

Finally, here’s the joke that I started with and had promised to finish before I bid adieu:

A man walks into a bar and orders himself a drink. After sitting alone for a few minutes, he hears a voice say, "Nice shirt." He looks all around him but can't see anybody near. 

He turns back around to finish his drink and hears the same voice again, "Nice haircut." This time he looks everywhere in the room; behind him, around the room, under his seat, but still he doesn't see anyone. 

A few minutes later he hears, "Nice tie." By this stage he's getting a bit worried, so he calls the bartender over and tells him he has been hearing this voice saying "nice tie”, “nice haircut”, “nice shirt”, etc. 

The bartender laughs, "Oh that! That's just the beer nuts. They're complimentary."

Keep smiling, writing and drinking—not necessarily beer :)

[NOTE: The above post has been adapted from an online course on ‘Humor in Writing’ that I had written in one of my previous lives as a freelancer. The site I wrote it for is now dead, but I managed to resurrect this piece from my digital attic.]