A Little Humor Can Go A Long Way

I was watching The Devil's Hour, a six-part speculative series on Amazon Prime (which is great, if you haven't checked it out already) when I was reminded of how much I enjoy dramas that also have splashes of humor. Much of the series' more grim moments are lightened with humor, particularly from its main character, Lucy Chambers (Jessica Raine), a young social worker and mom who is haunted by moments of deja vu and time distortions, forcing her to question reality. Lucy is an engaging and personable character who also struggles with a son who is unable to emote (he doesn't laugh, cry, feel pain, or express love) and a recent separation from her husband Mike, who has rejected their son. But what makes Lucy such an interesting character is that she uses humor, often in awkward moments, to offset the emotional turmoil she feels inside.

When characters use humor to crack jokes or make witty or funny observations, they become more human and well-rounded. Unfortunately, many contemporary stories often leave out humor, which creates a rather dull and dreadful reading or viewing experience.

Humor plays an important role in our lives. It can be a form of bonding as well as a social tool to signify happiness or nervousness. Think of the last time you laughed nervously over something someone did or said. According to experts, we are 30% more likely to laugh in the company of others, proving that laughter is a social activity that allows us to connect individually and collectively. We find laughter in even the most inopportune moments, such as dealing with tragedy and heartbreaking grief. As the old saying goes, we laugh so that we don't have to cry.

In storytelling, readers relate more to characters who are funny, have absurd but insightful takes on life, or use humor to cope with extremely heightened emotional moments. This holds for the unlikeable characters too. Think of all the classic villains in literature and film, and you will probably come across quite a few who use humor as a way to intimidate the heroes or victims. The Joker, of Batman fame, is a psychotic clown. Humor allows you to create characters to whom readers can relate, even when they are doing things they disapprove of. Humor gives characters personalities, sometimes ones that are even larger-than-life.

While planning out my novel series, The Book of Dreams, I wanted to ensure that both the main characters, Agent Kira Wood and Mister, the Z'Dhia, had a sense of humor. That was very important to me because I knew the relationship between the two would get off to a contentious start. They are both different in many ways––she is human, and he is an alien from the planet Idris-Sarra––with very different social and cultural cues. They also differ in how they approach their work. Kira is very much by-the-book, willing to obey the arcane rules and regulations of the organization, The Interplanetary Peace Alliance, for which she works, while Mister is much more focused on achieving his objectives, which involve recovering stolen volumes of the Book of Dreams by whatever means necessary, including breaking the very rules Kira swore to uphold. I didn't want to create a situation where readers were forced to take sides, but to see that both characters had valid reasons for why they chose the positions they did. So I needed to show these characters as being decent people, personable (and, yes, well, maybe even likable). Humor was a great way to do that. By showing both characters joking and laughing together, readers could feel their friendship was at stake when they disagreed.

I learned this lesson from the tv series The X-Files. Both Agents Mulder and Scully were intelligent, dedicated FBI agents who wanted to get to the truth, but had very different approaches to gathering facts. Where Mulder often flew by the seat of his pants, embracing whatever wild theory that presented itself to him, Scully was dedicated to the scientific method by looking at the facts and drawing conclusions from there. Of course, the whole series was weighted in Mulder's favor, but Scully's contributions were necessary to balance out the characters' worldviews and make them distinct individuals. However, the series showed that both characters (and the series itself) did not take themselves too seriously. They were able to laugh at themselves or the cases they investigated, not only to leaven out the darker, more cynical elements of the show but to create a bond that made them so iconic with TV fans.

Through humor, I developed my characters, established their different points of view, and created a bond that became believable throughout the novel. Oftentimes, in literature, I've found that humor is used mainly to establish the author's worldview and her absurd observations on life, which is certainly fine. Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or Percival Everett's satiric novels such as I Am Not Sidney Poitier, are great examples of that style of writing. However, I prefer the humor to come directly from the characters themselves. Laughter and humor are an indelible part of being human (though studies have shown that other animals, like apes, also can laugh), and characters should reflect that side of ourselves. Think of Shakespeare's comedies, such as Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, or Much Ado About Nothing, in which the characters' witty repartee not only become the source of much of the humor, but define the characters, their conflicts with each other, and their robust personalities.

Humor can show that a character doesn't take herself seriously, has keen insights, can show intelligence through wit, and can be used as social cues to alert what a character might be thinking or feeling at a given moment. Remember that nervous laughter I mentioned earlier?

What makes your character laugh? What do they find funny? Or silly? Or just absurd?

What type of humor do they have? Are they jokesters? Do they love puns? Or do they have a dry, acerbic sense of humor? Are they witty? Clever?

How do they use humor? Do they like to tell jokes to break the ice? Or to deflect from an awkward situation? To charm? Self-deprecate? Or do they use humor to make others uncomfortable? To control or belittle (especially if your character is the villain)?

Do they say little quips that signify a situation's irony or absurdity? Think of Mark Twain's, "The coldest winter I've ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

By thinking about how a character might use humor, you are building that character, fleshing him out, giving him dimensions, and making him real in your readers' eyes. We all love a good laugh, don't we?

Does this mean that all stories should use humor to build and develop characters? No. Not all stories need to, and there is a little thing called tone that you need to be aware of. There's a fine line between going from something hilarious to heartrending within minutes, and balancing those extremes is not easy. I mentioned the TV series The Devil's Hour at the start of this essay, and I think it offers a perfect balance between the two, mainly because the humor is coming from the characters and their interactions with each other and not from the situations themselves. This is the difference between situational comedy or sitcoms, and dramas that use humor to alleviate the tragic elements within them. Sitcoms make fun of the absurdity of social interactions, usually in dealing with the ever-changing etiquette that the character might have difficulty navigating. This style of humor is relational because we all might have been in a similar situation and faced similar problems. But not all situations are funny, and if you're working on a story where you find humor might not be the right tone, then by all means keep it out.

But using levity, especially in serious or tragic stories, can go a long way in preventing the story from being too hopeless. And when it comes to creating memorable characters who will live long in your readers' minds, it is, I find, absolutely a must.

Cynthia C. Scott is the author of The Book of Dreams series, The Haunted Child, Immortal, My Love, and The Naxos Academy of Psychic Studies for Colored Girls. Her short story, "Ruby's Paradox," was the 2018 Fairfield Writing contest winner, which appears in Here to Now: A Time Travel Anthology. She currently lives in the SF Bay Area and writes for her newsletter, The Portal.