Write Better Fiction: What Makes a Novel Funny?
/Are you writing a humorous novel and wondering how to make it funnier? See how one fantasy author can heighten the humor in her story.
June’s author is Renee. She’s writing a ~35k word comic fantasy novella. Here’s how she sums up her story:
Eve, of Adam and Eve fame, tells her story on living in Eden and why success meant the only way up was to move out.
In terms of what she’d like help with, Renee says:
Courage to craft and complete a damn good story. Tight prose. Meaningful situations that don’t get lost in the telling. Capturing interest with a big enough dilemma.
Renee’s questions cover a wide range of topics. Crafting a good story is a something a writer can devote a lifetime to studying. Let’s pick out two topics to cover in this post. First, what is the dilemma, which we also might call the conflict or obstacles the protagonist faces in reaching their story goal. The second topic we’ll cover is an important part of telling a damn good comic story—making the protagonist funnier.
The Dilemma, or Conflict
First off, in this story, Eve isn’t the one who faces the conflict. The protagonist is the one who faces the conflict. Here’s how Renee describes the protagonist:
Buck is a story collector without any finesse for words. He speaks fluent animalese but his boss wants human stories. People aren’t known to tell stories about themselves. Buck finds males are quick with words and females laugh when talking. Buck’s boss rewrites everything Buck submits because he’s no wordsmith.
If Buck collects “the” story, not only will he win the title wordsmith but he’ll get paid.
Not sure of his purpose, Buck latches onto the idea of capturing “the” story and earning a living by hearing people talk. His boss tells him it takes years to craft compelling words but if he’s got the moxie, it’ll pay off one day. Buck has to crack some good stories before his boss retires from the business, courtesy of his wife.
All he needs is that first story to prove he’s a natural wordsmith but since men don’t say much that leaves Buck with finding a woman who has a good story.
Based on what Renee says about Buck and what she told me about her plot, it’s likely that Eve and Buck will only interact for a scene or two. From the description of Buck above, we know that Buck’s goal is to collect a story, but the conflict could be more specific. Is the obstacle collecting the story in the first place? Is the obstacle holding on to a story once it’s been collected? Or is the obstacle that most stories are boring and get rejected by the boss? Let’s consider each of these possible conflicts.
If the conflict is in collecting the story in the first place, then Buck would spend most of the novella trying different ways of getting humans to tell him a story. He’d likely meet Eve in the second half of the novella after he’s failed at collecting a story from many other humans. This is a concrete challenge. Readers will know immediately when Buck succeeds and when he fails at getting a story.
The second possible conflict is holding on to a story once it’s been collected. With this challenge Buck could meet Eve early in the novella, get her story, and lose the story soon after. Buck would spend most of the novella searching for Eve’s story and failing to find it, or chasing after the character who stole Eve’s story and failing to persuade the thief to give it back. In this case, Buck might need to return to Eve later in the novella for a second story. This is also a concrete challenge where readers will always have a clear view of Buck’s progress.
The third possible conflict—Buck collects boring stories that get rejected by the boss—means that Buck is a poor judge of what makes a good story. This is an abstract dilemma, not a concrete one. With an abstract conflict, it’s harder to predict how the plot will unfold. Buck will try (and fail) multiple times to find a good story, but readers won’t necessarily know when Buck has collected a “good” story the moment he collects it. This is because Buck will only succeed when a story is judged to be worthy by another character. Stories with abstract conflict are more difficult to write because you have to explain the protagonist’s progress to readers, rather than rely on what they’ll be able to infer on their own.
Renee’s next tasks should be to determine the conflict Buck will face in this novella and if needed, make it more specific. She could choose one of the options presented above, or the conflict could be something else entirely. A good conflict will be challenging for the protagonist, but not completely impossible. It will take most of the word count to overcome. A good conflict will also allow for some moments of success and not just constant failure.
How close are you to crafting a novel readers won’t be able to put down? Take a quiz to see what’s working and what comes next.
Comic vs. dramatic protagonists
In a comic novel, a lot of the laughs come from the mismatch between the protagonist’s character traits and the obstacles they have to overcome. This means that what kind of conflict and obstacles your protagonist faces should influence what skills and traits you give the character. A comic protagonist often lacks one or more of the skills or traits you’d expect a character to have to face the conflict in the story. It can be easier to understand this if we compare a comic protagonist to a dramatic one.
A dramatic protagonist usually does have the skills to overcome the obstacles they face in the course of the novel. For example, in an action novel, the protagonist is often someone with a military background, martial arts training, or skill with some other type of weapon or spycraft. They’ve got knowledge of what to do to defeat the bad guys and they might even relish the adrenaline rush that comes from the fight.
By contrast, a comic action protagonist is more likely to have little to no relevant training or have a character trait that makes using that training unpleasant or difficult. A comic protagonist could be a pirate who has normal pirate skills like sword fighting and sailing, but refuses to hurt anyone, or they could be a duck who has to retrieve a magical item from a chest placed in a desert. Or a comic protagonist could be an astrologer who is constantly mocked by everyone in her world about her occupation but has an unshakeable belief in her astrological abilities to help the cops catch criminals.
Laughs come when these comic protagonists do their best to overcome the obstacles they face even though they’re not who you’d expect to do the job. The tender-hearted pirate might apologize after hitting someone on the head with a bottle, tie up prisoners, and make the ropes so loose the prisoners escape. The duck might have a camel who hauls all the normal desert gear plus a kiddie pool the duck fills with water and swims in several times a day. The diehard astrologer can ignore the mockery and use star charts, horoscopes, and tarot cards to help catch criminals and prove the nay-sayers wrong.
Heightening the humor in Renee’s story
Renee’s already got a mismatch between Buck’s skills and his story goal. Buck can talk fluently to animals, but isn’t great at writing words. This is good. But it would be even better if the conflict Buck faces was more specific, and we knew exactly how Buck’s character traits—like his skill in talking to animals—make it harder for him to succeed.
For example, if the conflict is that Buck has a hard time collecting a story, right now, it seems like Buck DOES have the skills he needs to do this. He knows how to listen and write things down. Renee may want to take away this skill or give Buck another character trait that makes getting close to humans so that Buck can listen and write things down more difficult. Let’s look at one example of a trait that would make getting close to humans more difficult.
What if Buck is a Tyrannosaurus Rex? Every time he gets close to a human, they run away in terror. So Buck might try disguises, bribery, or using an accomplice to get humans to talk to him. And those attempts can backfire. For example, maybe Buck dresses up as a grandma which fools a little girl into talking with him. But she insists they play tea party before telling Buck a story. But after teatime, it’s the little girl’s nap time. She naps in a hammock while Buck naps nearby. When Buck wakes up from his nap, the little girl is gone and so is every trace of the village she lived in. Everyone’s run away. Again.
Buck’s character traits will suggest should make it more difficult for Buck to overcome the obstacles he faces in collecting a story.
How close are you to crafting a novel readers won’t be able to put down? Take a quiz to see what’s working and what comes next.
Next steps for Renee
I recommend two next steps for Renee. First, get more specific about the conflict in this story. This will make it easier to do the second step, which is to adjust Buck’s character traits so that Buck faces more obstacles and the process of overcoming those obstacles is more difficult and amusing.
Questions to consider for making the conflict more specific:
Is Buck’s challenge in collecting a story in the first place? In holding on to a story once he’s got it? In judging what makes a story a “good” story? Is it something else?
How will readers know when Buck is making progress? How will readers know when things are going badly? What are the concrete signs that they can identify?
What are the consequences of failing to overcome the conflict? What are the rewards for succeeding?
Renee’s second step is to think about Buck’s character traits and skills. A comic protagonist can be summed up in 2-4 traits that define how he acts throughout the story. These traits should make him more of a mismatch for the conflict and obstacles he faces.
Questions to consider for identifying Buck’s character traits.
What type of a character is Buck? Is he human? A bird? An aardvark? An angel? A demon? A giant? A cockroach? Something else? Should he be a she? Or maybe a non-binary they?
What is Buck’s personality? Does he get nervous every time he approaches a person with a story and he can’t stop himself from rambling? Is he condescending and constantly interrupting the human telling a story to tell them how that’s not what he’s heard from his animal friends? Does he have a knack for saying the wrong thing and starting people to argue?
How do other characters react to Buck? Are they afraid of him because of his size or his sharp teeth? Do other characters want to put him to work because he’s big and strong? Do they describe themselves on their best behavior and tell stories with no conflict because they don’t want Buck to judge them? (This last one is especially relevant if Buck is an angel or a demon or some other type of divine being.)
How do the character traits you’ve chosen make it harder for Buck to collect “the” story?
You’ll know you’ve chosen character traits well when Buck is forced to use unusual (and humorous) methods to overcome the obstacles he faces.
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