Writing Funny

[Peg Herring]

I can't do it. I envy those who can.

I will admit that as a playwright, I wrote some things that were funny. But in my novels, nobody's going to laugh out loud.

I note this because I started reading a friend's MS last night and I did...laugh out loud. She has the knack of being funny without being silly, and entertaining without stooping to farce, which irritates me. I was never a fan of the Lucille Ball-type heroine, so overdrawn and asinine that I wanted to slap her. My friend's small-town heroine is sharp-minded and sarcastic, but on the inside, where she keeps up a running commentary on the ironies of American life. Unlikely to buck the system, she recognizes its weaknesses, and the reader gets the benefit of her sardonic observations in just a few words: that feeling of "here we go again" as we deal with personalities and situations we meet today and will see again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I think it's hard to balance murder and comedy, so when I find an author who does it well, I am particularly thrilled. In one of life's odd moments, I met this author at a booksigning of another author (Deb Baker) whose comical Yooper mysteries made me laugh. Deb introduced me to Janet Koch, and we started swapping MSs for editing purposes. The one I'm reading now is due for publication in September, 2010. I'll be sure to remind everyone when that date is closer, because if you like humor in your mysteries, it's a keeper.

[I. J. Parker]

I do a little humor, usually based on a funny character. Some of the minor characters are bit Dickensian and sympathetic. I don't have any Uriah Heeps -- at least not yet. The protagonist does not think of himself as funny, quite the reverse, but some of his flaws are probably funny to the reader. People aren't always aware how their actions and words strike others.

[Eric Christopherson]

I really enjoy the mix of comedy and suspense. Maybe that's why I'm a big Hitchcock fan, with North by Northwest being my fave of faves. I like Nelson DeMille's novels a lot for their humor. Jon I think you mentioned meeting Theresa Schwegel at that recent convention. I vividly remember enjoying her debut crime novel, Officer Down. Very funny stuff. Oh, and mustn't forget Chandler's humor. (Really need to get around to these Provincetown mysteries I keep hearing about too.)

[Dana King]

The humor in my writing tends to appear when characters are bantering back and forth. I have written a couple of scenes intended to be funny in and of themselves, but not many.

Working comedy into a murder story is hard; working a murder into a comedy seems to be easier. I've read several successful authors who, to my taste, don't pull it off because the humor is inappropriate to the scene, either making the "humor" unfunny, or ruining the tension. Carl Hiaasen does it very well, as does the previous commenter, whose name I hesitate to mention lest I offend his sense of humility.

[Jon Loomis]

My impulse is more and more toward comedy, I think. What's interesting about the mystery as a vehicle for comedy is that you have to find a way to balance what's funny with what's not--that death thing. Funny and dark isn't easy, but when it works I really like it.