I’m pretty cheerful in my regular life, but my writing has veered toward the dark. 

But 2020 was more than dark enough for all of us. So as I sat down to work on a big revision to my WIP, I decided to try something new: humor.

As I started working, though, I found it harder than I’d thought it would be to inject a few jokes into my WIP. I’ll admit, it was a bit of a blow to my ego. I’m not exactly a non-stop laugh riot, but I enjoy humor and often make the people around me chuckle a bit. 

(Oh god. They’re laughing at me, aren’t they?)

Eventually, I realized that I was having a hard time infusing my story with humor because I didn’t totally know how. Teen angst? I’ve got that down pat. Staring into the distance, having life-changing realizations while other teens are off having fun? They say write what you know, so I did. Overwhelming emotions as characters experience natural beauty with their friends and/or loved ones? Oh yeah, I can do that.

But it’s one thing to have a sense of humor in the moment and quite another to deliberately set out to be funny. So, being the Good Student that I am, I set about to learn: How do you make things funny?

First, I turned to the experts. I listened to and read books by prominent female comedians, including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Tiffany Haddish, and Maeve Higgins. All talked about the process of crafting jokes while also being very funny, so that was a win-win for me. Tina Fey’s Bossypants even has a whole section of the book devoted to deconstructing jokes from her show 30 Rock and what makes them work. 

I also read some very funny fiction, both adult and YA. I tried to read widely, so I could really zero in on what kinds of jokes tickled my sense of humor. 

Perhaps most fun in these pandemic times, I got caught up on funny TV shows and paid close attention to the kinds of jokes that made me laugh and why they worked. At one point while watching Ted Lasso, I made my husband pause the episode so I could analyze why a particular joke made me laugh SO HARD. He was not amused. (By me. He thought the joke was pretty kick-ass, too.)

And that’s kind of the bummer thing about deconstructing humor…for a brief time, things became a little less funny because I was spending so much time and energy trying to intellectualize them. But once I made it through that process, the real fun started.

As soon as I figured out what kinds of humor worked for me, I was able to work on my revision with an eye to amping up the funny. Here are a few of the ways I injected humor into my WIP:

• Voice. My MC has a unique perspective on social situations and the way she fits into them, and she is not afraid to express it, at least not to herself. Her wry observations and commentary on the antics of those around her serve to lighten the moodier parts of the book and sketch her character more fully.

• Harmless mischief. The group of teens in my novel work together to execute a large-scale prank. Their personalities get larger than life because of the heightened stress, jokes flow to ease the tension of getting caught, and the creativity of the prank offered some opportunities for the unexpected. 

• Character names. Middle grade embraces this tradition a lot, giving characters alliterative names, names that are puns, or names that describe the character. In my story, characters have given names and chosen names, so I went all-out for the chosen names. It should go without saying that taking cultural names or names that “sound funny” from a Western culture perspective and making them a joke is not cool…and not funny.

• Unexpected Responses. A lot of humor in our daily lives comes from the unexpected happening. Slapstick humor relies on this a lot – when your dog tries to jump up on the sofa and misses, it’s funny because we don’t expect animals to be as clumsy as we are. Toddlers swearing fits here, too. 

• Animals/Pets. Speaking of animals, pets can lighten even the heaviest moment. A well-timed dog fart has stopped many a fight in my house, and it can in your novel, too.

• Puns are fun! I’m not a master punster, but when I can come up with a good one, I use it. These are especially great for your dorkier characters to employ – think “dad jokes” or those characters on the nerdier side.

• Don’t be afraid of the absurd. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that there is almost nothing that is too absurd to be true. Major coincidences, talking pets, UFO sightings, a main character who was childhood best friends with a teen popstar, an airplane falling on the house next door…all can be funny andplausible, as long as we ground them in the world of our stories.

But perhaps the most important rule I followed: 

Don’t sacrifice the heart of your story for humor. In the end, I wanted to tell a story about people overcoming obstacles that, for them, were real and serious. Their meltdowns and freakouts and antics might be funny, but they are also deeply human and vulnerable. I tried to keep all the humor grounded in their stories and their struggles.

After all this study, I am FAR from an expert in writing humorously. So please, please, please give us your tips and tricks and resources and your favorite funny books in the comments below.