© 2019 Connie Kuykendall
So, you want to write comedy, but you’re a teensy bit of a sour, dour, stick-in-the-mud? Take heart, curmudgeon! You don’t have to be as funny as Melissa McCarthy to write comedy. Your grumpy side may actually give you an edge.
“The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow.” Mark Twain understood the thin line between tragedy and comedy as do comedians who struggle with depression and substance abuse. Here are two methods to animate your writing without turning to the bottle: Use your dark side to put the squeeze on characters while conversely immersing yourself in all things light and funny.
1. Juice Your Characters
Juice flows when grapes are crushed underfoot. Similarly, squeezing your characters between impossible choices causes the funny to flow. Place them in fish-out-of-water situations in which the only escape from discomfort is to crack jokes, make stupid choices, or trip and fall.
Laughter is a self-regulator and buffer against despair when we feel powerless or afraid. A human can only operate at a high stress level for so long before her mental state and inhibitions unravel. Give your exhausted readers a breather, a giggle of hope, to help them feel safe in the midst of the magnificent Sturm und Drang you’ve plotted.
2. Drink in Joy
Humor in means humor out. While you’re juicing maximum comedy out of characters, you must inversely drink it in so you’ll recognize and understand it. Observe what makes you and others laugh, including dialogue, stories from friends and family, or memes, and record them in a notebook or on a Pinterest board.
Learn from comedy pros. Press play on Saturday Night Live or that goat-screaming YouTube video. Read Dave Barry or Janet Evanovich’s pistol-packing Grandma Mazur. Watch Kevin Hart’s bumbling movie meltdowns.
Improv comedians on Whose Line is it Anyway? make it up as they go, demonstrating how freeing it is to ignore your inner censor. They respond to prompts without trying to be funny or worrying about how ridiculous they look. What would happen if you did the same? Give your subconscious mind free reign without criticizing or censoring “wacky” thoughts. You might feel stupid at first, but you must let go of fear to be funny.
When you become one with comedy, it’ll bleed into both your writing and personal lives, making even a Debbie Downer feel . . . dare I say, happy?
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Connie Kuykendall is a big-haired attorney from Virginia with an even bigger smile and accent. Southern charm and humor season her inspirational contemporary romances. She writes to encourage women struggling with body image and faith to look in the mirror and say, “I am so loved,” instead of “I’m so ugly and fat.” God can turn broken pieces and broken people—like a mosaic made of shattered glass and stone—into something beautiful.Visit Connie on her website, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
