round robin humour | Novels Now

This month’s topic comes from regular contributor, Skye Taylor.

How easy or difficult do you find including
humour in your writing and/or have you ever incorporated a true life
humorous event in your own life or the life of someone you know in a
book you were writing?

Well, not difficult at all. In fact my tagline is ‘dialogue rich Scottish Regency with a touch of humour’.

I love the touch of the ridiculous real life often throws at us and it isn’t hard to take a normal action and with a tiny twist turn it into something richer and funnier. In Mariah’s Marriage when Tobias needs to make an apology to Mariah, he sends her flowers. He sends her so many flowers that the house runs out of vases and everyone’s senses are overcome by the powerful scent. Why?

He does need to make an apology. A bunch of flowers is what anyone might do. Several bunches of flowers support his sincerity, his wealth and his acknowledgement that Mariah is different from the other women who may have been in his life. He is nonetheless nervous that Mariah may turn down his proposal. She has reason because he has been manipulative.

Because a work makes people laugh it doesn’t mean the work or the story are trite, light or sentimental. Making people laugh can be as thought provoking as any number of long paragraphs with long words and sinister underpinning.

On the other hand where a story has necessitated a big emotional scene, juxtaposing it with something humorous relieves that tension and lets the reader breathe. It’s partly about pacing. Keeping the reader at knife-edge all the way through can be exhausting for them.

I do often include an older character with different world views to the central protagonists. This allows for a clash of sensibilities which, if handled well, allows the reader to laugh with the characters and not at the characters.

I can’t think of a humorous event in my own life or anyone else’s that I’ve included in my writing. Isolated conversations and the occasional good phrase or two, yes. Whole incidents, no.