George Saunders on how to inject humor into a story
How to make the funny stuff in a story feel natural and earned.
Author George Saunders was asked this:
I just wonder how humour comes out of your writing process, how it connects to your funny spontaneous self, how it connects you to humanity and how you respond to humour in the writers you have so generously shared with us so far?
His response offers up a good framework for comedic storytelling: Tell the story straight at first and then inject humor.
In general, my preset is to try to tell things relatively straight at first. I’m mostly trying to find the next solid bit of communication: an action, a movement, a line of dialogue. This keeps the story moving ahead.
But it also gives me something to be funny about, or funny with, if the story seems to want to go in that direction.
This way, the humor, if it appears, will feel natural and earned, rather than forced on the story and contrived. It will appear organically – which tends to make it funnier. (The reader feels the need for the joke just as it’s delivered.)
In other words, my flavor of humor seems to work best when I make the funny bits earn their way in.