Day 11: Ask the Bard #18

Follow along with my WorldEmber progress!

I promised you a look over my shoulder this month as I bring a vague and disjointed collection of ideas together into a cohesive piece of world-building. These resources will help you keep track of my progress through this month-long marathon challenge:

Haly’s Official WE Progress Report — each participant gets a page that automatically collects their author information and all WE-eligible articles across all worlds into a single, shareable package.
Haly’s WorldEmber on Argentii Index — an on-the-fly journal page and handy sidebar displaying only new Argentii WE-eligible articles.

Q: When is it a bad idea to use humor? How does humor change the believability of a story?

A: TL;DR: It's never a bad idea, only a bad time; there is nothing more believable than humor.

Look, I’m going to answer this one bass-ackwards because that’s going to make more sense in the end, mmkay? Here goes.

If the humor in a story isn’t believable, it’s because the writer hasn’t bothered to develop a sense of humor. Everything can be funny, given the proper perspective and timing. If you don’t believe me, go watch an Anthony Jeselnik stand-up comedy special. Your best friend going for an abortion isn’t funny. But the things the internet shows you while you’re researching an appropriate gift for your friend after her abortion…totally hilarious.

Perspective. And timing.

My dad has cancer. He and I will sit and joke about insurance money, his funeral, being sick-but-not-sick-yet, weight loss, hair loss, all of it. My husband and the boys will just stare at us as if we’re cryptids. They don’t have our perspective and so they don’t get the humor.

So…when is it a bad time to use humor? That all depends on — say it with me now! — perspective and timing!

For example: say your hero spends all day fishing. It’s a bad day with a poor catch of only one meager fish. But it’s what he has for dinner, so he prepares it, fries it up, and as he’s about to eat it a stray cat comes along and snatches it right off the plate!

Now, is this scene funny? On its own, a little. It’s cute, maybe a little obvious, but still fun because — and this is KEY — no one has been harmed. However, scenes rarely exist outside of context, and the context is what can turn this into a slapstick romp, or a gut-jerking tragedy.

Tip the Bard

Let’s say that this is the third appearance of this cat, and it’s always outwitting this hero. Perhaps the hero set up some safeguards to keep the cat away, and the cat STILL made off with dinner. Depending on the details we include and the world-building we’ve done, we can take this from amusing to wildly ridiculous on the scale of a Monty Python sketch.

On the other hand, suppose we know that this fish was the man’s last chance at avoiding starvation because he’s stranded in the wilderness due to extreme weather and all sorts of other complications with which we’ve surrounded him. Now, all of a sudden, this innocent theft feels more akin to the universe having a personal vendetta against our hero, and hopefully our audience cares enough about him to turn the page and see how he’s going to get out of this.

The critical difference between these two outcomes — the funny or the tragic — is the harm that is done to the hero.

In the first context, the hero is not harmed. He’s embarrassed (at being outwitted by a ‘dumb’ beast), and he’s hungry. But those are not harm, they are discomfort. In the second context, the hero is harmed. His dire circumstances are made worse and without intervention, he will die.

Because the hero was harmed, there is no room for humor. At least…from the hero’s perspective.

If we know that the cat was actually trained by a local vampire who has designs on our hero and wants him to be on the brink so that she can rescue him and make him her thrall…well, she might just find the whole thing an absolute knee-slapper. Especially if he uses the last of his pathetic human energy to struggle through the snow after the cat and ends up falling face-first toward the ground, only for her to arrive and catch him.

See how, once we take away the harm, we start edging back toward funny?

I hope this helps!!