Humour in writing! [Thread]

Okay I was talking to friends about this and now I have Thoughts so I'm going to collect them here! Quick (she says) thread on writing humour in fics

To pass on the greatest tip I've ever heard about writing humour from Nick Park (from Aardman, the studio behind Wallace and Gromit) - write what makes *you* laugh. If you're finding it funny, someone else is going to too

Like a lot of things in writing, if it's having the desired affect on you, then it'll come across as more genuine. If you're telling a joke you find funny, it'll come across better as opposed to writing a joke FOR other people, which tends to come across as more forced

To add on to this, there is, in my experience, three types of humour in fics: dialogue, thoughts and situational

Dialogue is fairly obvious - the spoken lines. Different characters speak in different ways and therefore the jokes or funny things they might say are also different. Let's take Hinata and Kageyama (of course) for example

Hinata is very witty, he likes wordplay and he likes to tease. So his spoken humour can be puns or plays on characters' names (-yama nicknames!) and just general teasing, that's his sense of humour.

Kageyama on the other hand is not witty at all (sorry buddy) - he's very literal and blunt, so his humour is more along the lines of saying things as he sees them or just sticking his foot in his mouth, basically

Spoken humour is pretty based on the characters' personalities, but you have more freedom with their thoughts! We're a lot more hyperbolic and dramatic in our brains where no-one can hear us. Overly worried, overly angry, etc etc. Play it up, get over dramatic!

Situational humour is the old "and then character A stood on a rake and the handle smacked into his face." The kinda slapstick comedy. Describing an action that's silly or ridiculous

I personally find situational humour the hardest, and dialogue/thoughts much easier - find what works for you! Telling jokes is simply expressing what you find funny, just like when you're telling jokes in conversation. Maybe dialogue is hard, but describing it might be easier!

I like telling jokes a lot, and I found it much easier once I started writing things that made me giggle as I wrote them. If your funny scenes/lines are making you smile, they're making somebody else smile too. Have fun with it! There's so many ways to tell a gag :D