(How to Write Funny Dialogue.)

Writing jokes is the most fun thing in the world. It is also excruciating torture. In other words: It’s writing. But the difference between joke writing and non-joke writing, is that joke writing is held to an incredibly high standard: It has to make you laugh. If you don’t literally lose control of your physical body’s reaction to the joke, then that joke hasn’t done its job. While you can enjoy a tearjerker that produces no tears, a horror novel that doesn’t make you actually scream, or erotica that doesn’t automatically bring you to climax, nobody is in the market for humor that doesn’t make you laugh.

The high pressure on humor writing means high pressure on humor writers. Too much pressure to rely purely on those moments of inspiration when a great idea or a hilarious joke suddenly appears in your head, as if it was a gift from the Idea Fairy in exchange for your tooth (the Idea Fairy also wants teeth, she just doesn’t always wait for them to fall out naturally). How often does brilliance strike you spontaneously? If you’re anything like me, a professional joke writer, very rarely. The better option for a joke writer is to develop a deliberate, step-by-step writing process. I call mine “joke farming.”

I’ll admit, there are few less fun phrases in the English language than “deliberate writing process.” Maybe “multi-day colonoscopy,” but just barely. But I’ve found that the time I put into developing a repeatable, deliberate joke process has meant exponentially more ability to craft jokes on demand, when I need them, and exponentially less time waiting for inspiration to strike. It’s easy to feel blocked when you’re waiting for an idea to hit you. It’s harder to feel blocked when you have a step-by-step process to lead you out of the wilderness and onto the path to a joke. Just think about how much easier it is to assemble Ikea furniture when you use the instructions. But unlike the furniture, the jokes you write will survive multiple moves.

My personal joke farming process is an attempt to imitate the steps my brain goes through unconsciously in those times when inspiration does hit. After all, it’s not really the Idea Fairy giving me those ideas, it’s the strange, shadowy, secretive back half of my brain. My brain must have its own method of coming up with jokes, so I tried to reverse-engineer it into a process the public, cooperative, front half of my brain can work through. Basically, you can break my process down into three big steps.

1. Figure Out the Point of the Joke

Every joke, like every piece of writing, is trying to communicate something: a feeling, an idea, an experience, a message. Before I can write a joke, I need to know just what it is that I’m trying to communicate through it. I write it out for myself in the most straightforward, least funny way possible. If I don’t understand what I want the audience to understand, then how’s the audience going to understand it? It’s okay if the point isn’t funny. Making it funny is what the next steps are for.

2. Find a Premise That Communicates That Point

Jokes don’t communicate ideas by just stating them out loud. If they did, they wouldn’t be jokes, but statements. And nobody wants to go see a stand-up statementian. Instead, jokes communicate their ideas by almost stating them—and then leaving out just enough to force the audience’s brains to put together the pieces and “get” what’s being said. It’s that moment of sudden comprehension, of “getting” the joke, that makes us laugh. If you wanted to treat it like math, you’d say a joke is 1-2-3-4-6. What makes the audience laugh is when they fill in “5,” even though you didn’t say it.

We bring the audience to that moment of understanding by communicating the idea of the joke through a premise—literally the little story that you tell about the idea of the joke. In my book Joke Farming, I give the example of a joke asking why we say “walking the dog” when we really mean “take the dog outside so it can go to the toilet.” The idea behind the joke is that common phrases often obscure what people are ashamed to say out loud.

However, it’s not funny to say, “Common phrases often obscure what people are ashamed to say out loud.” It’s funny to say, “Why do we say, ‘I need to walk the dog’ when we’re really saying, ‘The dog needs to take a poop?’ Whose embarrassment are we avoiding here? The dog’s? Because the dog doesn’t seem to care who knows it.”

3. Construct the Joke Using the Mechanical Principles of Humor

This is a pretty big step, and there’s more involved here than I can fit into this space. It would take a whole book to describe it. That’s why I wrote one! But the most important thing to remember is that jokes aren’t just written, but constructed. They operate by not-quite-scientific principles that underly every type of humor writing, and they can be analyzed, understood, and applied without taking the fun out of humor. If anything, I think they make the humor more fun. You will laugh at a well-constructed joke. But once you know why it’s well-constructed joke, you’ll enjoy understanding the work that went into it.

Any writer looking to create jokes can benefit from analyzing their instinctive imaginative process and turning it into a deliberate writing process. Doing so won’t break the magic spell that allows you to write jokes. It will help you to write jokes faster, better, and more reliably, which will lower the stress you’re feeling and, in the end, make it easier for you to feel inspired when you’re writing jokes!

The way to start is by thinking about how you think. This may feel difficult at first, like trying to look down at your own mouth or defending the electoral college. But if you put in the time to understand how your brain finds inspiration, it will save you the time you’d otherwise spend waiting for that inspiration to be found.

Check out Elliott Kalan’s Joke Farming here:

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(7 Tips to Write Funny Headlines.)

When you pay attention with humor in mind, you’ll find “funny” at every corner. The world we live in is quite preposterous and full of incongruities, contradictions, and plain oddball happenings. Just look at any news service, and you’ll see headlines like these:

• An aggressive squirrel in California sent two people to the emergency room.
• Pennsylvania flood museum temporarily closed due to flood.
• A wandering wallaby is on the loose in Berlin, police say.

What the heck is a wallaby?

At the coffee shop where I’m penning this life-changing column, there are two women nearby gossiping about their neighbor who doesn’t cut his grass.

Woman #1: “I can’t even look at the yard next door. It’s horrible.”
Woman #2: “I bet some aggressive squirrels live there!”

Here are seven ways to collect your humor armor:

1 — Watch

Stand-up should be a daily pick on your Netflix list. I watch stand-up often, and I’ve performed at a few open mics. It sharpens your humor and gives you courage to push the limits. Here’s one: “When I first immigrated from Syria to the United States in 1984, friendly Americans would ask me, ‘How do you like it so far?’ I would reply, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty far!’”

2 — Listen

In addition to coffee shops, you can eavesdrop on trains, restaurants, malls, and just about anywhere else. Once, at the grocery store checkout lane, I heard a couple whispering about how they hoped the kids wouldn’t walk on them again like the night before. That’s enough material for three columns!

3 — Read

At my first job at the Birmingham Post-Herald newspaper in Alabama, we had a copy editor who picked discarded materials out of garbage cans to read. You don’t have to go that far, but comedy can be found in the oddest of places. Once, at a bookstore, I saw a book titled: “The Beginner’s Guide to Sex in the Afterlife!”

4 — Travel

Different cultures interpret humor in diverse ways. In India, burping after a meal is considered a compliment to the chef. In the Middle East and other regions, you must remove your shoes at the door (hope your socks don’t stink). In Iran, they have squatting toilets. Tell me you can’t go on and on about that one!

5 — Socialize

Social media, especially Instagram and TikTok, are treasure boxes for humor. YouTube can also be a useful source. Funny influencers have millions of followers for a reason. Find your favorites, watch them, then use their funny bits and ideas for your own material.

6 — Imitate

I’ve gleaned so much humor from watching several shows, including The Office. On occasion, I act like Michael Scott’s character without even realizing it. My kids call me Michael Scott sometimes—and it’s pretty hysterical. Pick your favorite characters from television, novels, stand-up, or any other source, then borrow away.

7 — Read

There are many comedy masters worth studying. My favorites are Dave Barry, Bill Bryson (his A Walk in the Woods memoir is a masterclass in humor writing), Dorothy Parker, David Sedaris, and Fran Lebowitz. I also find Garrison Keillor and his Lake Wobegon books terrific sources of material. Did you ever listen to Prairie Home Companion? I was addicted to that show on NPR. Look up Keillor’s bit on The Ketchup Advisory Board!

Create your own sources and start collecting funny bits. I use an actual journal. You can type in your phone, but something unique happens in the brain when pen meets paper.

I’ll end with this: Why shouldn’t you write humor columns with a broken pencil? Because there’s no point.

The post 7 Ways to Master Collecting Humorous Bits (On Humor) appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Writing Humor That Bites.)

I was born in 1978, so TV was my caretaker, my babysitter, my deity, and my best friend. I grew up in that glorious confluence of TV old and TV new, where manic Hanna-Barbera cartoons ran side by side with sitcoms about working class families and black and white shows featuring hilarious women in less hilariously gendered relationships. And I learned everything you need to know about this life through watching television: how to relate to an alien, why the dinosaurs went extinct (seriously), how to talk to the dead movie star haunting your house if you are a teenage boy, and what would happen if you could grant wishes but also had to be sexy and live in a bottle. 

But the most important thing I learned from TV? Never be sad when you can be funny instead—unless you can be funny and sad, which is even better. Slipping on a banana peel? Hilarious. Slipping on a banana peel while already downtrodden? Art.

Back then, I wanted to be an actress, and my role models were easy to find: depressed, snarky Lydia on the Beetlejuice TV show; depressed, snarky Peter Venkman on the Ghostbusters TV show; sardonic Darlene on Roseanne; and of course, selfish, sarcastic, and glamorous Peg Bundy on Married with Children. 

I also watched a lot of silent films with my mom late at night on AMC and studied the sad clowns closely: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton. Later, I’d watch MTV and idolize Daria, the cartoon embodiment of everything I wanted to be for real: witty, depressed, and cool. (It never occurred to me until much, much later that wanting to be depressed meant you probably already were.) These characters were never pitiful, never pitiable; they made unhappiness seem like a natural state, and anything else seemed artificial by comparison. Their outlook was existential, world-weary; nothing was off limits and death was the biggest joke of all. 

When I began writing plays, and later, fiction, I carried that same sensibility into my work. So many of my favorite playwrights, like Christopher Durang and Tony Kushner, dared to write humor around the darkest of subjects. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety while getting my degree in philosophy (lols all around, right?). And so I found the WHY—why I’d always been so drawn to the dark, funny stuff. It made me feel less alone, paradoxically, and made it easier to cope with what essentially felt like a hostile and often meaningless world. Humor was a rational response to the void!

Yet, though I learned about existentialism, I could never lean into it too much; like my humor heroine, Dorothy Parker, I had a deep cynic’s abiding belief in activism and the ability to change the world, even if you couldn’t change yourself. (Which is kind of funny, too.) And like Dorothy, I always felt that “you might as well live”—and do it wittily. There are plenty of places for pure pathos in art (like literally any Russian novel) and I love a good cathartic cry as much as the next reader or viewer. But there’s something incredibly, if paradoxically, comforting about a good joke about The Horrors. (Russian novels are full of those, too.) 

Breton coined the term ‘black humor’ as he was attempting to classify a type of writing where the humor comes from cynicism, often on bleak topics like death. He came up with the term in 1935, when this type of writing was nearly the exclusive province of men—or at least was believed so. And yet I would have been shocked to learn that as a cynical teenager in the 1990s, when so many of my role models were funny, sad women.

If I’d thought about it too long, I probably would have guessed that women were just born that way; our lot in life predisposed us to a kind of hopeless hilariousness. And so many of the writers I adore now for their sharp, sad, funny humor are women: Muriel Spark, Jenny Lawson, Stella Gibbons, Erin Somers, Lindsey Hunter, Barbara Comyns, Miranda July, Kristin Arnett, Sam Irby, Alyssa Nutting, Marie-Helene Bertino, Melissa Broder, Ottessa Moshfegh. So many sad and funny women, railing or not railing at the world from the proximity of the gallows. 

Now, I’m just glad no one told me that women weren’t supposed to be funny like that; I never learned any better. And just to prove it, I’ll tell you a joke I like: 

Woman says to her friend: My grief counselor died last week. 
Her friend says: Oh my god, I’m so sorry! 
Woman says: That’s okay. She was so good at her job that I’m already over it. 

Ba dum ching. 

We “give birth astride a grave,” says Pozzo in the play Waiting for Godot. And that’s sad. But in that same play, Estragon says, when asked how his carrot tastes, “It’s a carrot.” And that’s sad and funny: sublime. 

Check out Amber Sparks’ Happy People Don’t Live Here here:

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(See the winning entry list here.)

Burnt Toast

by Don Michalowski

In 1990, my best friend John and I took a three-week road trip through the western United States. In Custer, South Dakota, we camped at Flintstones Bedrock City – a theme park and campground inspired by The Flintstones. As we did every night, we got real high and went looking for adventure.

We decided to sneak into Bedrock after-hours and visit Fred, Wilma and Dino. It was on Main Street, as we passed Mr. Slate’s house, that John said to me, “You know what dude, if this trip has shown me anything, it’s that you’re, like, actually funny. I mean it. You’re one of the funniest people I know. I bet you can come up with stuff as funny as that guy who does The Far Side.”

“Thanks man,” I said, posing for a picture while cupping the stone breasts of the Wilma statue. I loved The Far Side, and I loved a challenge so, as I went off looking for the Betty Rubble statue I said, “I can yabba dabba doo that for sure!”

We eventually wandered back to the tent, kept on smoking and kept on laughing as I set out to write stuff as funny as that guy from The Far Side.

Long before this trip, John and I got in the habit of always having a notebook with us when we got high. We knew we wouldn’t remember anything if we didn’t write it down. It helped answer questions like: Where did we park? Why do I have a pocket full of Canadian coins? Who is Susan and why do I have her library card?

That next morning, in our tent outside of Bedrock, John and I reviewed our notes.

• Smoke
• Bedrock – Dino
• Wilma – stacked
• Shots – fired
• Barbed wire
• Cynic overlook
• Moses in the morning

Much more had been written, but this was all we could make out—thanks to our terrible handwriting and the dozens of blood droplets scattered across the page. The notes helped trigger our memory. We remembered being chased out of Bedrock by a security guard, hearing shots fired and then losing him by running through a field. I recalled leaping through tall grass then slamming into a barbed wire fence when I looked back to see if we lost him. This explained the blood.

Next to the chicken scratch and blood smears were two drawings.

A bit of background on the first. Our trip took us through a lot of national parks where there was always a sign that said, “Scenic Overlook.” It directed us to pull over, park the car, walk over to a railing and look at something breathtaking. Often, however, there was nothing remarkable to see—just another “been there done that” view that left us doubting the merits of the Scenic Overlook concept. We started calling these kinds of stops a “Cynic Overlook.” My drawing had a group of people standing at one of these railings, looking down at a guy yelling, “I told them there was nothing great to see here, but did they believe me? NOOOO!!! They never listen to me. They just want your money!” Caption: Cynic Overlook.

That was my first attempt at being funnier than The Far Side guy, whose name, by the way, is Gary Larson.

The second drawing was simple: Moses holding his staff, looking in the mirror with his hands stretched out wide as his hair miraculously parted. Caption: Moses in the morning.

We laughed hard at that one, then closed the notebook and packed up our gear. I slapped a few Band-Aids on my barbed wire holes, and we headed off to see Mt. Rushmore. By then, all I could think was, when was my last tetanus shot?

I didn’t write any more ideas for the rest of the trip. Or maybe I did, but didn’t write them down, or we couldn’t read them. Either way, that would have been the end of that story—if not for January 14, 1993.

I was sitting on the toilet reading the newspaper, when something on the comics page caught my eye. That day’s Far Side cartoon. There it was—Moses, looking in the mirror, arms stretched out wide as his hair miraculously parted. Caption: Moses parting his hair.

I was floored. That caption sucked. Mine was so much better—less obvious. And where was his staff? Everybody knows Moses parted stuff with his staff. Every depiction of Moses—Bible illustrations, sculptures, Charlton Heston—has Moses parting with his staff!

I didn’t think, “Hey, that Larson guy stole my idea.” I felt proud. I came up with an idea that Gary Larson came up with, before Gary Larson came up with it. That meant something. Sitting there on my toilet, I had an epiphany. I realized my purpose.

That was the day that I discovered I wanted to be – had to be – a syndicated cartoonist.

Of course that didn’t happen. Have you ever heard of Burnt Toast? Has anyone? Of course not. But Burnt Toast became my passion project. I went all in: designed a logo, printed business cards, secured a URL, even wrote a mission statement:

Laugh at life’s little things…why not, it’s only Burnt Toast.

I didn’t say it was a good mission statement, but I took Burnt Toast seriously. I wrote nonstop – hundreds of ideas in dozens of notebooks. Sketches drawn and redrawn, captions written and rewritten. I was determined to get Burnt Toast published.

There was, unfortunately, one major problem. I was not a very good artist. And if Burnt Toast was going to be syndicated in every major newspaper across the country, I needed an illustrator.

I met with dozens of artists, but only one clicked: Jay Washer. He had a fun, easy drawing style, but more importantly, his sense of humor matched mine. Together, we sorted through my mountains of ideas, picked out what we agreed were the best of the best and got to work producing our submission kits.

The result? Forty well-drawn, funny, off-the-wall comic panels, assembled into a professional presentation package complete with cover letter, bios and our mission statement. We sent them off to all the top cartoon syndicates. Not only were we proud—we were over-the-top excited. Why? Because it had been announced that Gary Larson was retiring at the end of the year. That meant there would be a big hole on the cartoon page of every newspaper in the country. A hole that needed to be filled.

And, in our hearts, we knew Burnt Toast was the answer.

We mailed off our submissions…and waited.

If Burnt Toast was going to be the answer, could someone please repeat the question?

There was no joy in Mudville—Burnt Toast struck out. Each submission was met with a polite but firm rejection letter. I was confused.

Did I pick the wrong illustrator?

Was I a one-hit-wonder?

Was I…not funny?

How could so many great ideas be met with absolutely no interest?

Two dedicated years of creating, writing and promoting Burnt Toast resulted in nothing. I even submitted to every magazine that bought cartoons—still nothing. After dozens of replies saying, “Not what we’re looking for,” or “Too close to what we already have,” Jay and I reluctantly decided to hang it up.

No syndication. No book deal. No merch store.

Our dream of a Burnt Toast coffee mug on every desk as co-workers gathered around the water cooler laughing at that morning’s Burst Toast panel evaporated.

That year, every newspaper launched a Far Side clone. The cartoon world had prepared for Larson’s retirement years before Burnt Toast ever hit their desks.

Then I read a Gary Larson interview explaining why he decided to retire. He wanted to quit while he was ahead and avoid creative burnout. He feared his work slipping into what he called the “Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons.”

Ouch.

Was Burnt Toast…mediocre?

Fast forward twenty-five years.

While moving to a new home with my wife Lee, I unearthed my Burnt Toast tote – stuffed with all my old notebooks, sketches and rejection letters. Reliving the Burnt Toast magic so many years later with someone new was a total hoot.

I must admit, Burnt Toast is…funny!

Those syndicates were wrong! What the hell were they thinking?

Okay—all joking aside—yes, there are some solid gems in the Burnt Toast collection. But overall, it is kind of, well, mediocre. Still, for as much as I loved creating Burnt Toast, I loved sharing it with Lee even more.

Her responses were priceless.

“This is stupid,” she said.

“Whaaatttt?!?!” I laughed, flipping through the panels.  “This stuff is great! Look at this one.” I showed her a drawing of a guy celebrating on a tennis court, arms raised in victory. On the other side of the net lay a dead horse, flat on its back, a tennis racket strapped to its front legs.

The caption: Bill has no problem beating a dead horse.

“That’s wrong,” she protested. “And definitely not funny.”

“Not funny?” I fired back. “Look at the score! It’s 40-15. He may have beaten the dead horse, but the horse still scored. That. Is. Funny!”

“It’s just mean,” she said shaking her head. “You got anything else?”

“Look at this one, it’s one of my favorites.”

I showed her a drawing of an open time portal, all squiggly on a wall. From both sides, the same guy, at the same time was trying to go through the opening.

Caption: Having found the portal to a parallel universe…Don bonks heads with himself trying to cross.

“I don’t get it,” she said flatly.

“It’s a parallel universe,” I defended, “so, by definition, the same thing is happening at the same time on both sides. So, he has to bonk into himself trying to get through.”

“Nope…dumb. Next.”

This went on for almost an hour. Me showing her one Burnt Toast panel after another, cracking myself up and watching her grimace in response, which, only made me laugh harder.

I kept going, determined to find at least one she liked.

“When people weren’t looking, Peter Piper picked his nose.”

“Gross!”

“All the campers wanted to have a big weenie roast, and Carl was the biggest weenie they knew.”

“Bad.”

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. But give him a few beers and you can get him to do practically anything.”

“Stuuuupid.”

Finally, on my last attempt, I slowed down, carefully pointing out the details.

“Okay, look closely,” I said. “See the hunter? Now look at the tree in the background—see it? The duck, just barely poking his head out.”

I pointed to the caption and read it aloud, barely holding back my laughter: Hunting the very elusive Peeking Duck.

“Ugh!” she shouted. But then it happened.

A smirk.

A subtle smile she tried so hard to hold back.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, surrendering, “I’m not laughing because it’s funny—because it’s not. I’m laughing because YOU think it’s funny. I’m enjoying how much fun you’re having showing me your stupid cartoons.”

And then she added:

“I do love how you see the world so differently. How you always find the funny in the little things. That’s why I’m smiling.”

It took twenty-five years.

Mission accomplished.

Get recognized for your writing. Find out more about the Writer’s Digest family of writing competitions.

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~~~~

If you’ve read Writer’s Digest magazine for any length of time, you will have seen cartoons and drawings by cartoonist Bob Eckstein. His “Worth 1000 Words” illustrations and back page “Before You Go” (co-created with Mark Shatz) column are always good for a laugh.

To celebrate the upcoming release of his newest book, Inspired by Cats: Writers and Their Mews(es), (written by Nava Atlas and illustrated by Bob Eckstein), we’ve partnered with Bob on a cartoon caption contest! Submit your best caption for the drawing below, and the editors of WD along with Bob will select one winner who will receive* a copy of Inspired by Cats.

To enter: Submit your caption in the comments below this post.

The contest is closed.

The winning caption will be posted on the WD website on Thursday, September 25.

Learn more about Inspired by Cats: Writers and Their Mews(es) by Nava Atlas and Bob Eckstein, which will be published on September 23, 2025.

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*Unfortunately, we are only able to ship the book within the United States.

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(10 Things I’ve Learned About Writing From Being a Stand-Up Comic.)

OK. Let’s get to the nuts and bolts of using humor in your writing. After all, we’re all building a tower to communicate our most inner thoughts, hopes, and dreams, a tower of expression unique to our voice. And a little humor is essential to mix in with the mortar holding up that illustrious tower.

From novels and nonfiction to poetry and short stories, humor provides the reader with an interlude of levity amid all the gravitas. It’s innate. Humans love humor. Incidentally, the two words, human and humor, share the same Latin root, humus, which means earth. That makes sense; I always feel grounded when I’m laughing!

I wrote a humor column for Mosaic.nj.com for years, Seriously, Karim! and I received hundreds of emails from readers who appreciated the bit of relief amid the prickly world of news. Doesn’t watching the news feel like playing catch with a porcupine?

20 Tips on Being Funny

Below are 20 tips on incorporating some laughter into your writing.

1. Be subjective: What’s funny to you may not be to others. Keep that in mind as you craft your humorous morsels.
2. Be selective: You must be discriminating when it comes to employing laughter in your writing. Brevity is a good thing, mostly.
3. Be a comedian: Standup can be a great teacher. My favorites are Jim Gaffigan, Mohammed Amer, Ali Wong, Louis C.K., Hannah Gadsby, and Aziz Ansari.
4. Be studious: Read works by humor giants like Bill Bryson, Emma Bombeck, Dave Barry, Mark Twain, David Sedaris, and Tina Fey. Bryson’s book, A Walk in the Woods, is a work of art.
5. Be a pioneer: I think of voice as style, tone, and personality. Find out what sets you apart. Things like unique punctuation and word-usage can define your work.
6. Be passionate: Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at the typewriter and bleed.” Believe it or not, it takes a lot of passion to write funny.
7. Be honest: Try to be honest to the degree of self-deprecating. Your readers will laugh at your lack of (insert trait here).
8. Be quirky: Fall in love with your quirks, defend your quirks, talk about your quirks like they’re your best part. I think I like the word, quirks!
9. Be a thief: Steal funny bits. Coffee shops are terrific for listening in and stealing. Make sure you wear a black suit and a mask; then, grab the funny bit and run.
10. Be confident: It’s OK to question things, but when you send your words into this universe, stand behind them. I’m not saying be arrogant, just walk that fine line between humility and pride.
11. Be real: Write the way you talk. Instead of saying, “I must envision the quintessence of this conundrum.” Just say, “I understand.” Although, the first sentence could work in a standup routine!
12. Be understanding: The more you know about your reader, the easier it will be to have them LOL out loud. BTW, I used to say LOL out loud, until one of my kids corrected me! Hey, English is not my native language!
13. Be a collector: Keep a journal of your funny observations and ideas. I use an actual notebook. You can go digital, but something magical happens when you scribble on paper.
14. Be a caricaturist: Make one of your characters funny, and every time they open their mouth, you can toss in a funny bit. Sitcoms always have a funny character. Kramer? My hair resembled his before I started losing it!
15. Be talkative: Dialogue is a fabulous place for lighter moments. This goes with the characterization mentioned above.
16. Be a bear! Hibernate on the idea and you might see it in a different light. What was funny two days ago may seem mundane, or vice versa.
17. Be judgy: Try out your funny bits on friends. If no one laughs, it may need some work. If they all laugh, it’s fine. If only one or two laugh, you may have a brilliant idea.
18. Be on television: Learn from advertising slogans. All I have to say is: “Where is the beef?” And you’ll rush to Wendy’s for a double cheeseburger, after finishing this column, of course.
19. Be a tornado: Twist common phrases. After all, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.
20. Be yourself: When you’re genuine and authentic, your writings will resonate deeply with your readers.

One Final Thought on the Quintessence of the Humor Conundrum

Send me your funniest bits, and I may share in a future column. And have fun making your readers snicker while consuming your words. Speaking of consuming, I’m feeling the strange urge to eat a cheeseburger while riding a horse and watching Kramer bits on my phone. Can someone please hold on to the reins?  

The post I’m Not Saying I’m Funny, but My Cat Just Laughed…Probably (On Humor) appeared first on Writer's Digest.

There’s something deeply joyful about making someone laugh—a moment where I can feel seen, valued, and understood on my terms. It’s one of the few things in life that has always felt like mine. But until recently, I never really let that part of myself loose on the page. 

My writing has always had snips of humor, but The Lavender Blade is the first time I truly gave myself permission to be funny. Really funny. I credit Mary Kole, my editor who read a draft of my first novel, Wild With All Regrets and said, “You know you’re hilarious, right?” and encouraged me to lean into it. So I did. I went all in. 

The result? A gritty, emotionally rich fantasy novel—that also happens to be full of ridiculous puns, absurdist moments, and an exorcist who’s more of a con artist than a cleric. 

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I didn’t approach this book with a joke formula or a plan. I write the way I talk—fast, sharp, sometimes spiraling into nonsense—and the humor just emerges. I don’t test punchlines or map out comedic beats. If a scene is funny to me, it stays. That’s it. I’ve always used humor as a kind of language, and I think readers can tell.  

The world of The Lavender Blade is brutal, unjust, and strange—so the humor isn’t just for fun (though it is fun). It reflects how I’ve always dealt with hard things: by making them funny. That impulse to find the darkness, spin it into absurdity, and find a glimmer of joy in it. Humor has always been my little lantern, I think. 

And while I don’t plan much of the humor in my work, I do get a massive thrill out of hearing someone laugh or snort at something I wrote. During our final pre-printing edit, my mom kept texting me about little jokes and easter eggs she hadn’t noticed before. That kind of delayed laugh? Delicious. 

The book’s voice is shaped most clearly through Colton, our reluctant, sarcastic exorcist with a strong sense of theatrics and absolutely no patience for nonsense—especially when that nonsense comes in the form of a gleaming golden-haired aristocrat named Lucian. Colton emerged very naturally: this sardonic, long-suffering guy who just wants to do his job, get paid, and not end up cleaning blood off his cloak for the third time that day. 

Lucian is the absurd element. He’s the beautiful, pun-obsessed aristocrat who seems genuinely delighted to be co-running a fraudulent exorcism business with a man from the slums. Colton is his foil—the man trying to survive both the haunting and the partner who insists on wearing capes. Together, they create a dynamic I love: Lucian makes things bigger, weirder, and more unhinged, while Colton reacts with weary disbelief and razor-sharp sarcasm. 

My favorite running joke? Colton’s horror at Lucian’s puns. There’s something deeply satisfying about a character who can face ghosts and blood rituals with a straight face, but completely loses composure when someone says something like “a demon for your thoughts.” 

And yet, Colton’s humor isn’t just a personality quirk—it’s a shield. Most of his sarcasm is a front, a way to keep people at a distance in a world that’s hurt him over and over. But underneath it, he’s deeply nurturing. He genuinely cares about the people around him, and he wants to make them laugh too. That’s probably where he and I overlap most. Humor might start as a defense, but it becomes connection. When Colton lets his guard down—when he lets someone in—he’s still funny. He just aims it toward comfort instead of escape. 

It’s tricky, balancing real emotional weight with comedy. The Lavender Blade deals with trauma, classism, addiction, grief. And yet I think one of the things that makes the darker moments work is that the book never forgets how to laugh. I didn’t want to write a world that was all grimdark gloom—I wanted to write characters who coped with misery the way I do: by making fun of it. Or, in Lucian’s case, by offering an artisanal cheese board and a bottle of hallucinogenic wine. 

What’s surprised me most is how many readers connect with that balance. People laugh, and then cry, and then laugh again. That emotional whiplash—the way humor softens the blow of truth—has always been the kind of story I love. I just didn’t realize I was allowed to write it that way. 

Turns out, I am. 

The post A Demon for Your Thoughts: Writing Humor That Bites appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Christopher discusses the deeply personal experience of writing his new sports comedy-drama, The Turn, his hope for readers, and more.

Name: Christopher Ransom
Literary agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media
Book title: The Turn
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: May 27, 2025
Genre/category: Fiction, comedy, romantic comedy, sports, mental health/psychology, golf, family drama, substance abuse/addiction
Previous titles: The Birthing House; The Haunting of James Hastings; The People Next Door; The Fading; The Orphan; Beneath the Lake
Elevator pitch: Reeling from his divorce and the loss of his father, 45-year-old Casey Sweet is forced to take a health sabbatical from work and soon becomes obsessed with golf. When he suspects a 22-year-old golf prodigy at his local course might be a son he never knew, he attempts to forge a relationship with the young man and rekindle a lost love with the boy’s mother, forcing him to confront his drinking problem and make meaningful changes in his life.

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What prompted you to write this book?

After being a full-time author for about eight years, I lost interest in writing more horror novels. I went through some heavy life changes, and after spending a couple of years working back in the cubicle farm of corporate marketing, I developed some health problems, including anxiety and panic attacks. My drinking habits escalated, and I was in bad shape. Around this time, I began playing golf again and became completely obsessed with the game. I started playing 60-100 rounds per year, and the mental and physical health benefits were immediately apparent. I felt there was a golf novel to be written about regular guys like me, recreational golfers who had latched onto golf almost as a life preserver. I thought that would make for a great backdrop for a comedy around these other midlife misadventures like divorce, career change, loss of a parent, confronting our own health challenges, and so on.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

About five or six years in total. But I spent a year or two trying to make a very different kind of golf-themed novel work. Originally it was going to be more of a suspense story, still somewhat humorous, but much darker, and more of a high-concept thing. After about 100 pages, I realized it had no heart and wasn’t really about anything other than men behaving badly. I decided I just needed to write about what I was experiencing and the regular people I was seeing at my local municipal courses. I wanted to tell a story that celebrated the good things that golf offers—outdoor time (time away from all the damn screens), physical activity, a mental break from our problems, social time, the bonds we form around the game, new goals, and so on.

I landed on the title (“the turn” is a term for the midway point in a round of golf) and realized this was the perfect thematic fit for the midlife crisis my protagonist, Casey, was going through, as well as what I was dealing with in my own life. Then I reached a critical crossroads where I knew that, to get what he wanted—a better life, a relationship with his long-lost son, and a romantic relationship with the boy’s mother—Casey was going to have to stop drinking. And to write that authentically, not to mention finally finish the damn book, I too would have to stop drinking. Once I did that, I wrote the entire second half of the novel in four months. It all became this beautiful process of going deeper into golf, getting healthier, and making the story much better than I ever imagined.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Honestly, this was a book I had to write, never mind the commercial prospects. I have an incredible agent, but I was still a little surprised he was able to place the book with a real publisher at all. While golf as a sport has never been more popular, most golf books are nonfiction. Golf novels are very rare, so I am really grateful to my editor, Rick Bleiweiss at Blackstone, for taking a chance on The Turn. It’s a comedy-drama that deals with loss, addiction, modern relationships, career crisis, family matters. It’s pretty candid in terms of men and our emotional and sexual dysfunction. It also a really optimistic story and features an uplifting sports drama. Our belief is that there’s a little something here for many types of readers, whether they love golf or couldn’t care less about it.

But the market gap is funny. Long before I finished and sold The Turn, one of my literary role models was Sideways, both the film and its source novel by Rex Pickett. Was the market crying out for a wine novel? No. But Sideways was a huge hit and literally changed the wine industry because it deals with real-life problems we can relate to. When Sideways is funny, it’s gut-busting funny. When it’s serious, it hits deep. That’s the tone I hoped to strike with The Turn. So, obviously, when Mr. Pickett was kind enough to give us a blurb, that was a special validation.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Other than the pretty big changes the book helped me make in my own life, I did not plan or ever expect to give The Turn a real underdog sports-drama story line. While it’s not the primary plot line, there is a thread here that I liken to some of the sports movies we all love. Hoosiers, Vision Quest, Breaking Away…these gems from the 80s featuring a cast of regular people (often flawed or overlooked) rallying around a team or individual goal. I never wanted to force something like that into the book, but as Casey and Josh (his possible son) get closer, Josh’s journey clarifies—he needs to grow up, move out of his mother’s house, and follow his dream of becoming a professional golfer. I didn’t need him to make it to the PGA, that’s not the point. But he needed to take a real step and leave the nest. I found a way to do that in this amateur golfer world, and it was the perfect way to gather my ragtag crew of characters around the climax. That ended up being unbelievably fun to write and I think helped me find the perfect ending for the story.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

Well, it’s comedy fiction, not a message novel, so I just hope it gives people some real laughs and maybe touches them in some way. If it inspires some people to pick up a golf club, great. On a deeper level, I think the personal growth and change piece is worth considering. Life is hard, we all go through rough patches. Golf (along with the work I did with my doctors and therapists) was an important piece of my healing and growth from age 45-50, but it could have been travel, pickleball, collecting maple syrup in the woods, knitting, whatever. I think we benefit from switching things up, trying new routines, getting out there with new people, getting away from social media and our phones, and actually living life.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

We always talk about inspiration. For me that means energy. Where does the energy to write come from? I know before I begin a new novel, this is where I’m going to live for the next few years, so I better be sure I can sustain enthusiasm for it. I think there is great energy to be mined from whatever aspects of the human condition and subjects we are curious and passionate about. Never mind what’s popular or what you think will sell. If you’re not writing from a place of excitement or deep interest, you won’t have a story worth reading. So, if that’s a detective story set in the world of fly fishing or a romance built around graveyard tourism, go for it. Show the world what is beautiful and strange and interesting about this stuff you’re into and tell the story in the way only you can tell it.

The post Christopher Ransom: This Was a Book I Had To Write appeared first on Writer's Digest.

A lot of stories have been told over the millennia. There is no shortage of repeats and overlaps. But voice can be unique. Voice can distinguish a work from the pack. And voice can lead to writing that only works because it comes from that specific voice. That’s the gold standard.

(Tips for Creating Voice in Your Writing.)

My favorite comics and shows all have it. Dave Chapelle, Maria Bamford, Nate Bargatze. The original (British) version of The Office, Atlanta, Succession. Those stories, those points of view, that dialogue, and those characters only work when presented in their specific, unique voice.

#2. Character counts.

Character is a subset of voice, specific facets of a singular vision. If you cluster enough shining facets together you create a gemstone. Story doesn’t matter if we’re not invested in the characters. It’s the characters we root for, root against, and remember. Much more than story.

The examples are plenty in stand-up and narrative storytelling. Dana Carvey delivers an entire cast of characters in a single stand-up set. You can probably name a few. The famous characters depicted on Saturday Night Live stay with us even when we can’t remember what they said. Roseanne Rosannadanna, Stephan, Darnell Hayes, Linda Richmond. Make them specific, and they will be unforgettable.

#3. Story services voice and character, not the other way around.

If you have a glass of wine, voice and character are the wine. Story is the glass. It holds everything together. You need it. It has to be sound. But what you enjoy, what you feel, is the wine. Story, in and of itself, is rarely what’s most important. Or memorable. The importance of a story-first approach is shouted in how-to books and writing seminars and especially by film and TV executives. But if you create three-dimensional, consistently behaving characters, and set them on conflicting paths, story should take care of itself.

If you ever hear a character say, “I can’t believe I’m going to say this but…” it’s because they’re acting out of character to fit into a pre-ordained template. And often when that happens, the viewer or reader feels the inconsistency and loses interest.

#4. Brevity.

This is paramount in stand-up. Comics refine and hone to deliver their material with not only the fewest words, but the fewest syllables. Television comedy is the same. So is writing novels. Get to the point. Get to the joke. Get to the emotional moment. And in general, start your story as late as possible and end it as quickly as possible.

In working on sit-com scripts, the first scene we all thought was necessary often was cut during production. Or in editing. The audience is smarter than you think. Start the story in motion—they’ll know what’s going on.

#5. Be kind to yourself.

Writing is making mistakes and fixing them. We all write garbage. All first drafts need work. Sometimes a lot of work. Sometimes a toss in the garbage. Don’t beat yourself up when you write something that doesn’t work. Don’t get down when you figure out that you should have gone another way. Those realizations are something to celebrate. Yes, it means you have more work ahead but that’s okay. You’re making it better. The real value in writing is the writing.

I’ve heard of writers who don’t like writing. I don’t understand why they do it. If you don’t like writing, there are other ways to express yourself. Other jobs. Know that it’s a process. Accept that it’s a process. Once in a while something brilliant just flows seemingly out of nowhere. But that’s not the norm. The norm is making mistakes and fixing them.  

#6. Relatability is key.

A character’s wants and needs must ring universal. Seinfeld is a perfect example. Everyone likes to say it’s a show about nothing, but that’s far from true. Seinfeld is a show about selfishness. Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer are the most selfish characters on the planet. That’s why the show has such universal appeal. We understand the selfish impulses those characters feel.

Whether it’s lying to a prospective love interest to make ourselves look better or regretting a hastily made decision like quitting a job. Most of us have the good sense not to act on those selfish impulses. In Seinfeld they do act on them, which is what makes the show so funny. And don’t confuse likability with entertaining. George Costanza is not likable. Kendall Roy is far from lovable. But their behavior is lovely to watch.

Click to continue.

#7. Everyone has an opinion.

When you put voice and character first, it’s sometimes hard for readers or viewers to “get it.” We’re hardwired to be wary of something new. Out of the ordinary. Sometimes something new is loved right away. Often it takes time.

So be careful when soliciting others’ opinions. Any one opinion may or may not have value. But one of my favorite sayings from TV writing is: If you’re at a party with 12 people, and 12 people tell you you’re drunk, then you’re drunk. If everyone gives you the same note, it’s probably correct.

#8. Structure is bullshit.

The idea that a certain signpost in your story has to happen on a certain page number is absurd. As a young writer, I read all the story-structure books and, after 40 years of working as a professional writer, I can tell you this: All those books are written by people who can’t write narrative fiction. Or they can and they’re just trying to pad their bank accounts.

What’s worse, is some non-writing people with authority (film and TV execs, publishers, editors) read those story structure books and try to apply the books’ professed wisdom to the work they’re overseeing. The result is rarely good. Story should be developed from the inside out. It can be a messy process, but that’s okay. Characters need to behave consistently. If you hammer them into place to fit a story template, their integrity will shatter. And your viewers will disengage.

#9. Show don’t tell is overblown.

Another outsider’s note. Something people learn from a book or in a writing class. It’s only true some of the time. Sometimes viewers or readers want to be told, especially to move things along. Sometimes it’s better to show. Showing can evoke more emotion. But neither show nor tell is best for all situations.

It’s human nature to like having stories told to us. That gets back to voice. We love when someone can take us to a new place in an interesting, moving way.

#10. Work ethic.

I began my professional writing career writing stand-up material for myself. I then wrote television. I’ve written stage plays and screenplays. Now I write novels. One thing is true for all mediums—it’s a job. Or as I like to say, “It’s a butt-in-a-chair job.” Treat it like one. Write when you’re inspired and, more importantly, write when you’re not inspired.

We all have bad days. We all get off track. We all have doubts. But you won’t have anything if you don’t write. Some people set goals by time. I do it by word count. Power through, day after day, whether it takes one hour or 14. No shortcuts. No formulas. No antenna-like receiving from the universe. Just write.

Check out Matt Goldman’s The Murder Show here:

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The post 10 Things I’ve Learned About Writing From Being a Stand-Up Comic and in the Writer’s Room of Emmy Award-Winning TV Shows appeared first on Writer's Digest.

What are the odds that opening line will end up being funny? Well, on its own merits, probably around 50-50. But if the line is being incorporated into a thriller… Not so good. Like a chain, it will only be as humorous as the rest of the work’s weakest link.

(5 Things Writers Can Do to Add Comedy to Their Novels.)

For humor to work in a thriller, the story and plot structure, and numerous other story elements must be in place and perfectly balanced—or at least as close to perfect as possible.

This brings us to the first key takeaway when attempting to do so: You must understand and know your characters as deeply as you know yourself. Their dialogue and behavior must be unique and organic to who they are and to the situation they’re in; making sure it’s believable that they would find themselves in the situation they’re in and not doing or saying anything to be intentionally funny.

If they do, it will come off as forced or cross the line into joke-telling. Don’t ever cross this line. Doing so will, at the very least, take the thrill out of the thriller and land the entire work on life support by page 45. And if the attempt is a head-on across the double yellows, the reader will declare it D.O.A. by page five or 10.

The prestigious Kirkus Review recently declared my debut novel, What Are the Odds, is “an outlandish and entertaining comic thriller.” If I don’t say so myself, that is as good as it gets when you risk incorporating humor into this genre.

If the writing style, story, plot, etc., stands on its own and draws the reader in, then seasoning the anxious and tense moments and situations with laughter in the right amount and at the right moments will take their reading experience from a good one to a great one—that is, of course, if what’s written makes the reader laugh. If it doesn’t work on all these levels, the only thing the author and publisher will hear from the reader is, “Yes, please just refund it back to the original form of payment.”

What Are the Odds explores what we all know: Life [often] doesn’t go as planned. Whether it’s being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the wrong time, doesn’t matter. What does matter is whether we’re in control of our lives, or are on some unforeseen, invisible path where every step unwittingly guides us along the string of relentless ticks of life’s clock, leading to the very second when the random unexpected happens. When the odds of such an occurrence are so astronomical that they’re incalculable, is it irrational to not write it off as chance or coincidence?

For much of his life, this question has dogged former NYPD detective Ray Dawson, a guy who’s as much a cop as he is a man and was unfairly forced into early retirement and stripped of his pension. The same is true for former Amco Oil company executive, Wilbur Bailey, now a wily, neurotic, and environmentally conscious fugitive with a $5 million bounty on his head, and IRS Special Agent Philip Dancourt, whose five-year investigation into Amco Oil has gone bust.

The odds of their three paths intersecting are incalculable. But it happens. And when it does, it propels them—and the reader—on a thrilling, thought-provoking, life-changing, and often hilarious journey down a tortuous road of truths and deceptions, trusts and paranoias, while taking them, in unexpected ways, on a deeper dive into the depths of love, loss, friendship, loneliness, and a commitment to values larger than oneself.

This brings us to the second key takeaway: To deliver a platinum-card-level emotional experience and enable readers to like and root for the characters, even when their behavior is morally questionable, the ride must also tap into the array of emotions we all feel in real life: excitement, anxiety, calmness, laughter, sadness, anticipation, and so on. Of course, we don’t feel every one of these emotions at once or on the heels of each other.

Click to continue.

Herein lies the third key takeaway when incorporating humor into a thriller: Timing and pacing are critical. You must completely understand the intensity level of every scene and situation to know when it’s the right moment to offer the reader a little relief. How? Play around with it, trial and error. Ultimately, go with your gut.

Think back to when you were a kid on the roller coaster, that moment of relief when you could breathe. But your brain subconsciously remembers the anxious, gut-wrenching feeling when the intensity is dialed back up as the roller coaster rockets toward the sky, and you know that in another three seconds, it will barrel-roll over the apex and plummet into a nosedive. The result is a wild, crazy, emotional, and yes, fun ride.

It’s no different than when you’re telling a story. The reader’s brains will remember, and you will engage them on all, or multiple, levels at the very least. But if the intensity level remains the same throughout, it will lose its impact and begin to bore the reader or tire them out instead of enticing them to turn the next page. And the next…

In a thriller, situational and character humor working on all levels not only strengthens the bond between the characters but also the bond between the characters and readers. I mean, who doesn’t love to be around someone who’s endearing and makes you laugh simply because of their worldview?

A good way to have a more complete understanding of the above, while also providing a useful guide to help you achieve it on your own, would be to buy a copy of What Are the Odds. The best way would be to buy several copies!

Meanwhile, back in the bar, one thriller looked at the other, then turned to the bartender and said, “

*Sorry, the writer of this essay has reached the Writer’s Digest essay word count limit. 

Check out David List’s What Are the Odds here:

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