(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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A longing look. A gentle caress. The butterflies when I realize that I’m sure what I want, leading to that first moment of delicious flirtation when I let my feelings be known. Finally, the anticipation reaches its zenith when we’re at home, in bed, opening up to one another for the first time, my fingers practically tingle when I’m ready to jump in with both feet.

(4 Vacation Romances That Took Me Away.)

Typically, this is when it all falls apart. The battle for control, my self-esteem and intellectual pride begins: me vs. the latest book I’ve just purchased or downloaded.

The first book, where I learned the rules of engagement, was Foucault’s Pendulum. I found it at 20, casually sitting on the dollar table at my favorite used bookstore on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It took me six months. Six months to read a paperback. I wanted to throw it across the room on a nightly basis. I knew Eco was no good for me. I thought about the book during class, on the T, and when I was bored during dinner listening to the ambient noise in the dining halls. A lesser person would have given up, but not I.

I will dominate the book. It will bend to my will. I will love it and it will love me. When I read the last sentence and it was all over, I didn’t feel victorious, but rather hollow and depressed. I didn’t get what I wanted out of the relationship, part of me wishing that I’d never started up with it in the first place. It haunted me for weeks afterward, and though I wanted to leave it behind, the book has followed me to every apartment and home I’ve lived in since, sitting in the back of my bedroom’s bookcase. I just can’t let it go.

And so it went with dozens of books in its wake: The Little Friend, a book I had been desperate to read since I fell in love with the author’s first novel 10 years earlier. Some left bigger scars than others. Metahistory almost killed me, both triggering my imagination and confusing the hell out of me, toying with my moods and emotions. When I realized I would be a better failed academic than an actual one, I left historical texts and heady novels behind, preferring instead to read biographies and memoir. There was a brief respite of joy. I read The Baron in the Trees and gave out the Calvino book to everyone I knew one Christmas, but then my old patterns emerged. I got stuck in the cycle all over again with the likes of The Romanov Sisters, which still sits on my nightstand, seductively waiting for me to try again, just one more time.

Lest anyone reading find this pompous, or some kind of intellectual virtue signal, let me be clear. I’m an equal opportunity victim in these relationships. For every Tartt, Eco, and White, there lurks a Brown, James, Hoover, and Balducci. These rebounds. The books I end up with late at night in the alley after the club closes and I don’t want to curl up that night alone. The worst was after a particularly bad go-around with The Children’s Act, a book everyone I knew loved but I hated, I hit rock bottom.

I confess this only to you, but I downloaded and binge-read Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later in a three-hour shame spiral that actually made me forget to pick up my kid, who I discovered alone in the rain, frantically texting me when I pulled up 25 minutes later than I should have. I just couldn’t help myself. There were similar humiliations with It Ends with Us and The Da Vinci Code, but I don’t have the strength to go into detail. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t quit wrestling books, both popular and not, intellectual and…not, into submission.

I knew then it was time to break the cycle. Alas, how terrible is knowledge when it brings no comfort to the wise.

These days, I’m more careful in how I engage and put myself out there, but I have good days and bad, like any other abusive cycle or addiction, it’s one-day-at-a-time. I do move slower. I try to learn something before I make the commitment. I often think I should join a support group that keeps me in check and accountable so I can see the pitfalls coming. I try not to ignore the warning signs on the jackets or the Amazon reviews, thinking that I can change the inevitable outcome, but sometimes, the book bomber devil that lives on my shoulder whispers in my ear: This one might be different! Try it! Who knows? Do you want to have IG Bookstagram FOMO?

Maybe I should apply the same strategy to the men I date? Aw, hell, one problem at a time. Bird by bird.

Check out Rachel J. Lithgow’s My Year of Really Bad Dates 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.

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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.

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(How to Find Light in the Darkness in Fiction.)

It was at this moment that I considered the need for duality in picture books and the feat of appealing to both children and the adults reading to them. Though it may seem like an impossible balance to strike, it’s something that I’ve prioritized in my own writing career.

Humor has power. When used strategically in the text, it has the ability to keep the audience engaged regardless of age, and it empowers children to put on their thinking caps and guess what shenanigans the main character may be involved in next. This has made humor a powerful tool that I am more than familiar with in my own writing.

Such a tool is exemplified in a scene from my latest picture book, The Mess Monster. When main character Lucy’s pile of clothes and toys fall on Max, her dog, Lucy screams, “OH NO,” encouraging the reader to try their hand at performing such an outburst. Moments that allow for exaggeration and theatrics keep every storytime participant hooked. This can be witnessed at youth services events in any public library, where master storytellers use movement, animated voices, and effusive tones to grip their audience. Next, the readers see a messy Max with clothes on.

According to Psychology Today, “Humor in picture books plays a crucial role in children’s development, fostering engagement, comprehension, and a positive attitude towards reading.” Employing humor in text has been a staple in my own writing practice, allowing the message at the heart of the story to reach both adults and children alike.

The vital theme of kindness through text can build a child’s emotional awareness and empathy towards others. In The Mess Monster, the contents of Lucy’s closet falling onto Max rips her out of her fantasy, grounding her in the realities of her decisions and adding a layer of seriousness that educates young readers on the impact of their own actions. Studies show that there is an undeniable connection between children’s literature and the development of empathy.

A 2019 study on children’s storybooks and the promotion of empathy found that empathy can be fostered through in-group and out-group identification and finding commonality with characters unlike one’s self in children’s literature. Children, however, are not alone in the need to continually build and exercise empathy. Adding these themes can help the text connect with its adult readers as well.

Appealing to both children and adults is helpful when trying to grow one’s audience as a kid-lit writer. Adults are more responsive to reading to their kids when the stories illustrate relatable family struggles and dynamics. Further, these stories give kids and adults a new way to talk about the things that concern them and to understand that they are not alone.

Both kids and adults will nod in recognition when they see Lucy blaming the Mess Monster for the piles in her room. Though it may not be immediately apparent, many of the struggles that children face can last into adulthood. I, myself, know many adults who can’t always keep up with household chores. The Mess Monster comes for us all—there’s no reason to pretend otherwise when writing a picture book about it.

Children and the adults that read to them approach stories differently, and understanding this can help a writer to successfully reach both audiences. Though many young readers may not yet have the language to express such desires, picture books with a strong sense of voice and with engaging, animated storylines likely appeal the most. Sometimes, it isn’t the book itself, but the performance of the story that makes it a bedtime favorite. So, what more can writers do to ensure that their books speak to their audience, regardless of age?

As a reader myself, many of my favorite stories are the ones that appeal to the human experience. They strike a chord in my heart, no matter the family I grew up in, the balance in my bank account, or the title in my email signature. Ultimately, it is vital for kid-lit writers to remember that a person is a person, and a reader is a reader. Though skill level may differ, ultimately the core of what makes a good book good remains the same. Young and mature readers alike want satisfying stories, engaging and relatable characters, and a bit of humor alongside the parts that hit home.

Check out Jessica Marie’s The Mess Monster here:

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(The Keys to Conflict.)

For me, the conflict of the novel needs to feel grounded and relatable. Two characters are meant to be together, but what is keeping them apart? This is the conflict. Conflict is broken down in craft by two segments, internal and external.

Internal is all about what lies the character believes about themselves and their situation to keep them from their happily ever after or achieving their goal. External is in the name “external” pressures or forces that are actively keeping your protagonist from their happily ever after or dream. It seems simple when explained that way, but the pain comes from execution.

1 – Grounded Internal and External Conflict

For my debut, The Truth According to Ember, Ember (the protagonist) believes a lie, or some have described as a “wound”, that she isn’t good enough to work in her dream job on her own merit. She thinks telling lies is her only option. Then she meets Danuwoa, the hot IT guy who is also Indigenous and now she has to keep up the charade, because she believes (wrongly) that he wouldn’t be interested in the real her.

The external conflict in a novel can be physical barriers keeping your protagonist from their goal or their love. In my debut, the barriers were systemic keeping her from higher education and a high paying job. Then there is also the corporate policy that does not allow coworkers to date. Enter the forbidden romance trope which equals more conflict. How will they continue to be together and not let anyone know?

2 – Real Consequential Stakes

But what is conflict without stakes? Stakes are crucial for readers to believe your story and root for your protagonist. If character X’s secret is revealed, then this massive life altering thing will happen. This creates tension. Tension, my friend, is the key for a compelling read.

If Ember’s lies are revealed she will lose her job, that means she will have no income and will lose her car and keep her from getting another job with no references. If it is revealed that she is secretly dating her coworker, then not only will she lose her job, but so would Danuwoa who is the caretaker of his sister. These are important grounded, real stakes a reader can believe in.

3 – Layer in Humor

With romantic comedy, I always try to keep everything grounded. In movies, a dance sequence and makeover montage work great, but in a novel, I’d rather have more juicy chemistry. I love to read the leads interacting and dazzling with delicious banter where you can highlight more of a writer’s humor between two characters designed to be together and compliment each other.

The novel Pride and Protest has some of the funniest lines of dialogue that showcases how brilliant the author Nikki Payne is (the nap pod scene IYKYK). The chemistry in that nap pod is exquisite torture and you just want Liza and Dorsey to kiss, but they can’t—not yet! Nikki Payne gives us everything a white out blizzard, forced proximity in a nap pod, palpable chemistry that sizzles on the page, and a fresh spin on a classic dynamic between characters—enemies to lovers. Conflict, stakes, humor! The trifecta!

In my debut, Ember has abandonment issues from her parents leaving and her having to grow up fast and to take care of her younger brother. When we have these emotional beats full of character development and growth between the characters, I try to always layer in moments of levity. For a rom-com, I want there to be a balance in the romance aspect and the conflict of the story, but it must deliver on the funny. I want to tug on my readers emotional heartstrings and then make them laugh out loud, often in the most unexpected ways.

An example with Ember, I gave her a severe cat allergy that reveals a big lie she tells Danuwoa. It’s funny after a passionate night together she wakes up with a swollen face and yet she cannot bring herself to be honest about the allergy. My friend Alexandra Vasti, who writes incredible romance once said, “A romantic comedy must be funny at the premise level, scene level, and line level.” So, I am sharing her wisdom with you, because wow! I couldn’t have said it better myself.

With Ember the premise is a young Native woman who lies to get her dream job, meets the love of her life at work where there is a no fraternization policy, and gets blackmailed to help a nepo jerk scam the company or risk she and her love getting fired. The scene level has a cast of characters in her life who know her secret and how she navigates her lies while growing closer with the love interest in as honest a way as she can manage. The line level includes banter, jokes, puns, and the use of the character’s voice with internal monologues so the reader always knows exactly what Ember is thinking, even if what she is saying is something completely different.

So those are my tips for writing unputdownable romantic comedies. I hope this helps and inspires you to write, have fun, and deliver on the funny!

Check out Danica Nava’s Love Is a War Song here:

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