RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist<blockquote><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/WordWeavers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>WordWeavers</span></a> 2025.07.19 — Do you use humor in your stories, and if so, what sort of humor (whimsical, sarcastic, satirical, etc.)?</p></blockquote><p>When I analyze my writing fairly, I find I use humor extensively. It provides balance; it's essential, though I rarely intend to be funny, or plot it in. I don't write jokes in my stories (which means the next one will include them.) If you follow me, you've seen I use humor in most of my essays and my posts, this one included. Subtlety is key. It's a pressure release valve that prevents a story from becoming too serious or too dark. I do not do comedy.</p><p><strong>Types of R.S. Humor</strong></p><p><strong>Dead-pan</strong></p><p>People often state the obvious. If placed carefully in the narrative or in the dialogue, it is unerringly mildly humorous.</p><p><strong>Non-sequitur</strong></p><p>I often end an essay, and sometimes end story sections, with a different but related thought or dead-pan comment. (If the thought is <em>unrelated,</em> that's joking.) I was recently discussing a friend's assertion about "there is a lot of grey" (an exact quote) in relationships. The discussion turned heavy, but I ended it by thanking him for spelling "grey" correctly. A definitely related non-sequitur that I think lightened the mood. BTW: Am-English uses "gray," but that's totally the wrong spelling, full stop!</p><p><strong>Snark</strong></p><p>I write in 1st person POV (as I am now), which can reveal how inner thoughts differ from outer dialogue and actions. I love characters who are snarky, sarcastic, or even cynical and have no compunction about narrating that way. A running commentary on life and the actions of others is humorous—funny in the sense that <em>funny</em> is the emotion we feel <em>in reaction to hurtful things that happen to, or are said about, others.</em> Typically, they're things our internal censor keeps us from doing or saying, but embarrassingly it remains an emotion we feel (and like). The psychological frisson we feel at the dichotomy is what we define as <em>funny.</em> </p><p>Snark highlights how we can be good people despite our own uncensored selves. It carries a message of self-forgiveness. I think it is a great device for developing characters.</p><p><strong>Double-entendre</strong></p><p>I often narrate things with words that if taken as written mean one thing, or if taken with another meaning mean something totally hyperbolic or funny (see definition of <em>funny</em> above).</p><p><strong>Puns</strong></p><p>I work to keep these solely in dialogue, and if I can make the puns seem inadvertent by the character, more the better. If the character does it intentionally, that becomes snarky.</p><p><strong>Alliteration</strong></p><p>I can be very alliteral at times, and while that is mostly a rhetorical device, if the right words are used it can come off appropriately hyperbolic and stick in the reader's mind. If I say that, "The perky passionate prince insisted on wearing pink," it comes off as humorous, says something (likely snarky) about the narrator (also likely from a 1st person POV), and definitely defines the prince.</p><p><strong>Innuendo</strong></p><p>This is best in dialogue, especially when the target character doesn't see it but the reader knows exactly what it is. A shared aspersion or dirty secret even if not true is humorous (see <em>funny</em> above).</p><p><strong>Karma, Schadenfreude</strong></p><p>We won't often admit it to our friends, but when someone richly deserves what happens to them, it <em>feels</em> good. It is <em>funny.</em> I write such scenes, but it takes foreshadowing and planning.</p><p><strong>Satire</strong></p><p>Yep. I occasionally write satire. <em>Mars Needed Women</em> is a super serious novel that goes from dystopian to utopian, while questioning the fabric of gender and common human power structures pointing out how bad and good people share certain uncomfortable characteristics. In the story, Mars is being colonized. The main character ends up being shanghaied there. However, the colonial company <em>goes bankrupt</em> at the same time, which becomes all sorts of bad and plot worsening. The name of the company is one of the satirical elements: "E. M. Mars Colonization Corp." We know what "E. M." stands for, don't we?</p><p><strong>Wait for it</strong></p><p>This is harder to define. I often write in grammar B, which specifies a technique for what otherwise would be considered disastrously long run-on sentences. These have to have a point, of course, but if handled like a micro-story within the narrative, where bits of idea are concatenated, ideas are expressed and elucidated, and the reader is carried along on a wave of deductions, when the ship comes to shore—battered by winds and storms of meaning—and it <em>isn't</em> a shipwreck, it carries with it it's own sense of the absurd. Of course, you can employ this technique using standard beginning-middle-end writing of subsections in a scene, but I find a long sentence builds a certain "wait-for-it" tension, the same way an orator or comedian comes to an <em>ah-ha</em> point OR a punchline in front of an audience. That's me, anyway.</p><p>[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]</p><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/BoostingIsSharing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BoostingIsSharing</span></a></p><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/gender" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>gender</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/fiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>fiction</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>writer</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/author" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>author</span></a> <br><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>writing</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writingcommunity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>writingcommunity</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writersOfMastodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>writersOfMastodon</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/writers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>writers</span></a><br><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/RSdiscussion" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>RSdiscussion</span></a></p>