How to be funny and still be a good writer?

I've been in SH for a couple of months now and i now have made my writing a bit better to read, but one question burns in my heart:
"i want to be the funny guy, but a good writer at the same time!"

How do you guys think I should go about it?

Dude... @Omarfaruq he calls you!

In my experience there are two types of humor that work best when writing something that exists for any p other than just being a joke.

Something serious taken flippantly.
Something ridiculous taken seriously.

Is MC making dickish comments to the armed gunmen trying to kill him, perhaps as a coping mechanism? Then it’s the former.

Is there a completely legitimate reason for MC to be transformed into a catgirl maid to infiltrate the enemy base and he needs to fend off horny suitors the entire time while trying to stay on task for the mission? Then it’s the latter. (Or possibly a trans coded story if the plot repeatedly insists on keeping him like that/turning him back into a catgirl until he decides this is conveniently the most authentic representation of who he/she is. There is some overlap occasionally)

The point is that the legitimate story and the humor need to be alloyed together. The humor of a man with a cheeseburger for a head stalking the main cast with lethal intent may be lost on them, but the readers may appreciate it. Similarly, witty combat banter is an age old tradition in fiction despite hardly ever happening irl because if you’re seriously fighting you need your air.

Eldoria said:

Dude... @Omarfaruq he calls you!

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Neither is he funny nor is he a good writer.

Jerynboe said:

In my experience there are two types of humor that work best when writing something that exists for any p other than just being a joke.

Something serious taken flippantly.
Something ridiculous taken seriously.

Is MC making dickish comments to the armed gunmen trying to kill him, perhaps as a coping mechanism? Then it’s the former.

Is there a completely legitimate reason for MC to be transformed into a catgirl maid to infiltrate the enemy base and he needs to fend off horny suitors the entire time while trying to stay on task for the mission? Then it’s the latter. (Or possibly a trans coded story if the plot repeatedly insists on keeping him like that/turning him back into a catgirl until he decides this is conveniently the most authentic representation of who he/she is. There is some overlap occasionally)

The point is that the legitimate story and the humor need to be alloyed together. The humor of a man with a cheeseburger for a head stalking the main cast with lethal intent may be lost on them, but the readers may appreciate it. Similarly, witty combat banter is an age old tradition in fiction despite hardly ever happening irl because if you’re seriously fighting you need your air.

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OK, Say i Trap 2 Teenagers, a 10 year old girl, a Navy SEAL, and a Cowboy from the distant past, and they are forced to fight Eldritch Monster Cheerleaders for my amusement, what does that put me in?

Biggest thing I do is write where the jokes are supposed to go before hand, and just come back to work on them after I'm done with the chapter. They usually start off pretty unfunny, but after an hour or two of working on them they're still not funny.

MC-Stories said:

I've been in SH for a couple of months now and i now have made my writing a bit better to read, but one question burns in my heart:
"i want to be the funny guy, but a good writer at the same time!"

How do you guys think I should go about it?

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I don't understand about you want to be funny guy. Is that some kind like personality things?
I mean, if you're actually funny guy, then you're funny guy.

Because i thought our writing will reflect our personality unconsciously, if you push something beyond your personality, it had some risk to your own writing.

How you do it is up to you.

I will swap in comedy after some more serious scenes... like today, my MC got 'princess carried' by an 8 ft tall woman after he healed her injuries and collapsed from near-mana exhaustion... There was a bunch of more serious stuff going on in the last few chapters, including several side character deaths, and his side winning the battle but losing the war.

Makimaam said:

Neither is he funny nor is he a good writer.

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Well, we all (authors) start with a single stroke of ink. At least his work is funny, fitting for its genre (comedy). I wouldn't be so careless as to label a writer as 'good' or 'bad.'

Eldoria said:

Well, we all (authors) start with a single stroke of ink. At least his work is funny, fitting for its genre (comedy). I wouldn't be so careless as to label a writer as 'good' or 'bad.'

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Agreed

MC-Stories said:

OK, Say i Trap 2 Teenagers, a 10 year old girl, a Navy SEAL, and a Cowboy from the distant past, and they are forced to fight Eldritch Monster Cheerleaders for my amusement, what does that put me in?

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Presumably the eldritch abomination cheerleaders are a legitimate threat and at least the SEAL and the cowboy are reacting to them as such in a remotely competent manner. That would put you into something ridiculous taken seriously territory, assuming that all of the people you listed are reacting to the situation as the dangerous and insane situation it is.

Also note that you don’t need to choose one or the other for your whole story. You can even have both running at the same time.

If the cowboy is actually from the 1950s and is his era’s equivalent of a weeb, but he’s ALSO a decent guy just doing his best, for example. He is dealing with the deranged situation by himself becoming deranged but in universe it’s a coping mechanism he’s embracing to stay functional. This allows him to be a funny over the top cowboy AND a character with depth AND a legitimate member of the team who actually contributes.

Generally you need something to ground the story a bit to maintain stakes or else you probably should stick to very short stories so the joke doesn’t wear out before you finish. A straight man and some actual stakes help, just like in any story.

What "kind" of funny are you aiming for here?

Surrealist humor? Read authors like Eugene Ionesco (especially if you can read them in his native French, though most translations I've seen do him justice), Harold Pinter (primary inspiration for the Monty Pythons), Douglas Adams (the Dirk Gently books mostly), or Lewis Carroll (especially The Hunting of the Snark, an Agony in Eight Fits). Also Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol falls pretty much into this too, though he also hit some very serious beats.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Humor? Read authors like Peter A. David, or any run of Spider-Man, Blue Devil (it was a DC title but still...), or the late "bronze age" runs of books like The Defenders (especially when it transitioned to The New Defenders - though the book right before this shift was some of the best surrealist humor ever in a comic).

Anything goes humor? Sir Terry Pratchett is probably the best here, though Douglas Adams pulled it off in the Hitchhiker's Guide books.

Look for the kind of humor you want to write, find authors who do it well, at least in your eyes if not objectively, and try to figure out how it worked when they did it, and why. Then try to do the same thing without copying them, or, if you must, copy them in a way that feels a little different.

For example, in one of the first Star Trek: The Next Generation novels Peter A. David wrote, there is an exchange that runs something like this (I may have a few words wrong, as I'm going by a decade-old memory).

Geordie looked over at the bar and smiled. "This bartender is amazing. Just ask him anything, and he'll know the answer."
Riker chuckled. "Okay. Hey, bartender?"
The bartender looked up.
"What is the average flight speed of a sparrow?"
Without hesitation, the bartender replied: "African or European?"
Riker turned to Geordie and said: "He IS good."

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MC-Stories said:

"i want to be the funny guy, but a good writer at the same time!"

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Why do you think they have to be mutually exclusive? Henry Rider: Clown Hunter is pretty much predicated on the idea that a story can be funny, intense, and dramatic all at the same time.

MC-Stories said:

I've been in SH for a couple of months now and i now have made my writing a bit better to read, but one question burns in my heart:
"i want to be the funny guy, but a good writer at the same time!"

How do you guys think I should go about it?

Click to expand...

Well, depends on what you're going for, but if you're ever looking for examples of sarcastic, deadpan, dark absurdist humor, laced with internet-coded cringe humor, I use it a lot in my stories, specifically my zombie diary one.

It's also how I talk normally!

Quite easy to pick up things when you're plagued by anime as a child then transitioning to offensive, dark humor videos on youtube.

Makimaam said:

Neither is he funny nor is he a good writer.

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Amen. I can't possibly imagine what gave you that impression.
Did I ever mention you're one of my few favorite people on here?
edit: aside from da 'mida.

ThisAdamGuy said:

Why do you think they have to be mutually exclusive? Henry Rider: Clown Hunter is pretty much predicated on the idea that a story can be funny, intense, and dramatic all at the same time.

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Your story is on Akki-chan's hall of fame alongside Louhi's. She called it a hidden game. That's something to be proud of.

Akkizakura said:

I clowned @Louhi too much it would be mean if I didn't recommend this one. The story match your requirements. It have 30K words and is still updated.

I am NOT a Demon Queen!

High schooler Xiao Ling loses her life while saving a child, only to awaken with the memories of her past identity as Su Yao, the Nine Tailed Heavenly Fox! Unfortunately, the world remembers her as the vicious Demon Queen from a blockbuster movie currently in theaters. In truth, Su Yao...

www.scribblehub.com

And this one is a hidden gem by @ThisAdamGuy with 145K words.

Henry Rider: Clown Hunter

All that stands between mankind and absolute chaos is Henry Rider. We're doomed. Life isn’t easy for Henrietta “Henry” Rider. Born into the lowest class of klaon society, collecting enough laughter to keep her alive is a daily struggle. The only upside is that she has the coolest job...

www.scribblehub.com

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MC-Stories said:

I've been in SH for a couple of months now and i now have made my writing a bit better to read, but one question burns in my heart:
"i want to be the funny guy, but a good writer at the same time!"

How do you guys think I should go about it?

Click to expand...

One lesson I learned is that don't be afraid to break the fourth wall in serious situations. Yes, it was from Deadpool, but he's funny, so...

Erysion said:

Your story is on Akki-chan's hall of fame alongside Louhi's. She called it a hidden game. That's something to be proud of.

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You make it sound like you can't be a good writer if you do comedy.

If you can deliver a comedy that many people enjoy, then you're pretty much a good storyteller. There's a reason why people in entertainment industry always say that doing comedy is harder than drama.

Unless if your standards of a good storyteller is the one who use flowery and poetic prose with uncommon choice of words. Well, there's a reason too why people in entertainment industry call them literary snobs.

Drama: If the audience doesn't cry, scene can still work.
Comedy: If the audience doesn't laugh, scene completely fails.

Comedy requires timing, rhythm, setup/payoff, audience expectation manipulation
If any of those break, the joke dies.

Even if you deliver all them perfectly, there's still factors like the audience comedic taste that is sooo diverse. Hence the many type of comedy/humor that several post above me described

Step 1: read Terry Pratchett
Step 2: Congrats, you've read good writing that's funny

seavmun88 said:

Step 1: read Terry Pratchett
Step 2: Congrats, you've read good writing that's funny

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His early stuff doesn't quite have the balance his later Discworld books hit. Strata is a science fiction story about people who designed and built a disc world (and even has a variation of the drum gag - one setting has "The Mended Drum" as a bar because "it's hard to beat" the other has "The Broken Drum" because "it can't be beat"), and his series about, essentially, gnome truckers was more surrealist than humorous.