Humor in a Story?

[Iridescence]

Hullo! I am on vacation, finding rare time to work on my story, but I've been having some trouble with a few things...mainly, how does one incorporate humor into a story without sounding forced? Has anyone else had trouble doing this? I personally enjoy stories with plenty of humor, especially fantasy (not so much humor that it detracts from the actual plot, however). I want to write a story with both serious action and witty jokes and comments, but I get blocked off. This is especially annoying since my story is first-person, and my main character is intended to have a sense of humor. Any tips, pleashe? Help is appreciated. :D

[sXe_Jinxeh]

Well, I think that the best way to learn how to write humor from your mind is to start by writing out funny things that have happened to you, or your friends. To get practice, or if you want a funny scene, take something that has happened to you and edit it for the scenario. After a while, making up funny stuff will just come natural, like telling a funny story to your friends

[Jack]

Well, the best way to do it, I find, is to have funny characters. I have seen stories where people try to create funny situations that just turn out to be stupid and unrealistic. The best (and easiest) way is to have humour incorporated through your characters making jokes or taking funny stabs at each other through dialogue. However, I am not sure I can help you with giving your character a sense of humour. You can't mimic a sense of humour; your characters sense of humour is almost always your own.

[Crocolyle]

Here's an example of humor incorporated in a story:

http://www.youngwritersonline.net/showthread.php?t=3417

It might sound forced. I wrote it.

[thecollector]

I think it's best for you to view the scene as if you really were the character. This would make it more natural for you. In turn, any normal comeback you would have for something a friend would say to you would fit in as if the conversation is natural. Backgrounds of how the characters know each other (if they have a history as friends or not) would be of great help... like inventing their own inside jokes. I'm not sure if that's of any help?

[ScottyMcGee]

I know exactly how forced humor feels.

If you've ever read "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Jesus' Childhood Pal" there is a LOT of forced humor near the end.

Forced humor appears when:
1) The main storyline is too serious to really be joking about.
2) The jokes are cliched
3) The main character is a typical "Lol-I-dig-chicks-and-this-is-my-story" kinda guy in first person view
4) There's just too much joking and not enough actual plot, or the plot seems thin compared to the amount of joking going around.

The humor should come natural. Don't even think about it. Like in an old story I wrote, which I still have to update, called "Space Crusade!" I never knew how funny I could be until I wrote that story. Humor can appear mostly between or amongst characters with conflicting views/personalities, and thus handle a situation differently. It starts out as irritable dialogue and then argument, leading to action.

I would suggest to think and observe normal life. That's usually how it comes to you too.

[lango]

Well, my not so very helpfull advice is that... for a character to be humorous, the writer has to be humorous too. I like telling bad jokes so my characters are good at telling bad jokes. The easiest way to train writing humour in a story I guess would be to create characters with easy to exploit traits. Like have a character that's excessively greedy. You can make predictable punch-lines with that.
Almost every story I write has humour inside it, but that's because almost every phrase I say has humour in it too. But making funny remarks, especially in a book, is much, much harder than it seems.
I keep rewritting my Pirilimpim chapters just because I think a said page isn't half as witty as the rest of the writting and thus it sucks.
Don't get stuck to making sure your book's hilarious. If the characters are great and the plot is good, readers are more inclined to smile than if your story sucks but the jokes amazing.

[Alex]

Because my brand of humor includes meme-spouting and other things most don't find funny my humor comes from overexaggerating descriptions or incredibly subtle implications of things that are funny; however, I'm a poet primarily, so what do I know about prose =p

[Dakilleux]

Stay away from sarcasm and cynism unless your whole story is created around it.

I suggest you have a character for comedic relief. Look at Gimli in LOTR and Porthos in the three musketeers. They're not constantly making witty comments and snappy little remarks. It's how they actually act and talk that makes you think "Oh, that's so Porthos".

[Zombified]

Go for it.

Humor is the best way to get through to people, is it not?

Make 'em laugh, get a chuckle. You won't regret it.