5 Rules for Writing Humorous Urban Fantasy
So, you’re looking to write something funny and urban and fantasy, all in one? Well, you’ve found this, so you’re kind of stuck with it. Unless you decide to exercise the agency to stop reading. Assuming you haven’t yet, this is my attempt at pretending I know how to show you how to do such a thing.
(5 Elements All Urban Fantasy Novels Must Have.)
Humor is hard. Really hard. Mostly because it differs so widely even between readers of a single genre. Even just that first paragraph likely made some (most) readers cringe, maybe made a couple grin, and maybe, just maybe, made one laugh.
The only thing less humorous than the subjective nature of humor is trying to explain why and how something should be funny. Generally, if you have to explain it, then it wasn’t funny to begin with, and you get stuck in a paradoxical rut where you can’t figure out how to be funny because as soon as you try to explain how to do it, it gets boring and dry.
All that in mind, there’s still a few general tips an aspiring writer can use to try and extract a grin or chuckle from their readership, and while the list below certainly isn’t all-encompassing, it’s at least a place to start.
1. Exaggeration.
This is really the most consistently powerful tool writers of the fantasy genre have at their disposal, and it is as useful for humor as it is for character and world building. Sure, you can be funny in subtle ways, and you should, but fantasy is one of the few places where you can have the Looney-Tunes level of absurdity that makes the inner-kid of your reader laugh and thank their preferred deity or political party that they aren’t reading nonfiction.
Instead of having your side-character get drunk and pass out, have them get drunk on wine that turns their imaginations into physical objects like a fantastical holo-deck gone wrong. Instead of the landlord posting an eviction notice on your protagonist’s door, he hires a witch to banish the whole duplex into Hell for a week like a magical fumigation technique. Instead of giving in to the HVAC guys overpriced estimate, the protagonist tries to summon an ice elemental into his apartment and starts a localized ice age.
The best part of these exaggerations is that they’re funny, but they’re also interesting and engaging, and can be major or central parts of the plot or character development of the story.
2. Disjunction.
One of the strongest arguments for fundamental humor and what its source is, is disjunction—a disjoint between the expectation and the reality. It can be as simple as a groan-worthy pun, or something as extreme as alligator Loki.
There’s a gap between what the reader expects and what they receive, and if the emotional element of the scene is light, readers will tend to fill that gap with humor. At least, assuming that gap is narrow enough. If it’s too wide, then you get confusion and that’s no good for anyone.
Urban fantasy is wonderful for this concept as well, as part of what readers like about the genre in the first place is to see just how your world differs from its cousins. How it varies from their expectations.
For instance, of course, you have werewolves, you’re urban fantasy! But how are yours different? Well, if your werewolves have been domesticated from werewolves to were-goldendoodles over the last dozen centuries, then you have both a bizarre and unexpected world element, as well as something some readers will find funny.
Check out James J. Butcher’s Long Past Dues here:
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3. Exclusion.
Don’t be afraid to make jokes that some people simply won’t get. First and foremost, because there’s no joke that everyone will get. Every time you have one of those little disjoints like I mentioned above, you’ll have readers fall through the gap instead of chuckling their way over it.
And that’s okay.
Your jokes don’t have to be for everybody. Hell, your whole book likely shouldn’t be for everybody, otherwise you’ll end up with the urban-fantasy equivalent of vanilla ice cream. Sure, basically everyone likes vanilla ice cream, but you can get that anywhere. You know how much competition you’ll be up against if you’re trying to sell vanilla ice cream? Instead, people should come to you because you have a monopoly on your ice cream flavor.
And if some folks don’t like it, but others are crazy for it, you’ll be far better off than if everyone feels middling about it.
4. Don’t take yourself seriously.
Seriously. Yeah, you want to write some super awesome story that changes the world or whatever. That’s fine. But be willing to laugh at just how absurd you are for that goal along the way.
I mean, seriously, if you’re a professional writer, you’re paid to make crap up. To literally pull lies out of your head and commit them to the page and the better you are, the harder it will be for readers to remember that they are lies. And that concept has just so much ingrained ridiculousness in it that you might as well make fun of not only yourself, but your peers and even your readers along the way.
The whole point of fantasy writing, in my not so humble opinion, is to have some frickin’ fun. And while you can and should try to make your readers occasionally cry, you better damn well be making them laugh too, or they won’t endure your abuse forever.
5. Humor yourself.
While it’s possible to write humor that doesn’t fit your own taste, it’s tough to do for any extended length of time, and writing is tough enough as it is without going for extra credit.
So, at the end of the day, I just write what I think is funny and leave it at that. And sure, I have crippling self-doubt every time I type up a punchline, but at the same time, as long as I find it funny, then there’s at least a non-zero audience for that joke.
Besides, as writers, we have the great benefit of the sunk-cost fallacy playing to our gain. Sure, maybe that pink-promise pun made your eyes nearly roll out of your head because it was so bad, but, come on, you’re already a hundred pages into the book. You’ve stuck it through this long, you may as well finish. And maybe you’ll even find a joke you actually do like along the way.
I certainly did.