How to Mix Humor With Horror in Fiction
Knock, knock.
This is one of the oldest, most recognizable set-ups for a joke. But isn’t it also terrifying? Isn’t it what you dread to hear in the darkest hours of the night, when your house creaks of its own accord? Not so funny now, when someone in your closet whispers through your shirts, Knock, knock…
(5 Rules for Writing Humorous Urban Fantasy.)
I think the duality of this phrase is key to writing humorous horror. It’s simple, but it offers everything. Is that knocking a joke or a cruel, cruel trick? As a writer, nothing delights me more than setting up my reader to expect either one at any time. Setting them up for a laugh and then deploying a BOO. Or vice versa! This balance helps my stories feel like one big, multi-faceted release of emotional tension. Which is, at the end of the day, why I want to read anything: to release as much as possible.
In general, I think there are three main components to writing humor in horror that make it effective.
ANTICIPATE YOUR READER’S REACTIONS/NEED FOR LEVITY
It’s fun to watch a horror movie with friends. To chat over the slow, quiet bits. To laugh over the bad dialogue and the building tension. You can’t share a horror novel in quite the same way. Nine times out of ten, it’s the lone reader and the page.
I try to be aware of that gap when I’m writing horror. I imagine what my friends and I would say at each point of the story. What would we question, what would we make fun of? Which beats need more levity? And I bring that levity directly into my story through the use of a straight man (which feels like a bit of an outdated term). Through straight men, I try to anticipate what readers might pick at as far as the absurdity of my story-world goes. Humor-wise, it’s always helpful for me to have one affable character who can say, for my readers, “That’s ridiculous.” You can learn a lot about your characters by exploring what gets them to stop wise-cracking, too. What shuts them up, and why?
In Edenville, my protagonist Quinn is hyper-aware, at all times, that she is in the middle of a perilous situation. She loves horror movies and anticipates that she’s in one as soon as the story begins. Even before she and her boyfriend Cam set foot in Edenville, she is painfully conscious of the fact that something in this godforsaken B-movie sinkhole will probably try to eat her.
Much of the levity in Edenville comes from Quinn’s reactions to this world. Through her, I had one question I constantly asked myself while writing: If I, a big fan of horror movies, found myself in a horror movie—what would I do? Would I really go in the haunted attic? Or would I leave, as everyone in the theater is yelling at me to do? Well, I don’t know, I’ve never seen an attic-demon. I kinda want to! I’d go in the attic! Sue me!
Quinn’s admittance to this same idea makes her not only relatable for readers like me, but it also allows her to see the humor in her situation, and in herself, in a realistic way. As she allows herself to be pulled deeper into her own story, she keeps thinking, “You’re super gonna regret this.” Which is exactly what my friends would be saying if they’d been watching Quinn’s story unfold onscreen.
So, ask the questions you think your readers might ask. Throw in a straight man who can say, for your reader, “You’re telling me this house is actually a spaceship? That’s ridiculous!” Because of course it is. Then immediately humble the hell out of your straight man by turning that spaceship on and blasting him into space.
That’ll show him.
IMBUE YOUR WORLD WITH WONDER
In order for your book to be humorous as well as horrific, your story-world needs to be somewhere your reader actually wants to go, a place in which they can find light. For instance, Stephanie Feldman’s recent novel Saturnalia depicts a fantastical world filled with horrifying creatures, death cults, and severely entitled 20-somethings (the horror!). But Feldman also shows us the beauty of this world. The lavish social clubs, the decadent parties… This creates a nice dichotomy between the antagonistic forces driving Saturnalia’s plot and the lighter forces pushing against them.
Consider other properties whose worlds are as magical as they are dangerous. Stranger Things, for instance, offers nostalgic glimpses at a past decade just as often as it offers peril and horror. I think its third season strikes this balance best, as Hawkins’ new mall glitters majestically in-between scenes of a giant monster made of people-goo.
Ask yourself: What makes your world fun? Why might readers choose to go there, and why would your characters choose to fight for it? What’s the Shire to your Mordor? Revisit worlds you find yourself returning to over and over again, and think about why you appreciate them. Most fictional worlds that endure aren’t all bleak all the time.
Check out Sam Rebelein’s Edenville here:
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THE THIRD THING
We only really laugh when the unexpected interrupts the familiar, and fear works much the same way. That’s why we roll our eyes when we hear the same stupid knock-knock joke for the millionth time, and why we don’t feel dread when the vampire creeps up behind his victim just like Nosferatu did over a century ago.
(5 Ways to Surprise Your Reader Without It Feeling Like a Trick.)
So let’s say I want to write a werewolf story. Great—it’s the full moon, there’s some howling off in the woods, Johnson’s goats have been eviscerated… But that’s all very familiar. I’m going to take these three cliché things I’ve just written and think of the third thing for each. X makes me think of Y makes me think of Z. For example, what other weird creature noises do I think are scary besides howling? Well, howling makes me think of roaring makes me think of woods sounds like the sound of cicadas. That could be spooky! Like, a were-bug? Then I can have my straight man say, “You’re telling me Johnson is a freaking were-bug?!”
That’s a unique, fun story right there. And if Johnson is glaring down at us from the trees as he sheds his old shell—it’s also spooky.
So try thinking of the third thing in your work. “Cliché-X makes me think of Y makes me think of Z.” Hopefully, that will bring a bit more of the unexpected into your stories.
You can apply this idea to emotional beats, too. Set up one emotional punchline, then divert to another. For example, your were-bug is up in the trees, his red eyes are so scary, he’s halfway done eating the sheriff, his mandibles open wide and he buzzes—“Do you have any Sprite? I would kill for a Sprite.”
You’ve just given yourself a scary image and something fun to play with in your were-bug story. Why does he want Sprite? And would he really kill to get it?
Look, at the end of the day, humor and horror work well together because they have the same basic structural task: set up and punchline. Stalk and kill. Laughing and screaming activate the same muscles, the same type of emotional release. And we all need a freakin release. Which is, I suppose, why we often do those two things simultaneously.
Personally, I scream-laugh all the way through roller coasters, through haunted houses, through high-stakes social events like my college reunion (except in that case, I was screaming and laughing internally). So, consider how you’re getting your reader to maximize their release. Really hit those punchlines, both sinister and hilarious. I love to keep my readers on their toes by getting them to expect each beat to be a joke or a scare.
But which one is knocking now?
I love imagining my readers creeping down the hall at night, hands cradled against their chest as if they’re holding their heart like a baby bird. That half-smile stretched across their face, waiting for the surprise, the twist, the punchline. A low whine escaping their throat as they approach the front door, and ask, Who’s there?