Storyworthy Summary (C16): Injecting Humor into Your Stories

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A story doesn’t have to be funny to be good.

And a story should never be only funny. Rather, it should evoke a range of emotions.

However, a bit of well-placed humor can definitely enhance a story.

The good news is, even if you aren’t a funny person, you can craft your story to have funny moments.

A good time to make your audience laugh is at the start of your story, preferably in the first thirty seconds.

This achieves three things:

1. It’s a sign to your audience that you’re a good storyteller, which allows them to relax.

2. It communicates that you ‘have the floor,’ which will prevent interruptions.

3. It lets the audience know that no matter how intense the story is, you’re okay now since you can laugh about it. This is especially important if you are telling a traumatic story.

Sam’s Note: The word “tears” is a placeholder for any meaningful emotion.

Another good place to insert humor is immediately before a heartfelt or tragic event. This provides contrast, which you have already learned is very important in storytelling.

You make them laugh before the tear-jerk moment, and again after it.

This serves to break any tension you have just created. It allows them to take a breath and reset.

When your story has multiple tear-jerk moments, you want to separate them as opposed to just stringing them together one after the other.

Putting a contrasting feeling between them, such as humor, accomplishes this.

Feeling the sad events separately adds depth to the story.

One time you don’t want your audience to laugh is at the very end. You want them going out on a meaningful note because this is what will stick with them.

If you end on a laugh, you're a comedian. Ending on a meaningful event that evokes emotion is the trait of a storyteller.

Like all other emotions in storytelling, laughter is a result of surprise. There are many ways to create this surprise. Here are some basic ones.

The setup is where you introduce the scenario, context, or premise of the joke. Preferably, it will describe a situation that your audience can understand or relate to.

The punch is the surprise you introduce to create the humor. It’s the twist or unexpected conclusion.

The setup doesn’t have to be very elaborate for the joke to work, but in general, the more you build it up, the more satisfying (funny) the punch will be.

When choosing what words to use in your jokes, the more specific you can be the better.

For example, instead of saying, “I’m making a sandwich,” you could say, “I’m assembling a gourmet feast between two slices of bread because my culinary ambition exceeds my grocery budget.”

Additionally, some specific words are just funny, such as those with a hard K sound. Caca, pickle, cankles, etc.

The premise of using opposites attract for humor is when you verbally push two things together that wouldn’t usually go together.

For example, describing a timid puppy as a fearless warrior or a librarian as a party animal.

A good way to do this is to create a list of three descriptors with the third one being out of place.

For example, you could describe a beach day filled with sun, sandwiches, and many red people who used to be white.

Using exaggeration is probably one of the easiest ways to get a laugh, but it only works if your audience agrees with the premise of the exaggeration.

For example, describing a large pot hole as being the size of the grand canyon.

Read the next chapter here.

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