Can you write humour? Or humor, depending on where you’re reading this?
My answer to that is . . . probably. Yes. Yes, you can. Why am I hesitating?
Perhaps it’s because, for many people, there’s a slightly different question. It’s not “Can I write funny?” but more a case of “Do I want to?”
“If you can write, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to add the contrast of tone that levity can bring to even the darkest of tales,” says Dave Cohen. Photo by Henrietta Garden.
There are a million reasons not to take that leap from wanting to write a book to wanting to make it funny.
I’m not saying you will instantly discover how to compose riotous wordplay like Tom Sharpe, create hilarious, compelling contemporary characters like Bridget Jones, or unspeakable monsters like those you find in the books of Nora Ephron.
If you can write, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to add the contrast of tone that levity can bring to even the darkest of tales. I know I’ll never be able to create a sense of place with the extraordinary skills of Rose Tremain or jaw-dropping plot twists like Gillian Flynn—but I can work hard and become better at these.
If you can write, you can write funny.
The Genre Challenge
Now we come to the really difficult bit: how do you market and publish a funny book?
The essential marketing lesson I’ve learned is that the worst possible form to be writing in is “comic fiction.”
The number one question every book marketer asks is this: what genre are you writing in?
“That’s easy. I’m writing comic fiction.”
“Oh, you’re writing a graphic novel?”
“No, no, fiction that makes people laugh.”
“But with pictures?”
“No, it’s ‘a comic novel,’ not ‘a comic that’s a novel.’”
“. . . ?”
“A written novel, just words, that’s funny.”
“Like Richard Osman?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, I see, a cozy murder mystery.”
“No, I mean funny. Like Richard Osman’s books are funny. They make you laugh. Helen Fielding funny.”
“Helen F . . . ?”
“Bridget Jones.”
“Oh, you mean romcom? Why didn’t you say?”
It’s not a problem with physical bookshops or libraries. My books would be on the fiction shelves. Under the letter C. Delightfully for me, that would put me between Jonathan Coe (my favorite British writer and a huge inspiration) and Jenny Colgan (whose comic romances have given me great pleasure).
That’s of no use to me, though, since nearly all my sales take place in that Giant Bookshop in The Cloud. Unless the Barnes & Noble assistant has a brilliant memory for faces and purchases, there’s no way they can know that you’ll like my book because you came into the store three weeks ago and bought something similar.
The writer is writing the books. The marketer is asking: Where is your readership?
Finding an Audience
For my nonfiction books about how to write comedy, that’s an easy question to answer. In my niche and specific world of People Who Want to Write Funny for British TV and the Movies, the audience is on the internet, actively looking for me.
They type phrases into Google like “I want to write comedy scripts.” My books, blogs, podcasts, and courses all feature high in the search engine. I’ve put a ton of free content out there: 200+ podcasts, dozens of blogs, links to books, testimonials. People who want to write British TV comedy know where to find me.
Trying to identify who’s going to buy my fiction is a much trickier prospect.
It’s fine if you’re writing in a specific genre. As long as the front cover of your science fiction opus looks like all the other science fiction covers—or crime, thriller, romance, young adult—your book will get a head start online by being sent to the Amazon pages of people who already buy in those genres.
My own comic creation, Barry Goldman, is wandering forlornly through cyberspace, hoping my attempts at marketing will bring him to the attention of your “People who bought Ben Aaronovitch’s funny fantasy novels may potentially express a vague interest in Barry” online store.
Understanding the algorithms behind online book sales is extremely useful. So many of them interpret what we buy as a predictor of what we might want to buy at a later stage, initially developed with books in mind.
Let’s not forget that Amazon began life as a bookshop. He may be off to Mars right now, but I’m guessing that the seven-year-old Bezos wasn’t saying “I want to be an astronaut” so much as “I want to be a writer.”
Which, by the way, in itself is a useful lesson for all you wannabe writers out there—whatever your dreams of scribing immortality, you’re more likely to get a job as an astronaut.
Writing to Market—or Not
Writing to genre is plugged into one of the most sophisticated algorithms of the internet. The reason marketing matters so much is that a well-crafted cover can make your book stand out in exactly the marketplace where people who like your genre are already looking.
But this isn’t an exact science. It hasn’t stopped the publication of mediocrity. And in these risk-averse times, quality is as much an issue for the big publishing houses as it is for the independents.
Publishing marketing gurus tell you that if you want to sell your fiction, you should try to imagine your reader. Invent one person.
There is a massive problem with trying to imagine the reader of my comic-historical-fiction-coming-of-age-Jewish-alt-com-rom-com trilogy, as that mouthful suggests. Which novelist’s “People who bought this book also bought . . .” list am I going to end up on?
The problem with writing comic fiction is that sometimes you don’t know what you’re writing until you’ve finished it.
It’s this that William Goldman’s famous Hollywood dictum “Nobody knows anything” applies to—the understanding that a large amount of success depends on factors out of our control.
Who could have guessed that anyone would want to watch a movie about a couple of small-time cowboy crooks called Butch and Sundance until William Goldman’s screenplay brought them to life?
Richard Osman’s cozy murder books are written in a strictly defined genre to a comfortingly familiar pattern. A certain volume of book buying was guaranteed thanks to a combination of writing to genre and his publicly high profile.
Yet they owe their additional and enormous success to the parts that are uniquely him—his writer’s voice, his style, and his characters. And his jokes. These are funny books that appeal to readers who will never pick up another cozy mystery in their lives. And mystery fans who will never give comic fiction a second glance.
When I was a stand-up comedian, I was free to write whatever I wanted. All about me. Let’s face it, no one else would. After ten years, I became a writer for hire—working on TV sitcoms and panel shows, where I was interchangeable with twenty or so fellow gag merchants.
In 2008 I was commissioned to write songs for the kids’ BBC TV show Horrible Histories, still a writer hired to give people what they wanted. But I brought a unique skill set of comic songwriting, a fascination with history, and an obsessive love of the pop music of my childhood. What people wanted, plus what they hadn’t known they wanted.
And crucially, I had only a vague idea I could deliver.
Writing a novel is a massive undertaking. I’ve found it the hardest work I’ve ever done as a writer. If I’d given proper thought to the marketing aspect at the start, I would probably have made my first book genre specific. As it is, I’ll have written three before I get around to doing that.
If you haven’t yet published your first novel, I suggest you should give writing to genre some serious consideration.
Is it possible to write what you want, to write what people didn’t know they wanted until you wrote it, and to write it within a genre?
I’ll let you know after my first attempt, which I’m planning to publish in January 2028.
About the Author
Comedian, broadcaster, BBC TV writer, and novelist, eight times BAFTA winner for his Horrible Histories songs, Dave Cohen is one of the most respected teachers of TV comedy writing in the UK. His book The Complete Comedy Writer is the definitive guide to radio, TV and movie writing. If you want to learn how to add light, shade, and laughs to your novel, pick up his latest book, Funny Up Your Fiction. Dave has written two novels, Stand Up, Barry Goldman and Barry Goldman: The Wilderness Years. Find out more here
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