Writing Humor in Horror
(Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gallows)
by Mike X Welch
I’ll be honest…not everyone is as comfortable with dark humor as I am. And that’s fine, since it takes all kinds to make this world keep spinning. One thing I’ve learned over the course of the last half-decade of dedicated writing, though, is this: if you don’t elicit some sort of emotion from your reader, you’re doomed.
It’s not exactly revolutionary to suggest that sprinkling humor into most stories is a good thing. Drama without comedy is dry. Romance without comedy is sappy. Spicy romance without comedy is more than likely just porn. You get the idea. But there’s one genre that most people rarely associate with laughs, and that’s horror. And frankly, that’s terrifying to me.
I can think of lots of horror content that lacks humor. The original Friday the 13 th movies leap to mind. Godzilla (1954) wasn’t intended to be a laugh riot. The most recent Ghostbusters sequel is largely unfunny. I could go on.
While Stephen King certainly didn’t invent the concept, my first exposure to humor in horror was his writing. King’s down to earth, workmanlike approach to his craft tends to bring out realistic characters, and many of his plots involve fantastic things happening to (or with) ordinary objects (cars, cats, clowns, Saint Bernard’s.)
It’s taken me a while to understand, but this means that in order to have realistic characters, you have to give them flaws. One of the things that plenty of people do is make light of difficult situations. They deal with discomfort or stress by finding the humor in it. And while there are certainly plenty of people in this world who immediately push back on this sort of emotional reaction (we’ll call them ‘straight-men’,) there are probably more folks who would deal with horrific situations inappropriately than not.
As a writer, it’s my job to paint my characters on the page as vividly as possible, warts and all. The opportunities this provides for pathos, heel-turns and, best of all, humor, are numerous. I have characters who have a hard time being serious for even a moment…but when they are serious, it hits like a sledgehammer. Conversely, if there’s a scene I’m writing that’s getting bogged down with too much gravitas, having one of the characters do or say something unexpected or, ideally, funny, breaks that tension nicely. It also engages the reader and hopefully makes them laugh along with the characters, thus releasing dopamine.
For me, personally, the best kind of humor tends to be pitch black and very, very dry. It’s not always possible to showcase this sort of humor, but I do what I can every chance I get. In my upcoming collection of short stories, “Turning of the Bones and Other Stories,” I’ve crafted a couple of tales that rely heavily on levity.
The triptych of ‘K’cetnoc’ stories are more sci-fi than horror, but all of them are based on the absurd notion that a being made entirely of rocks and minerals who has existed since our sun flared into existence simply can’t maintain a decent romantic relationship. We all have friends that are incapable of this, but the idea that an ancient, functionally immortal being also can’t is liberating in its ridiculousness.
Additionally, there’s the story ‘The Immortal Dan Sinclair’ about a man who can not only die, but has done so various and sundry ways, but always comes back to life soon after. The story opens with him painstakingly feeding himself to a pack of wolves in snowy Idaho and gets stranger from there.
My tale ‘Plandemic’ stars a couple of very familiar entities trying to enjoy a few days off from their celestial duties while navigating their own slightly adversarial relationship and our current society. And while some folks might consider the COVID-19 pandemic no laughing matter, it’s hard to miss the humor in the idea of someone not being able to find a drink they like because all their destination serves are rum-based cocktails.
There is a fine line, of course, between not taking the subject matter seriously and injecting the right dose of humor into writing. I’d like to think that it’s something I accomplish regularly, but only the reader can be the judge of that. What I do know for sure is that a little sugar makes the medicine go down easier, and that’s what a sprinkling of humor in an otherwise scary story accomplishes.
Turning of the Bones and Other Stories by Mike X Welch releases 7/9/24
The Author’s Guide to Libraries by Cari Dubiel launches next week!
The Author’s Guide to Libraries by Cari Dubiel arrives next week on 4/30! You can pre-order digital copies through Amazon or Print copies through Duskbound Books’ website.
Sacrifice Anthology
Those who submitted a short story to the Sacrifice Anthology will be notified of their story’s status on May 6th.
Robert Bloch was my gateway to humor-horror hybrid stories, of which he was an ingenious master.