This is a question for people who write fiction. I’m not interested in how many people read your stories or if you’re paid to write, so don’t ask if you “count” as a writer if you, you know, write stories. that are fictional.
In your opinion, which is the more difficult task: to write a story that is consistently funny in tone from start to finish, or to write a story that is consistently scary in tone start to finish? Assume in each case you’re allowed a normal build up, but from early on in your story your goal is to write something that’s scary or funny from then on.
I think either is pretty easy to mantain for a bit of dialogue, a few paragraphs, or even a scene, but in my humble opinion it’s much harder to do one of these things for the length of an entire story. Let’s see if you agree…
Personally, I find humor much harder to maintain. I’ve got a decent grasp of comedy, and I have managed to induce a few laughing fits that left people with tears running down their faces…but never for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Humor so often relies on surprise and the thwarting of expectations, so to maintain the funny, you have to be setting up the next expectation while knocking down a current one. Being able to do that for an extended stretch seems like a really delicate skill to me.
Horror–or at least the style of horror I favor–relies on dread. It thrives on a buildup of expectation, from basic creepiness to real foreboding to outright fear. Since there is no requirement to repeatedly thwart expectations, it’s easier to stretch it out. The limiting factor with horror is that the longer you stretch it out, the more compelling the payoff needs to be. If you build dread over a long period, the climax must be really horrifying, or it will seem banal.
I said funny, because a good funny novel really does have to be funny throughout. A good scary story only has to tell you that it’s going to be scary eventually, then be scary at some point, but it’s mostly the build-up that has to be in place throughout. Of course it CAN be scary throughout. And I’m not saying it’s easy to maintain that sense of foreboding, either. But there are a lot more successful scary books out there than successful funny ones.
It’s harder for me to write horror, since I don’t care for horror all that much. I’ve also had far more success with humor stores, with about 14 published (as opposed to only one horror) out of nearly 50 sales. My most successful story (financially, at least) was pure humor.
When I deliberately try to be funny, it usually falls flat. Invariably when someone reads something I’ve written and starts laughing out loud, it’s something I didn’t even think was really that hilarious.
Interesting that this should come up! I am tried of writing biographies that no one reads and that make no money, so I am going to try my hand at a comic horror novel.
I will probably crash and burn, as this is completely out of my comfort/skill zone.
Humor and horror are easy. Making money at it … there’s the difficult part!
(I voted for humor, though I’ve not written horror and have little or no interest in it, outside of H P. Lovecraft. But I notice horror writers who are able to turn successful horror novel after successful horror novels. Humor requires novelty, surprise, etc., and you can’t even do it in a consistent manner … you have to SURPRISE people, you can’t FORCE laughs from them. “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”)
What? Are you implying that if I write this book I will not immediately be rolling in million-dollar bills and selling the films rights for more money than Donald Trump can eat in a day?
I answered that horror is more difficult. For me that’s largely because I’m not a fan of horror in general and so I don’t really have a grasp on how to create a proper horror story; meanwhile, I love comedy.
My “usual” genre is “erotic fiction”, focused on BDSM and spanking stories, and I’ve successfully written a few funny ones. I’ve made one attempt at a supernatural “horror” spanking story, but it kind of took on a mind of its own (some stories are gonna go where they’re gonna go) and ended up being a sad but romantic cross-generational love/ghost/mystery story, a tragedy that had a happy ending (and the spanking/sex aspect of the story became completely insignificant and irrelevant). Ironically, it ended up being one of my best-reviewed stories.
Horror, you can - and should - start off with things normal, but there should be a building mood.
And if a joke in the middle of a humorous story falls flat, you can still recover with the next one - nobody expects every joke to be gold. And serious bits in between the humour work fine - the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, say, is pretty hilarious, but there’s serious sequences in every book.
If you break the mood in the middle of a horror sequence, you’re at best, back at square one. In a short story, or late in a long-form story, you may not have a chance. So, an attempt to be scary that fails, or injecting normalcy back into the middle is going to kill you.
I agree with the majority that sustained humor is harder, for the same reasons. I do think, tho, that there are funny story-tellers (Sampiro is one IMHO) who are good at it as opposed to the one-two-three punch type (Dave Barry.) Jack Parr (remember him?) had a friend named “something Douglas,” I think. I can’t find him on a quick Google search. But he wrote several books, one of which was called “Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes.” All these years later it still makes me laugh, and he’s a good writer to look at.
Should have looked at Amazon. :smack:
I said equally hard for both. This is mostly because when I try to write scary it ends up being funny, and when I try to write funny it ends up being scary. :smack:
Actually, upon reflection, I guess it’s a bit more complicated than that. If we’re talking novels, I stand by my original poll vote. But on short stories, it’s harder for me to write consistent funny. I tend to read more horror than comedy, so horror tropes/devices come to me more easily (and I can more easily put myself in a visceral “frightened” mood).
Humour is much easier for me. Not always intentionally.
I can do the rising horror with the twisty pay-off very effectively in a short story, but I can’t maintain that for a novel. I’m full of admiration for people who can.
Selling, now there’s a horror story.
ETA, I use Becky’s 1,2,3 punch formula for short horrors. The comedy is more character driven, I find that more sustainable over a novel length.
I think horror is harder to write. When my characters take over, they can usually be quite humorous… they come up with one liners I could never think of on my own. Horror, tho… when I try to write horror, it seems contrived, cheesy.
Wrote a story about a guy who could talk you to death. Comedy plus a bit of horror. Then related an actual conversation with a woman whose mother had died in her car while being transported from an old-folks home to the friend’s. Horror with a bit of comedy. A professional writer preferred the latter.