Laughing Through the Pain

Ever heard the story about the man with the spear through his chest? When asked if it hurt, he said, “Only when I laugh.”

I won’t bore you with my life story. Suffice to say I’ve made ample use of humor to palliate sad days, so it’s not a stretch for me to do the same when I’m writing novels. In Goodbye, Lark Lovejoy, a grieving widow feels she has lost everything. With nothing to lose, she can be irreverent at times—self-deprecating humor is her coping mechanism.

In my second book, Sissie Klein is Completely Normal, tragedy and betrayal reveal Sissie’s purpose and a razor-sharp wit.

I wish I could say this was by design. Sissie began as a minor character in Goodbye, Lark Lovejoy. After a brief separation from her less-than-gentlemanly husband, the manuscript whispered to me, “Why would she stay with him?”

That question nagged at me, and when Goodbye, Lark Lovejoy was off to print, I began writing Sissie Klein’s story. Before I could answer why she’d stay with Caleb, an impossibly difficult jerk, I had to explore how she found her way into the marriage in the first place.

Uncovering the Wounds

Early in my writing career, author Kristan Higgins encouraged me to determine my characters’ wounds before writing. Excellent advice I use to this day. But I wasn’t designing a fresh character for my new book. I had chosen to dissect one already in play, requiring me to backtrack to Sissie’s appearance in the first book. What had she experienced? On that note, I needed to spend time with the jerky husband, too.

Hurt People Hurt People

In Goodbye, Lark Lovejoy, one of the characters says, “Hurt people hurt people.” It’s not entirely original, but relevant when understanding character’s emotional pathology. In the same token, hurt people often reach to humor—dark, droll, on-the-nose, or self-deprecating—to palliate their emotional pain.

In the Sissie Klein book, Sissie’s sixteen-year-old sense of humor matures with her, all too often a result of heartbreaking circumstances. The pregnant teen, pushed into marriage by her image conscious parents, created challenges when introducing levity. Watching what she did, listening to her parents, her friends, and the father of her baby, I yielded when opportunities arose. In most cases, these came through her internal monologue as Sissie attaches meaning to her new identity as a wife and mother while describing the people and places surrounding her.

Too Much of This, Not Enough of That

The secret to balancing pleasure and pain in a novel is equal parts craft and luck. When the characters become alive on the page, they can tell us what they need and how they will react.

We’re told torturing our characters provides a path for them to evolve. Look at the books you love most, and you’re likely to find tragedy behind transformations.

A constant barrage of tragedy can overwhelm a reader, transforming a book from a “must read” to a “DNF” (Did Not Finish). Balance is the name of the game. Saving Private Ryan is chock-full of tragedy. Notice Spielberg doesn’t hit us with two hours and forty-nine minutes of bombings. Humor and tenderness are neatly tucked between those brutal scenes. Even the briefest spot of levity can provide a spoonful of sugar to take the unavoidable medicine.

Story Must Take Center Stage

How to balance the laughs and pain? Focus on story. A novel isn’t a night at a stand-up comedy club. It’s not 24/7 tragedy, either. It mirrors real life—messy, tragic, and funny.

Gentle teasing may lighten the mood, but it doesn’t remove the obstacle or erase the tragedy. Remain mindful of the wound that remains fresh in your character’s mind.

And when sprinkling humor in those tragic moments, we need to remain mindful of our character’s pain. We don’t make fun of our characters or their pain. We may laugh with them. We may laugh while supporting them. Overall, as authors, we remain by their sides as they search for a ray of light in whatever darkness has befallen them.

Take a look at Francis, Diane Lane’s character in Under the Tuscan Sun. Francis is worn down by a cheating husband and the divorce displacing her from her home. When friends send her to Italy, she glimpses a new life and makes an offer on dilapidated house. Soon after the offer is declined, a bird flies through the house and poops on her head, an act deemed good luck by the homeowner.

The bird incident is doubly fortunate. Not only does it provide welcome levity, but it moves the story forward. If the owner hadn’t reconsidered Francis’s offer, the bird incident might have served to reveal Francis’s humility and her ability to laugh at her circumstances.

As we place our characters in catastrophic situations, poorly executed or ill-timed humor can rip the reader out of the story. Here are some tips to help you find the right balance:

• Before concerning yourself with humor, determine the heart of your story. If it is about a football player who has lost everything, focus on the arc that takes him from down-on-his-luck to moving forward.
• Design the story around the inciting incident and the stakes. Humor can come organically when writing or can be introduced later.
• Under the same category as “Kill your darlings,” don’t fall so in love with a joke you build a scene around one. When the joke takes center stage, the reader loses track of the story. Stick to the heart of your character’s story arc.
• Ask yourself: If I experienced _____ , would humor be appropriate? There is a time and a place for everything.
• Humor can dismantle your story’s momentum. When in doubt, ask a critique partner or friend to review what you’ve written and confirm its suitability.
• Character-to-character dialogue isn’t the only vessel for humor. It can be introduced by the narrator or occur through a character’s interior dialogue. In the example from Under the Tuscan Sun, it occurs through action. In Ted Lasso, it occurs when the main character doesn’t know the full story behind his hiring.
• Consider your character’s voice. A reserved personality is likely to process tragedy surreptitiously, but their internal dialogue may reveal a humorous reaction they wouldn’t speak aloud.
• In fiction, humor comes in many forms. It can be a gentle nudge, like a grieving character revisiting a funny memory of their loved one. It can be sharp and quick, like a dose of humility for a deserving character.
• Most important, keep writing!