This year will mark my first attempt at historical fiction. In modern fiction, I tend to include humor organic to the characters, but it's rather easy since I have a sense of today's humor. Does anyone have any tips for identifying the humor of your time period and place, and how to organically weave that into your story? I'm not doing a full on comedy, for sure, but I do want the option for some comic relief. What has been your experience?
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Oct 10, 2008 - 00 40
I didn't set out to put humour into any of my hf, but it sort of seeped in, much to my surprise. Often it's to do with people testing the character involved, and that character managing to make light of it all, even if they don't pass the 'test'. That or there's a particularly droll character apt to make some ridiculous statement just to entertain the others. Or just people being playful, which goes down well in any era, ancient or modern, as do the others set-ups I've mentioned.
I think you (as the writer) have to be comfortable with the era you're writing about, so that you're able to let the situation develop without worrying about the historical setting too much. They're safely in their setting, and situations arise naturally.
In my era (5th/6th century Britain) any characters pushing their sense of humour onto those who take themselves seriously are likely to find they're on the receiving end of weaponry! However, it doesn't stop the friendly ones sending each other up, being playful or generally mucking around. Sometimes they do it when I don't want them to! If it's NaNo, I leave it in - wordage m'dear, wordage. But otherwise, I have to think whether the time is appropriate or not. Occasionally, a seemingly funny situation is actually deadly serious to those at the epicentre (i.e. the spectators don't know what they're really watching).
All good fun whatever ;-)
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2007 - Last of the Romans
2008 - King Slayer - East Saxons
28,612 / 50,000
Oct 10, 2008 - 06 55
Some humor is timeless. My story is set in the Bronze Age. When I looked up jokes from the time period, I realized I had already heard some of them - set in modern times. The jokes that seem timeless all revolve around sex, bad marriages, cheating spouses, stuff like that. But there's always the "stupid Newfoundlander/Greek/Hittite/Egyptian". The only problem I'm finding is that some period jokes are extremely offensive or disgusting to modern readers, or absolutely incomprehensible.
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42,603 / 50,000
Oct 11, 2008 - 10 16
So don't use them, or have them explained somehow. You have to balance "period accurate" with "good read" - Hemmingway blew it big time in one of his books by keeping exact translations of a Spanish offshoot into English. These weren't only incomprehensible, the entire flow of the book was off because they weren't speaking in their native tongue.
Personal choice - Keep in the humor that works, don't force it. And if its minorly anachronistic but 90% of the readers won't catch it - and it works in the story - use it.
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2006: The Zaqqum Tree (Victory is Mine!)
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Oct 14, 2008 - 15 10
Thanks for everyone's responses. Do you know if there's info on the type of humor, rather than straight jokes, that particularly appealed to a people or time period?
For example, there's a great movie called Ridicule or Wit about France right before the Revolution. All the humor from this period was cutting edge wit, emphasis on the cutting. It was all about one-upping and being smarter than the other person. Your wit made your place at court. At the end of the movie, you see characters in England. One of their hats blows away, and they say that's "humour" as opposed to wit. The English humor is a bit more, um, slapstick in comparison (at least in that moment). I found that movie to be a great illustration of different types of humor. England still has its own style of humor -- the Minister of Silly Walks and Monty Python -- as well as dry, understated humor (or is that all the same?).
My novel will be set in the early 1800's in Finland, Russia, and Sweden. How on God's green Earth am I going to figure out the nuances between these different types of humor?
1,715 / 50,000
Oct 19, 2008 - 07 13
Humour, just like perceptions of whats socially accetable and the sense of self, is vastly different now to how it was 500 years ago. so whats funny to the modern reader and whats funny to people way back when are different, just like how a person from one country won't understand the humour of another.
But from my studies, it does seem to stand that the very basics were funny as they were recorded in pictures and writings.
Farting for one. Later medieval Irish feast (15-1600's) weren't complete until the professional farters had played.
Jesters are commmon across europe. The misfortunes of an unlucky person were funny, as was bullying.
1800's wuld have been a time when play's and opera's were the most prestigious of events. Over played acting, tom-foolery, pranks, funny faces were big.
I'd say your best bet is to identify what class your characters are and what they like to do. Things get cruder the lower the class, so child humour is probably a good study for it. For higher class people, look into books and plays that were popular around the years you are setting it in and look for the comedy in those, for your characters laughes.
If you want it to be a comedy fr your readers, do whats funny today, but you characters mightened see the humour in it at all, which gives it a bit of a twist.
----------I shall die
but that is all
I shall do for Death