GenresFiction
Humour & Satire
Comic novels, farce, and the well-aimed needle.
A comic novel has to be funny on purpose, which is harder than writing a serious book and adding jokes in the margins. The humour should come out of character and situation, so that the plot would still make a kind of sense if you stopped laughing. Readers will forgive a lot of improbability if they are enjoying themselves, and they will not forgive a book that keeps pausing to admire its own wit.
Satire needs a target you understand well enough to be fair and sharp at the same time. If you only dislike something from a distance, the jokes tend to be the ones everyone has already made. Farce depends on timing and on people who are committed to a bad idea. Whatever the flavour, give the book a heart, even a small one. A comic novel in which nobody matters is tiring by chapter four, because laughter needs something it is afraid of losing.
The kinds of book inside it
Comic novel
The comedy is the climate of the book, and the story of a person still has to get somewhere by the end.
Satire
A real target, an institution or a habit or a class of person, is examined by being made to look like itself, only more so.
Farce
The trouble multiplies because people keep choosing the next worst option, and the pleasure is in how neatly the disasters fit together.
Parody
You are borrowing a form the reader knows, so the imitation has to be affectionate or accurate enough that the jokes land on the original.
Absurdist
Logic is optional and mood is not, and the strangeness should feel consistent, as if the book believes its own nonsense.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.