The Dark One
Auror
You need to be careful using humour to drive scenes because it can easily distract you fom the spine of the story. If you have an idea for something funny to happen, you might find it taking you away from the narrative flow that has sustained the reader's interest to that point. When I was writing the draft of my first published book there was a scene so funny I was literally howling with laughter on a train as I wrote it...in an otherwise silent carriage full of commuters. Then at editing time, the scene got cut. It was seven pages of set up for a major laugh...but seven pages away from the spine was too much (especially as I was under pressure from the publisher to cut the word count).
Another reason to be careful with humour is this - are you funny? Really? Do you know, deep in your heart, that you are truly funny? Nothing falls flatter than someone trying to be funny when they're not. I tend to have a vaguely satirical air flowing through most of my stuff which can burst occasionally into overt humour, but when it does it absolutely better be funny.
One trick I tried, in my most recently published book, was a scene including the performance of a stand up comic. I wanted the performance for a number of reasons, including plot and character development, but the perormance also had to be funny. This was a real challenge. I wrote the routine, which worked on the necessary functional levels...but was it funny? I thought it was funny enough, but usually when something is funny I know it's funny, and I wasn't sure. My answer? All through the performance, you are also privy to the internal narrative of the 1st person MC. And he kept whinging about the fact that the so-called comic wasn't very funny. Therefore the performance didn't have to be funny - in fact, it was better if the performance came across as unfunny and trying too hard...which then, in a strange way, made it funny.
Another reason to be careful with humour is this - are you funny? Really? Do you know, deep in your heart, that you are truly funny? Nothing falls flatter than someone trying to be funny when they're not. I tend to have a vaguely satirical air flowing through most of my stuff which can burst occasionally into overt humour, but when it does it absolutely better be funny.
One trick I tried, in my most recently published book, was a scene including the performance of a stand up comic. I wanted the performance for a number of reasons, including plot and character development, but the perormance also had to be funny. This was a real challenge. I wrote the routine, which worked on the necessary functional levels...but was it funny? I thought it was funny enough, but usually when something is funny I know it's funny, and I wasn't sure. My answer? All through the performance, you are also privy to the internal narrative of the 1st person MC. And he kept whinging about the fact that the so-called comic wasn't very funny. Therefore the performance didn't have to be funny - in fact, it was better if the performance came across as unfunny and trying too hard...which then, in a strange way, made it funny.