In an article for Writer’s Digest, Susan Reinhardt says humor can leaven even the darkest writing. “Humor is a tool I use to dial down tension, sadness, and heavier material,” she says. “It’s my pressure-release valve.”
For Reinhardt, sensitivity is key to adding humor to sad or difficult material. “Never sprinkle comedy into weighty material for a cheap laugh,” she says. “Humor must be organic and subtle, not a complete about-face within the pages.” Reinhardt has written novels about a woman who survives spousal abuse and the opioid epidemic, and was able to balance out the heavy topics with humor that came from the characters and setting. “To write an entire novel without glimmers of hope or dashes of laughter isn’t my style,” she says. “Humor, if done in batches, keeps readers turning pages. We all want to feel good and walk away from a novel feeling more than just depressed. Readers want to close the book and feel moved, changed on some level, and buoyed by the experience.”
