ABSTRACT
Comic effects go hand in hand with other aspects of storytelling. Humour surfaces in every genre and takes many different forms, from the gently ironic to the fiercely satirical. Samuel Beckett's meditations on futility, death and despair generate their own kind of bleak humour, a sly pessimism inherited by James Kelman. The readings from Garrison Keillor and Patrick McCabe introduce distinctive types of parodic humour; the former through anecdotal musings and the latter using a fiercer, more satirical approach. Humour is in the eye of the beholder. In his introduction to a selection from P. G. Wodehouse, Hillaire Belloc stresses the precise craftmanship of a writer whose stories, novels and journalism once epitomized English humour. This chapter discusses the simplest approaches to comic writing which is character observation. It talks about the authorial voice and the work on character and dialogue. The chapter deals with an elusive quality shared across comic and serious writing, that concept known as irony.
