The Totally Learnable Art of Writing Funny Characters

If you know how to create well-rounded characters, you know how to create funny ones.

Great character-driven comedy doesn’t begin with hilarious one-liners. That’s a perk that’s earned by first crafting well-imagined fictional beings who embody what it means to be human.

These characters are funny because we recognize our awkwardness in them. 

Our shortcomings. Our bad choices. Our bizarre impulses. Even our most devastating losses.

A well-crafted drama might destroy you psychologically and emotionally, but don’t be fooled by the warm hug of a story that makes you laugh. Comedy is not shallow. Comedy is depth softened with absurdity.

So if you want to write hilarious characters, your first job is not to brainstorm funny, quotable lines. It’s to learn how to develop well-rounded characters and find the humor in their humanity. 

Or develop flat charactes and still find the humor in their humanity. We’ll cover the flaties and the roundies in this article.

If you’re a Dabbler, you might want to open your current project in the Dabble Writer app so you can add notes and ideas to your Character Profiles as you go.

If you’re not a Dabbler yet, you can remedy that—or rather, experiment with remedying that—by starting a 14-day free trial at this link. That gives you access to all of Dabble’s features, including the customizable Character Profiles your peers are having so much fun with.

However you choose to organize your ideas, the first step is understanding the value funny characters add to your story. Let’s get into it.

Beyond Comic Relief: What Funny Characters Do for Your Story

Most people understand the most basic benefit of having funny characters: They break the tension in otherwise dramatic scenes. This is called “comic relief,” and it’s a great way to keep the audience engaged and give them a cathartic release when the story is starting to stress them out. 

But not all funny characters are strictly comic relief characters. In fact, even many of the fictional folks who appear to exist only for the joke actually play an additional role. Here are some of the biggest perks of having humorous characters in your story:

Delivering exposition - Every writer knows the struggle of sharing crucial background information without boring the reader or taking them out of the story. Funny characters can be great vessels for exposition because their comedic delivery keeps the audience engaged in the story.

Creating a realistic drama/humor balance - Real life is a balance of comedy and tragedy. Your readers will have an easier time engaging with a story that reflects that reality with characters who have a sense of humor even in the worst circumstances.

Inspiring connection - Funny characters are often relatable characters. We see ourselves in their hilarious flaws, awkward interactions, and absolute exasperation with a society that doesn’t work the way they think it should. There’s a lot of humanity in comedy, and readers tend to connect more deeply with stories that acknowledge the humor of being human.

Complicating the conflict - As you’ll soon see, many of the traits that make characters funny also help those same characters heighten the conflict. Their single-minded perspective leads to hilarious and disastrous misunderstandings, and their exaggerated flaws cause them to exacerbate the very problem they’re trying to fix.

Now for the big question:

What Makes a Character Funny?

There is no single blueprint for an amusing character. If you know what you’re looking for, you can find humor in any archetype.

The Jester is obviously funny, with their sharp observations and reluctance to take anything seriously. Eleanor Shelstrop (The Good Place) is a great example of this.

Innocents, like Andy Dwyer (Parks and Recreation) can also be hilarious when you amp up their wide-eyed wonder and simplified understanding of the world.

Even an obsessive, perfectionist Creator can be funny when you take their fixation on their craft to absurd extremes, as we see with Wednesday Addams.

So when we talk about what makes a character funny, it’s less about the type of joke and more about where we mine the humor from. A lot of first-time comedy writers stumble by leaning on witty dialogue or clever antics without exploring why a character is inherently funny.

Here are the characteristics you should really focus on when you’re developing a character for laughs:

Perspective

If you only remember one item in this list, make it this one. Point of view is the most important quality of a funny character. Give them a distinct and unique perspective that they cling to, often to their own detriment. This point of view will inform everything they do, including their funniest lines and most outlandish actions.

In A Man Called Ove, the protagonist is a black-and-white thinker who values hard work and practical skills above all else. His perspective gives us fun lines like this:

“That was why he had always liked mathematics. There were right or wrong answers there. Not like the other hippie subjects they tried to trick you into doing at school, where you could ‘argue your case.’”

It’s also why we get to see Ove rage over other people’s poor parking skills and patrol his own neighborhood for unauthorized vehicles or incorrectly stored bicycles.

Then there’s Death’s fascination with human emotions and reasoning in Mort. Ron Swanson’s undying hatred of the government. Anne Shirley’s determination to romanticize life whenever possible.

Look at any one of your favorite funny characters, and I guarantee you’ll be able to identify a strong point of view that drives their most amusing behavior. These uncompromising perspectives give these characters a reason to do ridiculous things and ensure that the funny things they say rise organically from their personality.

Relationship Dynamics

Once you’ve given your comedic players unflinching worldviews, you can heighten the humor by forcing those characters into relationships where they have to navigate their contrasting points of view.

That’s why it’s such a delight to watch Bob and Linda Belcher together. Her zest for life pairs perfectly (and sometimes catastrophically) with Bob’s resistance to anything remotely unfamiliar.

Relationships also give you an opportunity to show how your character responds to the vulnerability of human interaction. Who do they become when they feel intimidated or fall madly in love? 

Next thing you know, you’re finding the joke in experiences your reader can relate to, whether it’s the idiotic thing your nervous character says on a first date or the extremes an employee goes to in order to dodge a performance review.  

Contradictions

Real people contain multitudes, and so should your comedic characters.

While you want to avoid inconsistencies that make it hard for your reader to understand who a character is, a few quirky contradictions can add a dash of reality and an opportunity for hilarity.

This is especially true when those contradictions come in the form of hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance. 

Voice

When we talk about your character’s voice, we’re talking about the way their personality shines through in their speech. This is your opportunity to add color and comedy by exploring their rhythm, pacing, and diction. I know that all might sound very clinical, but let’s see it in action:

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." –Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest

"When I get bummed out, I take my shirt off because the bad feelings make me feel sweaty." –Andy Dwyer, Parks and Recreation

“You realize the bébé is crying? Isn’t it scheduled to be dormant by now?” –Moira Rose, Schitt’s Creek

Each voice is distinct, and each line is funny for its own reasons. To learn more about creating a voice that does justice to the brilliant character you’ve created, check out this article.

Quirks and Mannerisms

This is the stuff people usually think of first when it comes to developing funny characters, but, again, their most amusing tendencies should be an extension of their unique point of view.

Chidi Anagonye (The Good Place) believes deeply in his responsibility to live ethically (worldview), and that’s why he’s an overthinker who gets a stomach ache over seemingly basic decisions (funny mannerisms).

Dwight Schrute (The Office) places extremely high value on authority and self-reliance, and that’s why he almost never smiles, regularly demonstrates his martial arts skills, and takes immense pride in his beet crop.

Quirks and mannerisms are important. They’re the details your readers will laugh out loud at and remember. But they work because they make sense. They’re not random. They’re a natural expression of your character’s uncompromising perspective.

Finding the Joke in Character Development

You don’t need to fully develop the tertiary characters who are just there for a quick laugh and convey some information. Give them one funny trait, really accentuate it, and you’re good to go.

But if you’ve got a funny protagonist and/or secondary characters, you’ll need to develop them as thoroughly as a major character who’s not meant to elicit laughter. Remember: You find comedy in the depths. So take the time to create characters with layers.

Now, we can’t get into all the ins and outs of character development here, but this free DabbleU article will get you started, and, for DabbleU Academy members, this course will really help you master the art.

For now, we’re just going to touch on some of the key steps in the character development process, exploring how you can find the humor in each one.

Personality

Comedy and exaggeration are old chums. While turning a character’s personality trait up to eleven might feel like a strategy that only makes sense for a 1990s Adam Sandler movie, it works in every genre.

Think about the unapologetic indulgence of Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. Or Kelli Prenny, Insecure’s no-filter party girl. Both these characters have a dominant trait pushed to extremes, and that exaggeration enhances the comedic effect without compromising the (relatively) grounded nature of the shows.

Maybe it’s because extremes aren’t that uncommon in real life. This big, beautiful world is jam-packed with fascinating people who are who they are to the fullest extent possible. Why shouldn’t a few of them be in your story?

Backstory

Your character’s backstory can be funny, especially if you’re writing broad comedy. Like everything Dwight Schrute gradually reveals about his upbringing, from the terrifying nursery rhymes to complicated family relationships (“I didn't see my father for the first two years of my life. I thought my mother was my father, and my wet nurse was my mother.”).

You can also use a more grounded backstory to explain why your funny character has such extreme views and even give the audience permission to love them for their vices. 

In The Good Place, Eleanor Shellstrop’s backstory is loaded with funny stories about her tendency toward extreme selfishness and manipulation. But at the heart of it all is some serious childhood neglect. (Around these parts, we call that the Big Hurt.) Eleanor is pathologically self-serving because that’s what she’s had to do to survive in a world where she had no allies. 

Knowing that, we can easily still love her when we find out that she put her cousin’s credit card on Reddit as revenge for a mild insult.

Central Goal

Keep comedy in mind when you create your character’s primary goal, and you’ll advance the humor and improve the plot.

It’s not that the goal itself has to be funny. It can be, but most funny characters have goals that look pretty normal on paper. Get the job promotion, romance their crush, save the world, etc, etc.

What makes the goal funny is how ill-equipped the character is to accomplish it. Just look at Po in Kung Fu Panda. He’s infinitely clumsy but also determined to prove himself as the Dragon Warrior. 

Now, to really pull off the comedy here, you want to make sure the goal is something your character is highly motivated to accomplish and seriously believes they can achieve. The contrast between their earnest, passionate pursuit and their lack of the appropriate skills is where the best jokes live.

Weaknesses, Flaws, and Fears

You’ve probably picked up on this one by now, but a character’s flaws are an excellent and reliable source of comedy. In fact, there’s usually a direct connection between a character’s stubborn worldview and their fatal flaw.

Moira Rose (Schitt’s Creek) identifies fame and wealth as her most reliable sources of joy. It makes sense, then, that her greatest flaw is that she pushes away the things that could actually bring her fulfillment to chase after material validation instead. 

This opens the door for all kinds of hilarity when her family loses their fortune and she’s forced to coexist with people she sees as beneath her. Instead of embracing opportunities to connect with the locals, she consistently attempts to reinforce her status through ostentatious clothing, a beyond pretentious vocabulary, and the relentless assumption that the people of Schitt’s Creek admire and envy her.

From her core beliefs and fatal flaw come a whole swarm of smaller, related flaws, fears, and weaknesses. Her ego is both inflated and fragile. She’s tremendously selfish. She’s terrified of becoming socially irrelevant, but she’s also not as talented as she thinks she is.

All of it makes for excellent comedy.

External and Internal Conflict

Funny characters don’t necessarily need funny conflict. In fact, you get some pretty compelling high-stakes comedy by giving your comedic characters serious conflict.

Let’s talk about Moira again. There’s nothing inherently hilarious about losing one’s fortune to a deceitful business manager, nor is there anything particularly funny about having to live in a motel. The jokes arise because of what Moira brings to the conflict.

And the more your character’s comedic quirks intensify the conflict, the funnier the situation becomes. The key move here is to plunge your character into wildly unfamiliar circumstances, then have them stubbornly attempt to solve new problems using old tactics that are utterly useless in this world.

This also helps you develop a great internal conflict for your character. Their failure to succeed with their old habits and belief system might cause them to question their worldview. This can lead to an identity crisis, a crisis of faith, conflicting feelings about old relationships… all kinds of fun stuff.

Whether or not they change by the end of the story is up to you.

Rookie Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Of course, writing comedy isn’t easy, not even with all these tips at hand. Sometimes our best efforts fall flat. And while we can’t control whether the things we find funny resonate with our entire audience, we can avoid some common errors that cause us to miss the mark with nearly everyone.

Here are some mistakes new writers tend to make:

Using Clichés

Clichés are comedy killers because good comedy is surprising, and your reader can’t be surprised by a cliché. Think about every time you’ve seen a character in a TV show or movie complain about an authority figure as the camera pans to their grimacing friend. You know what’s coming next.

“She’s right behind me, isn’t she?”

Yawn.

Now, there are a few ways you can avoid clichés in your comedy writing, and strong character development is a big one. When you create a well-rounded character that feels like a real human being rather than a caricature, you’ll have an easier time giving them dialogue and actions that are as unique as they are. 

Another essential strategy is workshopping your humor. The first joke that comes to mind is often a cliché, so take the time to brainstorm original and nuanced alternatives.

You can also put a new twist on an old cliché. That’s a really effective way to create that all-important sense of surprise. 

One of my favorite examples of this is the gag in Arrested Development where attorney Wayne Jarvis tries to drop some shocking information by turning on the news. It’s a classic move for sharing exposition in a more interesting way, but Arrested Development gives the more realistic version—waiting through commercials and other segments until the relevant story pops up, at which point Wayne says (with serious mic-drop energy), “And imagine the impact if that had come on right when we turned on the TV!”

Leaning on Stereotypes

Then you’ve got stereotypes, the obnoxious cousins of the cliché. A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people, and it makes for some pretty lazy comedy.

There’s also a long history of using stereotypes to mock people from marginalized communities, and that kind of thing really kills the laughs. Good comedy punches up, poking fun at those who hold power, including the power to tell the story to begin with. (That is to say, if you’re the storyteller and want to stereotype your own community, have at it.)

Once again, good character development is a great way to avoid bad stereotypes. If your character’s ethnicity, sexuality, or physical ability is your go-to source of comedy, you haven’t done enough to flesh them out.

Telling Your Readers How Funny the Character Is

Have you ever been in that awkward situation where someone tells you a joke, and you don’t find the joke particularly funny, but they think it’s hilarious, so they’re laughing hysterically and punching you in the arm and making excessive eye contact, waiting for you to really get it so you can tell them how brilliant it is?

Makes the joke even less funny, right?

Turns out, you can do the same thing to your readers. I see new comedy writers make this mistake most often when they’re trying to demonstrate that two characters really jive. One of them makes a joke, and the other laughs so hard they hyperventilate or shoot mashed potatoes out of their nose.

It’s not a problem if the reader also finds the joke that funny. But if they don’t, seeing that extreme reaction takes them out of the moment and gets them thinking about you, the writer who thinks their jokes are hilarious enough to warrant such a reaction.

Now, you’ve got some real challenges here. You can’t help the fact that comedy is subjective, and it might be important to establish a shared sense of humor between these two characters. So what do you do?

First, focus on the game of the exchange. When your best friend starts saying some hilarious stuff, you probably laugh, but you’re not their audience at an open mic night, right? You chime in. You riff. You build on their jokes.

And then how do you feel? Joyful? Giddy? A little buzzy? 

Focusing on these details creates an energetic exchange between your characters and gives your reader room to decide whether the exchange deserves a quick nose laugh or full hyperventilation.

Sacrificing the Character for the Joke

There will be times when you come up with a hilarious line of dialogue your character would never say. Cut the line. Whatever it is, I guarantee it’s not funny enough to justify distracting your reader with inconsistent characterization.

Remember that writing a comedic story is not the same as writing jokes for stand-up. Even though the comedy matters, the story matters more.

Stay true to your characters, and take as much time as you need to mourn the jokes that don’t work.

Give Your Funny Characters a Secure Home

Funny character development is still character development. That means that even if you’re writing a full-on comedy, your major players still need the in-depth exploration you’d give characters in a more serious story.

Who are they? What do they fear? Where do they come from? Who and what has shaped them? What do they want? What internal contradictions do they wrestle with?

It’s a lot of information to hang onto, which is why these characters demand the note-taking treatment. Create character profiles where you can store all your ideas. You think you’ll remember, but take it from someone who’s learned the hard way: You won’t.

The best note-taking system is the one that works for you, but I’ll throw my two cents in and say that I would be lost without the Character Profiles in Dabble Writer.

You can upload images, create property lists, create your templates (or just snag ours!), and sort your characters into Casts. It also helps a lot that these profiles are always a click or two away from your manuscript, as well as the Plot Grid, where you can track your character’s arc as they flail their way through the conflict.

If you don’t already use Dabble but you’d like to explore these features (I mean, why not?), you can start a free 14-day trial by clicking this link. You don’t have to enter a credit card, so there’s zero risk of accidental charges at the end of your trial. Just sign up and get to clackin’.