You can't tell a joke and you've given up trying years ago. The embarrassed nods and forced laughs of friends and family are just not worth the torture of spluttering your way through the lines and then excusing yourself to hide your shame in the toilet until everyone has drunk enough to forget your cack-handed attempt at humour.

You know you're no good at funny, but now you have to inject some humour into your story. What are you going to do?

Don't panic!

Being able to deliver the perfect punchline requires you to master many skills, such as self-confidence, eye contact, knowing when to pause or when to slow down, and a good memory. Even if you don't possess a single skill on that list, there is good news. These skills are for live performances, not for writing.

Writing comedy is different in that you, as the writer, can take your time to inject the perfect comic timing by the way you structure your sentences, without having to look anyone in the eye. In fact, you can do it while sitting in your pyjamas amongst the dirty breakfast dishes and no-one would ever need to know. The best thing is that you can delete and start over as many times as you like – something that would make a good joke die an unbearable death if done in person.

Humorous techniques

Humor is not only found in fictional or satirical writing. Although you might often think of comedy in terms of exaggeration or fabrication, taking readers in a direction they didn't expect to go or using metaphors and funny words can be just as effective. Here are some techniques to keep your readers engaged by having fun.

Funny Words: The improbability of finding certain letters together can make one word funnier than another containing a common combination of letters and sounds, like fugeggedaboudit. In the same way, ‘k’ and ‘oo’ sounds are found more often in funny words, giving oink and floozie high laughter potential.

The Rule of Three: Put two similar ideas together in a list and then throw in a third, different and unexpected, idea. Here’s an example of a sentence using the Rule of Three: Writing comedy is easy with the rule of three: you'll be funnier, your readers will love you and in about ten years you'll become an overnight best-selling author.

Using Comparison: Think of using comparison in the same way you'd use metaphors. Look at this example from Cancer on $5 a Day* (*Chemo Not Included) by Robert Schimmel, “...this stupid hospital gown is riding up my ass. I try to pull it down and it snaps right back up like a window shade. I cross my legs and suddenly I’m Sharon Stone.”

Clichés: Introduce a well-known cliché into your writing, but finish it off in an unexpected way. Writing, “People who live in glass houses...should always wear pants,” surprises readers into laughing because they were expecting to read, “...shouldn't throw stones.”

Practise these four techniques as often as you can. The more you do it, the easier it'll become. You may become so good at them that you even find yourself trying them out live at the next party you attend!