Show Me the Funny!

NaNoWriMo Day 7 Tips from Harry Potter

A most excellent post from Veronica Roth on YA Highway today called Humor, Contrast, and Harry Potter inspired me to offer you a sampling of some of my own favorite funny moments from the series.

Veronica does an excellent job of explaining why JK Rowling's sense of whimsy worked so well in a series that touched on serious themes and darkened as it progressed.  I recommend that you hurry over there, after reading here of course, and enjoy her insight.

If you've been working hard on your NaNo project, I imagine you might need a humor break about now.  So, grab some tea, sit back, and enjoy these funnies from various Potter books:

   "Oh, are you a prefect, Percy? You should have said something, we had no idea."
   "Hang on I think I remember him saying something about it, once..."
   "Or twice-"
   "A minute-"
   "All summer-"

   "Now, you two - Behave yourselves. If I get one word that you've blown up a toilet or -"
   "Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet."
   "Great idea though, thanks, Mum."

   Ron was staring at Pettigrew with the utmost revulsion.
   "I let you sleep in my bed!" he said.

   "Professor Dumbledore - yesterday, when I was having my Divination exam, Professor Trelawney went very - very strange."
   "Indeed?" said Dumbledore. "Er - stranger than usual, you mean?"

   "Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?" said Fred.
   "That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!" said Percy, going very red in the face. "It was nothing personal!"
   "It was," Fred whispered to Harry as they got up from the table. "We sent it."

   One of them was a very old wizard who was wearing a long flowery nightgown. The other was clearly a Ministry wizard; he was holding out a pair of pinstriped trousers and almost crying with exasperation.
   "Just put them on, Archie, there's a good chap. You can't walk around like that, the Muggle at the gate's already getting suspicious-"
   "I bought this in a Muggle shop," said the old wizard stubbornly. "Muggles wear them."
   "Muggle women wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear these," said the Ministry wizard, and he brandished the pinstriped trousers.
   "I'm not putting them on," said old Archie in indignation. "I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks."

   A week after Fred and George's departure, Harry witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves, who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier, and could have sworn he heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, "It unscrews the other way."

   "Don't put your wand there, boy!" roared Moody. "What if it ignited? Better wizards than you have lost buttocks, you know!"

   "Hello, Harry," said George, beaming at him. "We thought we heard your dulcet tones."
   "You don't want to bottle up your anger like that, Harry, let it all out," said Fred, also beaming. "There might be a couple of people fifty miles away who didn't hear you."

   "We're not discussing anything here, it's too risky," said Moody, turning his normal eye on Harry; his magical eye remained pointing up at the ceiling. "Damn it," he added angrily, putting a hand up to the magical eye, "it keeps sticking - ever since that scum wore it - "
   And with a nasty squelching sound much like a plunger being pulled from a sink, he popped out his eye.
   "Mad-eye, you know that's disgusting, don't you?" said Tonks conversationally.

   "When we were in Diagon Alley," Harry began, but Mr. Weasley forstalled him with a grimace.
   "Am I about to discover where you, Ron, and Hermione disappeared to while you were supposed to be in the back room of Fred and George's shop?"
   "How did you...?"
   "Harry, please. You're talking to the man who raised Fred and George."

   "What are you doing with all those books anyway?" Ron asked.
   "Just trying to decide which ones to take with us," said Hermione. "When we're looking for the Horcruxes."
   "Oh, of course," said Ron, clapping a hand to his forehead. "I forgot we'll be hunting down Voldemort in a mobile library."

   "This is different, pretending to be me--"
   "Well, none of us really fancy it, Harry," said Fred earnestly. "Imagine if something went wrong and we were stuck as specky, scrawny gits forever."

Have you used humor in your story?  Humor is an essential mechanism for how we humans cope with life, even the most negative side.  As Veronica so wonderfully points out, it's an important element that needs to be included in our stories.  But it is best served up when it flows naturally from the characters rather than forced from the author.

I'd love to hear examples of how you've used humor in your own WIP. Or tell me one of your favorite funnies from Harry Potter!

Humor in Crisis

One thing I love about JKR's writing is her deft hand with humor.  Even in a serious, high-stakes scene, she's likely to insert some light banter, which helps to bring the action fully alive and reflect the reality of the characters involved.  Take, for example, any scene that Fred or George are in -- as we looked at in an earlier post, Those Tricky Twins and that Peevish Peeves, their role as tricksters is to invert the status quo, to upset the apple cart and make the reader see things from a different perspective.  Their primary tool for handling this is a wicked sense of humor, which crops up at even the most inopportune times.

We see the twins up to their tricks in the delightful scene of "The Seven Potters" in Deathly Hallows, when Harry escapes Privet Drive for the last, and most dangerous, time.  Of the thirteen witches and wizards gathered to escort Harry to safety, led by the uber-serious Mad-Eye Moody, all are somber and focused on the danger they are about to face.  All except Fred and George.

Mad-Eye's plan is for six of Harry's friends (plus Mundungus) to drink Polyjuice and become Harry.  Thus Voldemort and his Death Eaters will not know which Harry to follow as they flee in seven separate directions.  When Harry protests the risk those who will be impersonating him must take, Fred responds:

"Well, none of us really fancy it, Harry," said Fred earnestly.  "Imagine if something went wrong and we were stuck as specky, scrawny gits forever."

When Harry refuses to give-up the hairs they will need for the potion:

   "Well, that's that plan scuppered," said George.  "Obviously there's no chance at all of us getting a bit of your hair unless you cooperate."
   "Yeah, thirteen of us against one bloke who's not allowed to use magic; we've got no chance," said Fred.

Then, once everyone's gulped down their Polyjuice, and Fred and George are transformed into Harry:

"Fred and George turned to each other and said together, "Wow -- we're identical!"
"I dunno, though, I think I'm still better-looking," said Fred, examining his reflection in the kettle.

As Harry watches his six doppelgangers change clothes to match his:

He felt like asking them to show a little more respect for his privacy as they all began stripping off with impunity, clearly much more at ease with displaying his body than they would have been with their own.

Even Fleur gets into the act:

"Bah," said Fleur, checking herself in the microwave door, "Bill, don't look at me -- I'm 'ideous."

And when Bill assures Fleur that she will be riding with him on a Thestral:

 Fleur walked over to stand beside him, giving him a soppy, slavish look that Harry hoped with all his heart would never appear on his face again.

This light-heartedness works well here because even though the group is about to face tremendous danger, they haven't faced it yet.  No one has yet died.  The banter is a way to relieve tension, show the reality of the characters involved, and amuse the reader.  It all comes together for a wonderfully entertaining scene.

JKR always keeps humor flowing through her novels, no matter how dark.  Thus, the absence of it from the most serious, high-stakes scenes make them all that much darker.

Humor is a difficult spell to cast as it performs differently for everyone involved.  Humor is subjective.  But when it works best, it is because the author has been true to her voice, the characters are speaking out of their reality, and the humor bursts forth from intrinsic action of the novel.  In other words, to someone who hasn't read the story, they probably won't get it, because the humor is very much based on the details of your story.  Read the quoted lines above -- if you've never read Harry Potter, you probably won't understand where the humor is in each of those bits.

So, how have you used humor in your stories, especially in a scene of tension or crisis?

Seven Potters image credit 
Harry as Fleur image credit