Writing humor is not for the faint of heart. It is a difficult task for anyone – stand-up comics, sit-com writers and even those who produce comic strips. However, humor writing is the hardest for the novel writer because body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, funny drawings, and sound tracks are not available for use. Novel writers are slaves to the power of their words. The problem inherent to writing humor is that everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a funny situation. You, as the writer, can’t tell someone what is funny. Each person is unique and therefore, has a different sense of humor. There are even some people who have no sense of humor at all (I refer to them as humor-challenged). You have to realize you can’t please everyone, so you have to write what makes you laugh. How can you effectively use humor in your writing? One way is to make an ordinary situation extraordinary. Shake things up with a surprise situation or an unexpected result to an otherwise normal day. Play with words by using metaphors, similes, irony or satire. Bring misunderstandings to the forefront of the action and incorporate a bit of…