The Deadpan Rule: Why Trying to Be Funny Makes Your Comedy Fall Flat

Writers who try to be funny usually aren’t.

I’ve seen this pattern hundreds of times in student manuscripts. A character makes a wry observation. Another character responds: “Very funny, Ellen.” The first character smirks. The reader does not smile.

The problem is the author signaling that a joke just happened. Real comedy doesn’t wink at you. It commits.

The funniest characters in fiction—Elizabeth Bennet, Bridget Jones, Stephanie Plum—don’t know they’re in a comedy. They’re desperately trying to survive their lives. Bridget isn’t performing for you; she’s trying not to drown. The humor comes from the gap between her anxious sincerity and our outside perspective.

Call it the deadpan rule: comedy lives in a character’s total commitment to a ridiculous goal. The moment the author leans in to make sure you noticed the joke, the joke dies.

Test your funny scenes this way. Read each line of dialogue and ask whether the character seems aware she’s being amusing. If she does—if there’s a hint of performance—cut it. Replace self-awareness with earnest desperation. The reader will laugh. The character won’t know why.

Comedy is what happens when your character takes her absurd, losing battle with the world completely seriously.

Open your draft to a scene that’s supposed to be funny. Read every line of your protagonist’s dialogue and action beats, and circle any moment where she seems to notice she’s being clever—a smirk, a wry inflection, an awareness that she’s winning the exchange. Replace each circled moment with something more desperate: she doesn’t know she’s amusing, she’s just trying to get through the next five minutes with her dignity intact. Comedy that survives that translation is real; comedy that evaporates was performance, not character.

This topic is covered in depth in our Comedy Writing course.