If a short story, which is essentially serious, has flashes of humour, even comedy, is it falling down in the area of consistent tone? I keep reading that keeping the tone, i.e. the writer's attitude to the subject matter, consistent throughout is important, and I think this is probably largely true but, if this 'rule' were strictly adhered to, we would have, say, no serious novels with touches of humour. Or is it that there is more room for variations in tone within a longer work?

Thanks for any help with this, it's doing my head in.

I don't think humour is necessarily a break from the seriousness of a story - it can be part of it. You can make a joke at a funeral, or have comedy about wincingly serious things.

If the humour springs naturally from the events and characters in the story, just as the serious stuff does, then it will still feel consistent to the reader, because they're naturally occurring within a single, consistent world.

You can make a joke at a funeral, or have comedy about wincingly serious things.

I think you're right, but the joke at the funeral is there and gone and the comedic treatment of a serious thing sounds like a consistent treatment throughout.

What I've been worrying over is the combination of a serious, quite taut opening, then a semi-comedic middle section, then serious again towards the end. It's a story I'm working on at the moment and I think I know that I've veered too far into a humorous take and have thrown the thing out of kilter and need to get it back on track.

Thanks, Emma.

I agree, it depends how the humour is incorporated. A serious subject can hold lots of laughs. What i don't think it can do easily (though anything is possible in the right hands) is respond to its material in two opposing ways. So one of those round robin-style bigoted jokes about old people wetting themselves or how bonkers women are would only fit in a story about elderly incontinence or a woman going mad if it were demonstrating the unfeeling response of a character we're not supposed to identity with. if it were put in by the author as irony-free light relief, it wouldn't work.

I've sometimes found that I positively have to let the funny side of a serious moment be acknowledged in a story, if I suspect that the reader might laugh anyway.

I think I've got a bit over-analytical of this tone thing. Really shouldn't write or re-read when I'm tired.

At my book club on Friday the book we discussed was Andrea Levy's The Long SOng. You can't get a much more serious subject for a novel but there are some brilliant flashes of humour there too. Unfortunately I was one of few people who thought the novel killingly funny in parts.

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I just wonder that maybe as long as the voice is consistent then it can veer between serious and comical and still work.

I think there may be two separate issues here. First, there is the difference in tone between a short story and a novel, which to a degree will be built from the structure too. I started out writing novels then moved to short fiction. Like a lot of novelists, I had a tendency to produce short stories that read like the start of a novel. Most (but not all) successful short stories are likely to work the closer they are to having just one character in one setting with one problem in one scene. It has to be off and running from the first word; not spreading wide to mark out its territory before getting into the plot, as novels can get away with. So, for me it was changing my mind set - doing less in one sense, but in a more concentrated way.

Second is the question of whether or not a short story that's essentially serious can have flashes of humour. Well, I think it can but probably the tone has to be set up from the start to allow it. Again, we're back to that one approach thing. A serious novel can have flashes of humour that aren't indicated at the start, because its nature is to take in all of life. But a short story is tone-dependent, I think, so if you're planning flashes of humour - even if only in dialogue - I think the overall tone has to hint at this right from the start. This doesn't mean being humorous right from the start, but more in making sure the tone will allow for it later without jarring the concentrated flow.

Terry

I think your second point is spot on, Terry. I have, this morning, stripped out the parts that were tipping over into humour and am rewriting it from a more serious standpoint. It's a better story for it. I think it was a case of killing my, in this case comedic, darlings which were getting in the way of the story I really wanted to write and which were causing me to flounder.

That sounds like exactly the right thing for a short story writer to do. Maybe a short story is a bit like having a conversation with a friend where you have one thing to tell them and it's either a serious thing or a funny thing. If it was serious and in the middle of it you told a joke, your friend would be mighty pissed off and feel emotionally cheated. A novel is maybe more like moving in with a friend when there is going to be more time for variants . . . but I think I'd better stop here since I can feel the ghost of Swiss Tony curling my quiff.