L is for Laughter – Alphabet Challenge

woman laughing 6163885_sL: Laughter

I’m on a roll with the humor this week.

Did you ever read a book where the characters giggle, guffaw, and laugh like they were lunatics? It sometimes seems like everything is a joke to this kind of character, and often it’s annoying. Laughter at a good joke is okay, or an outrageous situation, or the occasional nervous giggle is good, but no one laughs at everything! It’s unrealistic to portray a character like this, and can make me put a book aside as “too silly.”

When I write, I like to have my characters laugh in appropriate spots. If something strikes me as funny, I will probably share my laughter with the character I’m writing. I think that’s natural, and more realistic.

Have you ever read a book where the laughter (not yours, the characters’) was non-stop? How did you feel about it? Did it make you laugh along?

For your hopping convenience:

12 Replies to “L is for Laughter – Alphabet Challenge”

  • I love when a story is so entertaining that you actually laugh out loud! In the Sons of Johnny Hastings, I laughed out loud with a few things, but especially with Mary Wehr’s To Have and To Scold. “I don’t know why a man wants to lick a women’s cat”

  • No, now that you mention it, a character “guffawing” or “giggling” every minute would annoy the crap out of me, I think. But I also notice “he said” tags and adverbs and things like that. I think it just depends on what your brain picks out. Like, to some people, a person snapping their gum is a non-event, they don’t even notice it. Whereas I zero in on it and my eyes bulge out like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he breathed in the Mars atmosphere in Total Recall, sweartagawd.

  • I find it annoying. If it’s appropriate to the story and realistic then it’s ok but most good authors
    don’t write like that.

  • I like having a serious man burst out laughing when he finds out something quirky about the woman he loves. Then hugs her and tells her he adores her. Or something like that, but not constant laughter.

  • I agree with you. It gets annoying and if far from realistic when characters laugh at inappropriate moments. These days, I tend to have mine smile at what’s funny and if they laugh in a book, they rarely do it more than once.

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