My beta reader, Margie, has been encouraging me to add more humor to my writing. You’re funny, she insisted. Just try.

Just try? How does one “try” to be funny? If it doesn’t come out naturally, it seemed to me that it shouldn’t come out at all. But she’s a smart woman, so I decided to give it a shot. I borrowed “The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You’re Not” by John Vorhaus, and set about learning how to be more like Jennie Cruisie.

Vorhaus grabbed me by the throat right away. “Comedy is truth and pain,” he writes. Things are funny when they highlight the truth and pain of fundamental, shared human existence.

We hear this credo in romance writing, too. We’re told that to generate sympathy from an audience, we must touch upon shared human experiences. We must make the audience nod and think, “I never thought of it that way, but that’s exactly how the world works.” Even if that world is paranormal, audiences still like to feel drawn into a story that reveals something fundamentally if unexpectedly true about the nature of existence.

Advertisers sometimes do a great job with this in commercials. Let’s look at the “Where’s the Beef?” Wendy’s spots from the Eighties. I just found one on YouTube, and it’s still pretty funny, even after all these years, but why? What’s true and painful about that little old lady looking for the beef?

It’s true that old people can develop senility. It’s painful to see an old person wandering around, looking for something she’s sure she needs. Her desires and needs have even been whittled down to one single object: beef. She needs the beef. Wants the beef. Can’t understand why no one will give her the beef! Beef becomes a symbol for her lost home, her lost health, her lost loved ones and friends. I want her to stop looking for the beef, because she’s making me sad. But she just won’t quit! She’s ridiculous, of course, because we all know she can’t have the beef. It isn’t just that it’s missing, but rather that there is no more beef for her in this world. She’s willingly made herself into a figure of mockery by lusting after what she cannot have. It’s ugly and painful, but sadly, reflects reality.

Okay, not “reality,” but something like it. The commercial shines a spotlight on a shared human fear of growing old, forgetful, and ridiculous. We worry that no matter how hard we try to keep ourselves together, we will inevitably become the “Where’s the Beef?” lady, mocked for her intense yet ridiculous search for something she cannot have. We fear that we will grow old and forget our purpose, forget our selves, forget to put on pants. I doubt there’s a culture on earth that so venerates its elders that its members still don’t worry about growing old. These cross-cultural fears bind us together as humans.

So I laugh, because not only is the situation too-often true, but it’s also painful. “That silly old woman!” I say. “I will be a silly old woman one day,” I whisper.

I never knew that comedy could be a vehicle for delivering a lesson on the hardest parts of being human, but Vorhaus knows his stuff. I began to think about things I find funny – often awful, dark things that make me laugh only because I’d otherwise cry – and realized that they’re funny because they dare to show me the truth in the dark side of the world. (I’d give you an example here, but none of my favorite dark jokes are even remotely family friendly.)

In writing comedy, Vorhaus advised that we admit reality. Show it clearly. Admit pain, too. Just don’t make your audience work too hard to understand it.

So, dear friends, tell me: what makes you laugh? Do you, like me, laugh at things that frighten or sadden you? Or do you refuse to find humor in the truth and pain of being human?