Does writing funny fence me in?

Writing life: 79

Note: This post is neither a complaint, nor a lament. I couldn’t be happier being known as a writer of (mostly) funny novels. No, this is more of a self-indulgent intellectual exercise as I contemplate what kinds of books I’d like to write in the coming ten or fifteen years.

This question of being “typecast” as a funny writer never occurred to me until I wrote my sixth novel, One Brother Shy, published in the spring of 2017. But before we get to that, what does the query headlining this post actually mean and why have I raised it?

Setting up the question

If you’ve been with me since the beginning of this humble Substack adventure, you know that I had a rather charmed—albeit unorthodox—journey to the published land eighteen years or so ago. My initially self-published debut novel, The Best Laid Plans miraculously won the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour snaring me a literary agent and a publishing deal with McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada. And I’ve happily been with M&S ever since.

Back in 2005, I decided to try to write a funny novel because those were the kinds of books that I liked to read. Besides, I had a sense of humour—though my family may question that assertion—and was unable to suppress it when writing. I’ve also come to believe that to write authentically, writers ought to write with all of themselves—deploying all of their writerly resources.

To say I’ve been blessed in this journey would be the understatement of the millennium. My first five novels were all finalists for the Leacock Medal, and two of them won. I know how lucky and privileged I am and I never take that for granted.

My first five novels.

All of these novels—I hope—are filled with funny scenes and laughter, punctuated by important moments of pathos. The sad or at least melancholy moments are meaningful to me because life tends to be a blend of the happy and sad. We laugh and we cry. That’s life. So none of my novels is a flat-out, uninterrupted cruise on the S.S. Hilarious. But I began to notice at speaking events in my early years as a writer, that I was often introduced not as a writer, but as a “humorist.” Again, not a complaint. But after my first five novels and their welcome connection to the Leacock Medal for Humour, it was clear that I had managed to create certain expectations among my modest readership. There was a natural and understandable assumption that books I’d written—or would write—would make readers laugh.

A shift in my writing…

But after Poles Apart in 2015, I felt my writerly instincts shifting just a little. As a rookie writer trying to write my first novel back in 2005, I was very focused on cramming as much humour as I could between the covers. But after five novels where humour was still the driver, I was ready to challenge myself and try a few new tricks in my sixth book. I had become just as interested in the story and my characters as I was in making readers laugh. Enter One Brother Shy and the novels that came thereafter, as I made fledgling attempts to grow as a writer. (To be clear, I’m not suggesting comic novels represent a lesser literary form—quite the contrary in fact. Rather, I just wanted to experiment a bit with the form, and change things up a bit. That’s what I mean by growing as a writer.)

One Brother Shy

My sixth novel was not a profound departure from its five predecessors. I still wrote it as a first person narrative. I still intended the novel to be funny. But there was a darker undercurrent to the story. For the first time, my narrator was not only a good guy, trying to do the right thing while enduring his hapless moments along the way—as my previous leads had been—but this time around, my narrator was damaged. Ten years before the novel opens he suffered a traumatic and very public humiliation as a high school student that was captured, and went viral, on YouTube. And as the book begins, he is still recovering and is not the person he was on track to become before his trauma.

I was trying to become a better writer by stepping just a little outside of my comfort zone. (Here’s the post I wrote about One Brother Shy back in the fall of 2022 in case it’s helpful context.)

The first edition and the reprint version of One Brother Shy.

Don’t get me wrong, the novel is still funny (I hope), but it’s arguably a more complex, serious story, laced with more drama.

Albatross

In my seventh novel, Albatross, I again tried to step beyond the realm of the “comic novel” with a funny story that examined the tension that exists between success and happiness. Again, there are some moments of high drama in this story—including a shocking scene high atop the famous Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai—but my sense of humour can still be found, if not on every page, at least in every chapter. I also played a little with the story’s timeline. When writing Albatross, I could feel myself stretching as a writer. (Here’s my post from September 2022 about Albatross.)

Operation Angus

In Operation Angus, I returned to the characters in my first two novels but in a comic thriller rather than another political satire. I wanted to see if I could write a high-stakes thriller while still making the reader laugh. More stretching. (Operation Angus post, here.)

A New Season

My ninth novel, A New Season, is the clearest and most significant departure I’ve attempted from the humour path carved by my first five novels. Yes, I like to think it’s still funny, but the very premise of the story hardly lends itself to sustained, side-splitting humour. But as you can read in my post about the novel, I wrote it in the middle of the pandemic. I wanted to show respect for those who had lost loved ones. And, I probably wasn’t feeling like laughing as much myself in those months and years of social isolation. But I still wanted to write. So I wrote a novel that was unlike any of my others, despite a reputation for writing novels that would make you laugh.

My point—and I do have one…

Anyway, I guess my point is that my readers who enjoyed my first five novels—and based their expectations of me thereon—have probably discovered in reading my subsequent four novels that I may not quite be the same writer now that I was back then. I still like using humour, but I’m perhaps now more interested in the story itself and how best to tell it. In other words, my writing feels more driven by what’s happening, and what’s at stake in the story than by the imperative to make readers laugh, though there will always be funny moments and funny scenes—well, funny to me at least.

I certainly hope that doesn’t mean my readers haven’t enjoyed my last four novels. I like to think and hope that while they may not have laughed quite as often, they were still engaged—even immersed—in the stories and found them to be compelling and worthy tales (he says hopefully).

But here’s an interesting fact. While my last four novels sold well—all were national bestsellers and three of the four hit number one—the two that had somewhat flatter sales trajectories despite both being #1 bestsellers, were One Brother Shy (2017) and A New Season (2023), the two novels that perhaps diverge most from the style and tone of my first five novels. Now, it’s difficult to compare the sales of books that were written six years apart given the shifts in the overall book market in that period. But the lower sales curve for those two novels may not be a coincidence.

It is quite possible that when some of my regular readers saw reviews of One Brother Shy and A New Season and learned that they were perhaps a little more serious in tone and tackled themes that were darker or sadder, they decided to take a pass. On the other hand, it’s also possible I gained at a least a few new readers who aren’t necessarily into straight up comic novels. Regardless, the net result was slower sales. It’s very hard to know what happened with any certainty—and perhaps it’s not possible to, or even necessary, to know.

It was twenty years ago that I wrote my first novel, The Best Laid Plans. It would be hard to write for twenty years and not change, and I hope, grow as a writer. While I can’t speak for all of my readers, I don’t regret any of the writerly choices I’ve made in my novels. No regrets, only gratitude.

So, do I feel pigeon-holed as a humorist?

Sometimes, but in general, no. Am I concerned about it? No. If I were worried about being typecast as a “humorist,” I wouldn’t have written so many novels—almost all of them—where trying to make the reader laugh was at least part of my plan.

I feel deeply honoured to be able to live the writing life. There will always be humour in my writing. I find it impossible to write without my sense of humour playing out on the page. Moreover, I have no desire to try. But I will also continue to explore other interests in my writing and challenge myself—sometimes successfully, and other times, perhaps not. But I wouldn’t change a thing. It all feels like a necessary part of my writing journey.

For example, I challenged myself in my upcoming tenth novel, The Marionette, by setting the story in far off lands and trying a comic thriller for a second time. And in my eleventh novel, now written, I’m writing for the first time in the third person narrative form, as well as in a shorter format. There is humour in both, but more so in number ten than in number eleven. (More to come in future posts about novel #11.)

As we used to say in the company I cofounded thirty years ago—and from which I retired back in 2022 to write full time—“if you’re standing still, you’re going backwards.”

I don’t intend to stand still as a writer, but certain aspects of my stories will remain as constant as the north star, including humour and hope. After all, I like to laugh, too.

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Wrapping up…

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