A Spoonful of Sugar…

…Makes the medicine go down, according to Mary Poppins in the classic 1964 Disney film. She’s got a literal and figurative point in relation to both life and fiction (though she can keep the pigeons). 

In life, we often lean into laughter when we want to cry but fear we won’t stop if we start—in fiction, so do our characters. When watching a movie about a difficult subject, who hasn’t felt the relief of a pithy one-liner that breaks the tension, even if just for a moment? There’s a reason comic moments are a staple of horror flicks. But the same broad principles about balancing darkness and light, humour and drama, apply to pretty much all stories.

If you’re writing about dark subject matter and something feels off about your pacing, a good first question to ask yourself is, ‘Have I given the reader some emotional breathing space through a comic moment or lighter scene?’ A touch of humour acts a ‘spoonful of sugar’ not just in terms of balancing out the darkness but also in terms of the fact that any emotional state becomes boring over time. Just as our tastebuds get saturated by an excess of any single flavour, variety keeps us savouring a dish to the end—this is why contrasting tastes like lemon-meringue and rhubarb-and-custard are perennially popular.

Readers need emotional variety to avoid empathy overload; it’s the changing emotional landscape that allows us to stay immersed in a story, vicariously experiencing every beat. If there aren’t lows, the highs don’t sing so sweetly, and when there are only lows, a story can start to feel like an ordeal. So if you’ve added a comic one-liner or a scene where your protagonist plays with a kitten and your manuscript is still feeling heavy-going, consider whether the balance of emotional ups and downs across the whole story is right.

The really thorny question is ‘How do I achieve an effective balance?’ Emotional variety is important but readers don’t relish emotional whiplash—unless it’s to a purpose—so think carefully about how quickly you shift from humour to drama. When relief from too much tension is needed, a sudden shift tends to be fine. It’s trickier the other way round as moving from humour to darkness too abruptly can leave readers feeling the rug has been pulled out from under them. Often it works best when the writer sets up a scene to seem funny, then reveals the deeper, darker truth beneath – Holly Bourne’s work is a masterclass in this. The crux is a sense that the revelation of the ‘truth beneath the surface’ comprises an authentic, realistic and yet surprising insight into a character and/or situation that, in turn, expands our understanding of people and the world around us.

Tone is just as important, especially in terms of the risk that readers will feel a writer is being flippant about serious matters. In contemporary stories dealing with serious issues, gallows humour is often most fitting—it’s the type of humour we revert to in real life when things are terrible, whereas true light-heartedness is inauthentic for moments of horror. Again, the key ingredient is a sense of the ‘truthfulness’ of the emotional shift. This is why readers are most likely to welcome a dash of humour to balance out darker elements if the laugh isn’t the writer’s priority—the writer’s focus needs to be on using both comedy and drama to do justice to the real issues the book explores.

Whatever approach is chosen, readers expect writers to respect the issues at stake. If humour is intended to shock or offend, readers expect there to be a purpose behind the choice—usually to shed new light or challenge those who devalue the issue in question. However, this approach is firmly out of vogue. Current readers prefer the use of (Western-style) magical realism, fantasy, or satire to provide a new lens on an issue or a palatable distance between reality and the story. Often this comes in the form of an implausible ‘what if’.

In The Best Way to Bury Your Husband, four women kill their abusive husbands in self-defense within a two-week period and 5-mile radius. This would never happen in reality. However, four husbands killing the wives they’ve been abusing – and doing so in a short space of time and small geographical area—is merely unlikely. The impossibility of the first scenario makes it funny, whereas the fact that the second could really happen means putting a comic spin on it would be uncomfortable and problematic.

The tone of the humour in The Best Way to Bury Your Husband is fittingly black. More importantly, it’s delivered through the voice of the protagonist, Sally. Using a character to drive the humour means that readers aren’t being asked to accept that what’s happening is actually funny, let alone good—instead, I’m simply inviting them to see a terrible situation through Sally’s perspective as she tries to cope. Readers can then make of it what they will. 

As a writer, I believe in asking questions, not delivering messages. If the book ‘says’ anything, it’s that male violence against women and girls is horrifically common and we have to do better than abandoning women to the choice between killing in self-defense or risking being murdered. The fact that the book’s set during the Lockdown makes it an even starker situation. I’m happy to provide some laughs along the way, but it’s up to readers to decide how they answer the moral questions the book raises. 

By providing a ‘spoonful of sugar’, my hope is that people who’d otherwise avoid books about this vital issue will engage not just with the story but the changes we all need to commit to being part of if we’re to make the world a better place.

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