I’m working on the second draft of my newest novel. I love working on second drafts almost as much as writing the first draft. (The less said about how much I love working on the subsequent ones, the better.) As I edit, I’m struck by a detail that should never have become a problem. It is a punctuation mark.
I’m not sure when I first discovered that I had a favourite punctuation mark. However, it was a revelation when em dashes began appearing in my writing decades ago, if I recall correctly.
Most people aren’t aware, but the em dash first appeared in the fifteenth century as a mark indicating the width of the letter “M.” It was, in fact, not even an invention created by grammarians to assist us in expressing our precise meaning, as most punctuation does. Rather, a printer gave us this handy little mark, which lets us replace parentheses, commas and colons. In my view, it also gives the sentence a different feel and, therefore, a different meaning.
I even did a YouTube video on this handy, well-loved little mark back in 2022 (when I still did that kind of thing), giving tips on my personal favourite punctuation marks. FYI, I’ve added it at the bottom in case you’re into these things.
So, you can imagine my horror at discovering that the em dash is now one of the ways editors and readers think they can spot writing created by artificial intelligence. How utterly simplistic. This horrific discovery then sent me on a mad chase to find my em dashes in my second drafts. I examine where I have used them and try to figure out whether parentheses or commas would be better. In almost every case, they would not. So, I’ve succumbed, like so many other writers these days, to incorporating the dreaded sentence fragment. Probably even worse. If you get my meaning.
Then, common sense dawns. I step back and realize that if anyone thinks any piece of writing wasn’t created by a human just because there are em dashes, then I believe we have a serious literacy problem. If, on the other hand, you love a story that also might have the odd em dash, used correctly, effectively and by design, then read it and love it.
I am not apologizing for my em dashes. I love them.
I had a surreal experience recently. My book, We Came From Away, was a 2025 finalist for one of the most coveted literary awards in Canada. It’s the Stephen Leacock Award for Literary Humour. If you don’t know who Leacock was, then you probably should.
He was only the best-known humourist in the world between 1915 and 1925.
British by birth, Leacock settled in Canada, where he first worked as a professor of economics at McGill University in Montreal and later relocated to a small town two hours north of Toronto. And it was to this town, Orillia (also the hometown of another Canadian great, Gordon Lightfoot, BTW), that he settled, and it was there that the Leacock Medal originated three years after he died in 1944.
So, as a finalist, I spent the weekend hobnobbing with some of Canada’s finest humorists: Wayne Johnston, Cathal Kelly, Terry Fallis. They were all there because they are all past winners. Anyway, at one point in the weekend, when someone said that we write humour because we’re all funny people, I almost swallowed my tongue. I am not funny. Not funny at all.
Here we are…the three finalists, cutting a cake that features the covers of all three short-listed books. (I think this photo is courtesy of Leacock Associates, https://tinyurl.com/2k58vj2n, but there are so many similar ones…)
And most of my writing isn’t funny—unless it is. Clearly, since my book was chosen as one of the three best humour books of the year, I must have done something right. The truth is that I don’t set out to write humour. Humour creeps in through my characters and their experiences. So, I thought I’d share some tips about injecting humour into your writing.
Okay, maybe I’m a bit funny when required to do a dreaded book signing. (photo credit: CG Production Company, via https://tinyurl.com/2k58vj2n)
Of course, there is nothing funny about much of what we write these days. If you’re an unfunny writer, you probably wonder why you’d even think about such a ludicrous idea. Well, there may be reasons you haven’t even thought about. I never set out to write humour, either.
I first thought about why one might even consider injecting humour into one’s writing. Here are some reasons.
Humour can make your writing more engaging.
Humour can help you build rapport with your readers.
Humour can sometimes provide contrast to the darker moments, heightening emotional impact.
Humour sharpens insight.
It can also help to light your own mood.
So, what have I learned about writing humour?
First, I learned that humour comes best when the writer first finds the truth and then exaggerates it.
Much of the best humour comes from seeing everyday truths in a sharper, exaggerated light. Take something relatable and then push it a little further into the absurd, the awkward, or the ironic.
I also learned that it’s essential to keep an eye on your audience’s sense of humour.
Not everything is funny to everyone, and in these days where so many people choose to take offence at just about anything, you sometimes have to tread carefully. I have an ongoing funny focus on vegans in this book—one of the characters is a vegan and she bears the brunt of the other character’s slightly off-kilter opinions on veganism and its dubious place in their lives. Sorry, not sorry if anyone is offended. It’s humour.
I also know this to be true: less is funnier. There is no need to over-explain the joke or pile on too many punchlines at once. I learned to trust my readers to “get it.” Often, one well-placed witty line or ironic observation is far funnier than paragraphs trying too hard.
Characters are the foundation of humour in any scene. Humour really shines when it grows organically out of your characters’ personalities or flaws. A character’s inappropriate observations ( my characters are the queens of the inappropriate). Even their deadpan reactions to events can be hilarious—and believable. It’s not about making the scene funny. It’s about following your character’s actions and reactions.
Overall, as I was writing We Came From Away and its sequel Meet Me in Miami, I realized that there’s a difference between writing comedy and writing humour. Comedy writers are going for the gags. Going for the laughs. Humour writers know that there is humour in the mundane. It’s all about how you see it.
Not all my writing is funny, and that’s great for my humour writing because when the characters and situations are funny, it just happens.
Now, when I’m not writing stories that make people laugh, I’m writing mysteries and thrillers. A genre change, you say? Why, yes. Why not?
Sentences make up your paragraphs. Paragraphs make up stories and chapters. Chapters make up books. However, the most basic component of writing is your choice of words. Choosing the right word to convey the right meaning is an essential part of writing well. This is a topic we’ve covered before, but using the right form of a word is a stylistic writing issue that divides the pros who care about getting it right from the amateurs who don’t. Agents, editors, and readers all care about professionally written work, which shows that a writer cares about accuracy.
A few months ago, one of my regular viewers on my YouTube channel, WRITE. FIX. REPEAT. suggested that a video on compound words would be helpful, and that’s the topic of today’s video. What makes compound words especially tricky is that their forms often evolve with our language, requiring writers to keep up. Understanding the structure and usage of compound words helps ensure proper grammar and clarity.
Need a bit of guidance? A few examples? You’re welcome.
Patricia J. Parsons 