Aims of the course
- To provide participants with an overview of the comic novel tradition, from Cervantes’s Don Quixote and the works of Jane Austen to celebrated modern humour-writing.
- To introduce participants to central techniques and craft principles of writing comic fiction.
- To encourage participants to make their own experiments with the form.
Course content overview
- Comedy has been central to storytelling since antiquity. The first modern European novel, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, is described by A.S. Byatt as a ‘comic realist tale.’
- On a surface level, writing comic fiction is a simple business: the aim is to amuse the reader. In practice, however, it is a complex and multifaceted genre, with a range of conventions, aims, and stylistic approaches.
- The purpose of this online course is to introduce participants to the craft of comic fiction as it relates to (among others) satire and farce, the ‘rom-com’ novel, as well as avant-garde forms of surrealist and postmodern comedy.
- Each week we will examine a different major aspect of comic fiction (plot, characterisation, dialogue, narrative point-of-view, and novel openings & endings).
- Emphasis will be placed on (i) craft discussions, (ii) close reading of extracts from a range of comic fiction traditions, and (iii) writing prompts and exercises.
Teaching Week 1: 'No, but seriously...': comedy in narrative fiction
Participants will gain a high-level understanding of the history of comedy from Aristophanes and Aristotle through to the present-day. How has the ‘comic hero’ developed over the centuries? What are the core sub-genres of comedy today (farce, satire, romantic comedy, postmodern), and what are their identifying features?
The primordial importance of humour in fiction-writing will be emphasised. According to Sigmund Freud, joking can be defined as the ability to find similarity between dissimilar things. The same definition applies to metaphor-creation and perhaps literature itself: ‘the writer’s task,’ John Updike wrote, ‘is the perception of connections between unlike things.’
Supplementary materials will be provided, notably PDF copies of P.G. Wodehouse’s short story, ‘Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court’, and excerpts from Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.
By studying this week the participants should have:
- Acquired a basic understanding of the origins and recurring patterns of narrative storytelling (‘universal structure’) and specifically comic fiction.
- Discussed key features, readerly pleasures, and possible limitations of the ‘flat’ comic character.
- Studied illustrative passages from inter alia Cervantes, Shakespeare, and P.G. Wodehouse, along with excerpts from craft texts such as Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them by John Yorke, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field and The Art of Fiction by John Gardner.
Teaching Week 2: Characterisation in comic fiction
At the end of Week 1’s presentation, participants consider the ‘flat’ hero of light fiction designed merely to divert and amuse. This week we look at satirical fiction that grapples with the darker side of human nature.
Participants will examine how more ‘rounded’ fictional characters enable writers from Jane Austen to National-Book-Award-winner Jonathan Franzen and Booker-Prize-winner Paul Beatty to achieve tragicomic effects in their novels.
As in other modes of fiction, character roundness or depth is related to the concept of desire. There are two strands to desire: the character’s ‘want’ versus his or her ‘need’. Addressing the protagonist’s unconscious need during a story leads to psychological change.
Not only is a rounded, tragic-comic character more complex, but the juxtaposition of light and shade has stylistic benefits. By placing them in proximity, Nabokov and other great writers knew that the funny thing becomes funnier and the sad thing sadder.
Various novel excerpts will be considered to stimulate discussion about characterisation in comic fiction, including but not limited to Emma, The Corrections, Pnin, The Sellout, and the ‘post-comic’ stand-up artistry of Hannah Gadsby.
By studying this week participants should have:
- Learned to create compelling protagonists in comic fiction by understanding how character depth and tragicomic story development are linked.
- Discussed specific passages from comic novels where the complexity of the character is established and develop to humorous effect.
- Completed a character-based writing exercise.
Teaching Week 3: Dialogue in comic fiction
Effective comic dialogue is about more than a powerful punchline. As in any form of fiction, it must also develop plot and reveal character. In this sense this week’s focus on dialogue will build on matters of structure and character considered previously in the course.
Participants will read selected dialogue from a range of comic fiction and examine what effects are being achieved and how. This range of dialogue will cover everything from old-fashioned comic realist social observation (The Line of Beauty and The God of Small Things), to contemporary deadpan (Convenience Store Woman and My Year of Rest and Relaxation), tragicomic wordplay (The Crying of Lot 49 and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?), and what might be called lightly fictionalised memoir (Naked, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, [Priestdaddy?]).
The comic benefits of direct versus reported speech, or a combination of the two, will also be considered.
A writing exercise will provide participants with the opportunity to develop their dialogue skills in their own creative work.
By studying this week participants should have:
- Performed close readings of dialogue-heavy excerpts from selected comic novels and short stories.
- Developed a critical understanding of the strategic possibilities and effects of good dialogue in comic fiction beyond conveying information.
- Put into practice this critical understanding with a short piece of creative work
Teaching Week 4: Narrative point-of-view in comic fiction
This week we will examine how narrative point-of-view can be deployed for comic effect in both (a) conventional realist fiction and (b) surrealist-influenced or postmodern fiction.
Using an unreliable narrator is a reliably comic technique: the gap between the narrator’s perception of events and those of the reader can be exploited for humorous effects.
In more avant-garde writing, a self-conscious narrator (like the narrator of Laurence Sterne’s 1759 Tristram Shandy) can comically call attention to the artificiality of the text. Other innovative uses of POV include the second-person narrators of Lorrie Moore’s short stories and the chorus-like “we” of Donald Barthelme’s much-anthologised ‘The School’.
Participants will further develop their thinking about plot and character from the first two weeks of the course. How is a novel’s plot shaped by narrative proximity or distance from its characters?
By studying this week participants should have:
- Understood the comic advantages of employing different narratives voices and perspectives.
- Studied excerpts from acclaimed comic novels and short stories that use different POV modes, including work by Lorrie Moore, Edward St Aubyn, Zadie Smith, and Donald Barthelme.
- Experimented with writing in ‘close third’, second person, unreliable first person et cetera.
Teaching Week 5: Openings and endings in comfic fiction
In this final week, we will think about what makes for effective beginnings and endings in the comic novel.
Starting with the former, what is the purpose of a first sentence, beginning paragraph, opening page…? Participants will consider the importance of the comic set-up as a narrative strategy. Examples from long and short fiction will be considered.
The ending of a story, according to 2017 Booker-Prize-winner George Saunders, should ‘satisfy (the reader’s) expectation in a way that’s both complicated and non-random.’ How might we satisfy the complicated and non-random requirement in modern comic writing? We will finish the course by returning to notions of story structure (notably the question of synthesis/resolution) examined in week 1.
By studying this week participants should have:
- Analysed the nature and objectives of effective novel openings and endings.
- Completed a writing exercise on first sentence/paragraph and conclusion of a comic story.
- Studied and discussed a range of examples from comic fiction.
Schedule (this course is completed entirely online)
Orientation Week: 18-24 May 2026
Teaching Weeks: 25 May-28 June 2026
Feedback Week: 29 June-5 July 2026
Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours reading material, etc., although this will vary from person to person.
While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material).
Virtual Learning Environment
Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (discussion boards etc).
Certificate of participation
A Certificate of Participation will be awarded to participants who contribute constructively to weekly discussions and exercises/assignments for the duration of the course.
What our students say:
"I thought this was a superb course - exactly rightly balanced for someone at my level, and I felt Timothy was actively and warmly engaging with all of us."
"This is one of the best courses I have done because of it's practical hands-on nature. The craft of structure, characterization, dialogue and point of view has been clearly demonstrated by a writing pedagogue. What surprised me was the range of topics that sort under comic writing."
"This is the first ICE course I've attended and, I admit, it was a great experience, very instructive and from which I learned a lot. With the narrative strategies I learned new useful notions for better writing and especially for creating comic effects! In addition, the wide variety of literary examples, including contemporary ones, made me discover new writers or deepen my knowledge of readings."
