This is a question I’ve been asking myself for a while. Now that the first draft of my novel Not Famous is complete, I’m choosing to revisit it. One common description of lad-lit is that is contain a lot of humor. Lots of lad-lit I’ve read is definitely meant to make you laugh-out-loud.

If we go back to High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s debut novel… It’s often described as comedy… but, I’m not so sure that it is. I mean, it has light, humorous moments, but it’s hardly a comedic novel like, for example, Nick Spalding’s Love… series.

The one thing I may not have developed enough in the story to make it proper lad-lit is the humor. Of course, humor can mean humorous situations or funny dialogue, and I’ve tried to sprinkle both throughout the novel, but sparingly. Off the top of my head, I can think of two scenes written with the purpose of injecting some humor. An awkward moment caused by a dog running wild, and a scene involving the return of Nick’s one-night-stand. There are jokes and probably some funny lines of dialogue here and there, but humor was not something I wove into the story as a dominant theme. The humor that does occur is for comic relief purposes… to lighten up the story while also driving the plot.

My beta-reader is now nearly half-way through my novel, and so far I’m hearing that yes, the scenes I’ve written to be funny are in fact funny. Which is really the best that I can ask for, as I’m not specifically trying to write a comedy, but a good story that isn’t overloaded with crazy antics and situations meant to tickle your funny bone. Perhaps that’s enough.

I hope so.