Short Story Example: Comedy. A Complete Funny Story and Why It Works
Quick answer: An original comic short story, a father and daughter assembling a wardrobe without the instructions, with notes on how character and escalation make it funny.
Comedy in a short story does not come from jokes. It comes from a character with a fixed idea meeting a situation that refuses to cooperate, and from the writer letting the situation escalate one honest step at a time. The original story below is about a man, a flat-pack wardrobe, and his conviction that he does not need the instructions. The breakdown afterwards shows where the laughs are built and why the ending is warm rather than cruel.
Step Fourteen
Deepa's father did not read instructions. He had built a career in civil engineering, a garage extension, and a marriage on this principle, and he was not going to abandon it for a Swedish wardrobe. 'It's a box,' he said, laying out the panels on Deepa's bedroom floor. 'Four sides, a back, two doors. A child could do it.' Deepa, thirty-two, who had done it twice in previous flats, sat on the bed with the instruction booklet closed in her lap and said nothing, because she had learned that saying something only made it take longer. Within twenty minutes he had a frame, a back, and a look of satisfaction, and within twenty-two he had discovered that the frame was inside out, with the good veneer facing the wall and the unfinished side facing the room. 'Design choice,' he said. He took it apart. The second attempt went in the right way round and had a shelf at knee height, which he described as 'for shoes' with great confidence, and a door that opened into the other door. He took it apart. At the third attempt he was quieter. He had begun to accumulate a small pile of parts that did not, in his view, belong to this wardrobe. There were eleven of them. Deepa knew, without looking, that they were the cam locks from step fourteen, and that step fourteen was the reason the doors would not hang. At 6.40 her mother rang to ask how it was going. Deepa said 'Nearly there,' and her father, from inside the wardrobe, said 'Tell her it's a good wardrobe, structurally,' and her mother, who had been married to him for thirty-eight years, said, 'Has he found the little metal things yet?' At 7.15 he sat back against the bed and looked at the pile of eleven and then at the booklet in his daughter's lap, and they held each other's gaze for a long moment, thirty-two years of it. 'Read me step fourteen,' he said. 'Only fourteen.' She read him step fourteen. The doors hung. He stood back with his hands on his hips and looked at it and said, 'That's what I'd have done anyway,' and she said, 'I know, Papa,' and meant it, mostly.
Where the comedy is built
The first sentence is the character and the whole plot: a man who does not read instructions and a wardrobe that requires them. Everything that follows is escalation. Inside out, then a knee-high shelf and a door that opens into a door, then a pile of eleven unidentified parts. Each failure is bigger than the last and each is met with a smaller and more dignified excuse, 'Design choice', 'for shoes', 'structurally', which is the rhythm of comic pride collapsing.
The daughter's silence is the story's second joke and its heart. She has the booklet and does not open it, and the story tells you why in one clause: it only made it take longer. Her mother's line on the phone confirms that this is a thirty-eight-year pattern and lets the reader laugh with the family rather than at the father. The ending gives him a partial surrender, 'Only fourteen', and a final face-saving line that his daughter allows him. The last word, mostly, is the story's tone in one adverb.
Writing your own comic story
Give a character one fixed belief and put them somewhere it will fail. Escalate in three steps, each worse and each met with more dignity. Add a second character who knows the answer and has a reason not to give it. Let the surrender be partial and let the last line be kind. Comedy that punishes its characters is farce; comedy that lets them keep a little pride is something people reread.
What writers can take from this
- Start with a fixed belief and a task that will test it.
- Escalate three times; the excuses should shrink as the failures grow.
- Give the knowing character a reason for silence.
- Use a phone call or a bystander to confirm the pattern is old.
- End on a partial surrender and a face-saving line.
Try it yourself
Write a comic story of under 700 words in which a character insists on doing a task their own way while someone who knows the correct way watches. The task must fail three times, each excuse shorter than the last, and the story must end with dignity intact.
Questions
How do you write comedy without jokes?
Build it from character and escalation. A fixed belief, a task that defeats it, and a rising series of failures met with rising dignity will make readers laugh without a single punchline. The humour is in the gap between what the character says and what the reader sees.
Can a funny short story also be moving?
The best ones are. Step Fourteen is about a wardrobe and also about a daughter who has learned when to hold a booklet closed. Warmth under the comedy is what makes readers care whether the doors hang.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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