It's not funny

If one of your characters is an archaeologist and you know nothing about that, you do some research, right? That seems straightforward.

It seems to me that it gets a bit harder when one of your characters is cleverer than you are or is funnier. What do you do then?

Maybe when a character is cleverer than you, you can be smart with dialogue and syntax to convey intelligence. And you could research subjects that they talk about to show us the things that concern them.

But funnier?

No book I write will be a laugh a minute funny. I mean there may be a smirk here or there, possibly I could even raise a chuckle from you. But I won’t be writing a comedy anytime soon. People tell me I make them laugh … but I'm never quite certain how or why. If it happens it happens.

I just can’t turn on the funny.

So if a character is funnier than I am … how do I do that?