As the end of November starts to slide into view and the sales process for the new Christmas novella swings into the automatic phase of appearance after appearance after appearance, I start to turn my mind to the next writing project.
As anyone who has read my earlier posts on this blog will know, I have been considering a number of different possibilities for 2015: a comic novel, a more serious novel that seems to be developing to of the comic novel, another collection of Abigail Massey historical stories for children, perhaps another Abigail Massey novel, and even a play project that would be developed out of A McAdam Station Christmas.
That's a long list, I know. And it may just end up that I actually pursue two, three, even four of them in the new year.
I have written about 15 pretty good pages of the comic/serious novel and I find myself continuously developing it as I wonder through my life.
I had a nice coffee with a friend the other day, a friend who has been strongly involved in the Abigail project over the past two years, and she has expressed an interest in creating a writers' group specifically to work on new Abigail children's stories. The idea would be that we find two more strong writers, toss around stories ideas together, then each of us go away and write a story for the others to review.
There are a lot of real advantages to this kind of approach, including the fact that it would become less a work project and more a social project and the fact that having four writers involved in the project would mean that we had four people helping to promote the new book once it is published.
The possibility of a new Abigail novel, meanwhile, got a jump start when, in response to a very simple story suggestion sent to me by a friend, I pumped out a fully developed plot proposal of more than 500 words for a possible novel. It surprised me that it came so easily: clearly I have been considering the possibility, at least in my subconscious, for some time.
And the play idea... well, that one might actually be the first on the list. A friend at work has earned a degree in screen-writing and is very interested in working with me on a play. And I think that, if we can write a decent stage play out of the Christmas novella, we could have it performed next Christmas at the McAdam Station or perhaps at a local theatre. That would provide a boost not just to the Station but to the sale of the Abigail books themselves.
These are interesting times... with lots of decisions to be made and lots of writing work to be done.
Showing posts with label comic novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comic novel. Show all posts
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Monday, April 14, 2014
The elements required for writing funny...
I've been doing a lot of reading lately about how to go about writing humour. Or "writing funny".
(Which, itself, sounds funny. Writing funny. "Hey, you're writing funny." What does that mean? That I'm holding my pen with my nose? That I'm hitting the keys on the keyboard with my toes? That my cursive script looks odd on the paper?)
Now, I consider myself to be a pretty funny guy in person. I like to believe that I have a quick wit and use language effectively in the back-and-forth of casual conversation.
In fact, I have often thought about trying my hand at stand-up comedy. But then I realise that I'd probably be better at the improvised-conversation-with-the-audience part than I would be with the prepared material.
And that worries me. It is a very different thing to be funny in prepared material, in writing, than it is to be funny in day-to-day life. Writing, by definition, takes time. And there is a time lag between when you write and when your reader reads. There is no interaction, no back and forth, no reading off your reader's reaction and moving off into a new (and with luck funny) direction.
Without the free-flow of a conversation, I am not so confident that I can be consistently funny.
On the other hand, I write a monthly blog for my work on Privacy and I pride myself on how funny it is. People actually watch our workplace's website for the next entry on that blog and, when it gets posted each month, I can hear people laughing out loud as they read it in their cubicles.
(Which, itself, sounds funny. Writing funny. "Hey, you're writing funny." What does that mean? That I'm holding my pen with my nose? That I'm hitting the keys on the keyboard with my toes? That my cursive script looks odd on the paper?)
Now, I consider myself to be a pretty funny guy in person. I like to believe that I have a quick wit and use language effectively in the back-and-forth of casual conversation.
In fact, I have often thought about trying my hand at stand-up comedy. But then I realise that I'd probably be better at the improvised-conversation-with-the-audience part than I would be with the prepared material.
And that worries me. It is a very different thing to be funny in prepared material, in writing, than it is to be funny in day-to-day life. Writing, by definition, takes time. And there is a time lag between when you write and when your reader reads. There is no interaction, no back and forth, no reading off your reader's reaction and moving off into a new (and with luck funny) direction.
Without the free-flow of a conversation, I am not so confident that I can be consistently funny.
On the other hand, I write a monthly blog for my work on Privacy and I pride myself on how funny it is. People actually watch our workplace's website for the next entry on that blog and, when it gets posted each month, I can hear people laughing out loud as they read it in their cubicles.
So maybe I can be funny in writing. At least in short bursts. But can I be funny over the course of an entire novel? Hmmmm....
I am planning to write a comic novel and I have already charted out the main points of the plot and developed most of the primary characters. It's a good start. But I find myself putting off actually sitting down to write because of my fear that I cannot be funny for that extended period of time... in writing.
I think I need to be in the right mood. I generally dash off a blog post on the spur of the moment when the mood strikes me. I have to be happy, and excited, and energetic and stuff like that.
To write an entire comic novel, I think I'm going to have to be all those things. And perhaps a little drunk. In fact, I'm already planning to spend evenings this spring and summer out in my back yard, with a tall G&T and my netbook, writing funny. I think I could be successful under those circumstances.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Twisting the rubber band....
My first issue of Writer's Digest includes an excerpt from the book Comedy Writing Secrets, 2nd Edition, by Mel Helitzer, with Mark Shatz. The article is entitled, "Realism & Exaggeration: Really, Truly Funny".
To be frank, I wasn't impressed with the excerpt: I found it uneven and unclear. I also didn't find the examples given by the author to be particularly funny nor effective. As a result, it certainly didn't make me want to rush out and buy the book.
The excerpt's clarity problems become apparent in its very first paragraph, which begins, "Humor only appears to be free-form. To the trained ear, it's predictable because it's structured."
Huh?
I had to read the first paragraph a couple of times to figure out that the word "appears" should be italicized in the first sentence, to make it clear that Heltzer is arguing against the unstated premise that most people believe that humor (or humorous writing) has no structure. Without the italics, I read the sentence as having the emphasis on the word "only", suggesting that the only way that humor appears to exist is in free-form format.
Confusing your reader does not seem to be a great way to launch an excerpt.
That being said, I did find that the Helitzer piece helped to confirm my own impressions of how to approach a successful comic novel. Helitzer talks about the important connection between realism and exaggeration in humor, pointing out that the two must be properly balanced in a truly funny tale. You must create a realistic background, he argues, and realistic characters, to make your eventual exaggerations that much more effective and funny.
I have just started attempting to write my own comic novel, my first. In preparation for this attempt, I decided to read a number of successful such novels from the last 15 years, just to get an idea of the elements that are common to all of them.
I began with Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, followed that with Richard Russo's Straight Man, Lazy Days by Erlend Loe, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and finished up with two by John Green: Paper Town and An Abundance of Katherines.
All very successful and all, on the surface at least, very different. To paraphrase Helitzer, however, "These comic novels only appear to be different."
In reading them, you see, I found a number of common threads:
1. All featured male protagonists;
2. All the protagonists were portrayed as "real" people, but each had a slightly exaggerated characteristic that made him different from the norm;
3. Each protagonist, therefore, was positioned as an outsider of sorts in their communities, such that they were able to provide a slightly warped but still fairly objective commentary on the world;
4. The humor in each novel flowed from the interaction of the exaggerated characteristic of the protagonist with the people and events he encountered; and
5. Each novel featured at least one hilarious scene where a series of believable, realistic steps leads to a bizarre, ridiculously exaggerated outcome.
As Helitzer says, "You start with a realistic scenario, then bend and distort it for comic effect."
In the books I read, it is the exaggerated characteristic of the character that, in each case, does the bending and distorting of reality.
In Russo's book, for example, his character (William Devereaux, Jr.) is an anarchistic academic who simply cannot take "the rules" seriously. The result: he ends up appearing on the television news, holding a goose aloft, threatening to murder it if the University does not cooperate; or hidden, urine-drenched, in the false ceiling above a meeting room where his colleagues are deciding his fate.
In Lazy Days, Bror Telemann has an exaggerated love for the theatre... and for master chef and author Nigella Lawson. This leads to arguments at tennis courts and late night forays into the kitchen to make Nigella's favourite dishes.
My favourite is in The 100-Year-Old Man, where the main character's old-style formality and politeness lead naturally, inexorably to a memorable chase through the country-side in an old bus, with a small-time criminal, a gangster, a sexy mature woman and an full-sized circus elephant along for the ride.
John Green's characters, like the protagonist in The Rosie Project, are both hyper-intellectual, socially awkward young men in search of love. It's their intellectualism that gets in the way but also tends to lead them into increasingly bizarre and interesting situations.
In all cases, the characters are based in realism, with only slightly exaggerated character traits. But those traits cause the characters to proceed down carefully designed, increasingly exaggerated pathways to end up in hilarious places the reader could never have foreseen.
In the case of Straight Man and The 100-Year-Old Man in particular, the writing was so skillful that I never once questioned the build-up to the crazy punch-line (the professor dripping urine or the elephant in the bus). It was only when I got to the punch-line that, laughing heartily, I thought: How the heck did this author get me to this ridiculous place without me noticing or rebelling?
As I work on my own comic novel, I will remember the lessons I've learned. I will start from the realistic and allow my character's slightly exaggerated trait lead me into hilarity. And I'll have Helitzer and Shatz (and all the other authors mentioned above) to thank if my book is a success.
To be frank, I wasn't impressed with the excerpt: I found it uneven and unclear. I also didn't find the examples given by the author to be particularly funny nor effective. As a result, it certainly didn't make me want to rush out and buy the book.
The excerpt's clarity problems become apparent in its very first paragraph, which begins, "Humor only appears to be free-form. To the trained ear, it's predictable because it's structured."
Huh?
I had to read the first paragraph a couple of times to figure out that the word "appears" should be italicized in the first sentence, to make it clear that Heltzer is arguing against the unstated premise that most people believe that humor (or humorous writing) has no structure. Without the italics, I read the sentence as having the emphasis on the word "only", suggesting that the only way that humor appears to exist is in free-form format.
Confusing your reader does not seem to be a great way to launch an excerpt.
That being said, I did find that the Helitzer piece helped to confirm my own impressions of how to approach a successful comic novel. Helitzer talks about the important connection between realism and exaggeration in humor, pointing out that the two must be properly balanced in a truly funny tale. You must create a realistic background, he argues, and realistic characters, to make your eventual exaggerations that much more effective and funny.
I have just started attempting to write my own comic novel, my first. In preparation for this attempt, I decided to read a number of successful such novels from the last 15 years, just to get an idea of the elements that are common to all of them.
I began with Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, followed that with Richard Russo's Straight Man, Lazy Days by Erlend Loe, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and finished up with two by John Green: Paper Town and An Abundance of Katherines.
All very successful and all, on the surface at least, very different. To paraphrase Helitzer, however, "These comic novels only appear to be different."
In reading them, you see, I found a number of common threads:
1. All featured male protagonists;
2. All the protagonists were portrayed as "real" people, but each had a slightly exaggerated characteristic that made him different from the norm;
3. Each protagonist, therefore, was positioned as an outsider of sorts in their communities, such that they were able to provide a slightly warped but still fairly objective commentary on the world;
4. The humor in each novel flowed from the interaction of the exaggerated characteristic of the protagonist with the people and events he encountered; and
5. Each novel featured at least one hilarious scene where a series of believable, realistic steps leads to a bizarre, ridiculously exaggerated outcome.
As Helitzer says, "You start with a realistic scenario, then bend and distort it for comic effect."
In the books I read, it is the exaggerated characteristic of the character that, in each case, does the bending and distorting of reality.
In Russo's book, for example, his character (William Devereaux, Jr.) is an anarchistic academic who simply cannot take "the rules" seriously. The result: he ends up appearing on the television news, holding a goose aloft, threatening to murder it if the University does not cooperate; or hidden, urine-drenched, in the false ceiling above a meeting room where his colleagues are deciding his fate.
In Lazy Days, Bror Telemann has an exaggerated love for the theatre... and for master chef and author Nigella Lawson. This leads to arguments at tennis courts and late night forays into the kitchen to make Nigella's favourite dishes.
My favourite is in The 100-Year-Old Man, where the main character's old-style formality and politeness lead naturally, inexorably to a memorable chase through the country-side in an old bus, with a small-time criminal, a gangster, a sexy mature woman and an full-sized circus elephant along for the ride.
John Green's characters, like the protagonist in The Rosie Project, are both hyper-intellectual, socially awkward young men in search of love. It's their intellectualism that gets in the way but also tends to lead them into increasingly bizarre and interesting situations.
In all cases, the characters are based in realism, with only slightly exaggerated character traits. But those traits cause the characters to proceed down carefully designed, increasingly exaggerated pathways to end up in hilarious places the reader could never have foreseen.
In the case of Straight Man and The 100-Year-Old Man in particular, the writing was so skillful that I never once questioned the build-up to the crazy punch-line (the professor dripping urine or the elephant in the bus). It was only when I got to the punch-line that, laughing heartily, I thought: How the heck did this author get me to this ridiculous place without me noticing or rebelling?
As I work on my own comic novel, I will remember the lessons I've learned. I will start from the realistic and allow my character's slightly exaggerated trait lead me into hilarity. And I'll have Helitzer and Shatz (and all the other authors mentioned above) to thank if my book is a success.
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