LOVE this clip from Studio C! Too bad it's not that easy...
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Monday, June 4, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Best Writing Advice Ever
By Julie Daines
In 1986, Frank L. Visco published this advice in Writer's Digest. It's so awesome I had to post it again here, even though I'm sure many of you have already seen this.
How To Write Good:
Here are a few more added to the list by another guy:
Click here for source.
Posted by Julie Daines
www.juliedaines.blogspot.com
In 1986, Frank L. Visco published this advice in Writer's Digest. It's so awesome I had to post it again here, even though I'm sure many of you have already seen this.
How To Write Good:
| My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules: | |
|
|
Here are a few more added to the list by another guy:
- Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
- Poofread carefully to see if you any words out.
- A writer must not shift your point of view.
- If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
Click here for source.
Posted by Julie Daines
www.juliedaines.blogspot.com
Friday, June 3, 2011
A Comedy of Horrors
by Scott Rhoades
Last Friday, I wrote about how delight relies on surprise. Things that delight us are often things that surprise us.
This week, I want to write about two genres that depend almost entirely on surprise to delight us, two genres that might be thought of as near opposites but that are really very similar. If you read the title of this post, you know where I'm going. (I never was very good at keeping a surprise.)
Comedy, as I pointed out last week in my almost worshipful praise of songwriter Tom Lehrer, depends completely on surprise. Think about jokes. Jokes, whether they hinge on a stupid pun or an unexpected resolution to a humorous situation, depend on a surprising punchline. When the surprise is gone, so is the funny. That's why a joke is only really funny--I mean gut-splittingly-drink-spittingly funny--the first time you hear it.
For comedy to work really well. You need a set up. A good set up builds tension, and the tension continues to deepen until you finally get the release from the punchline. If something in your setup fails, you end up with a premature release. It might not completely spoil the punchline, but it takes away much of the punch.
The same with horror. The best horror doesn't simply gross you out, something many of today's horror writers, and especially screen writers, never quite learned. Horror is all about building tension toward a release at the end. Sure, there might be small releases along the way, like the smaller hills on a roller coaster, but they are not really releases. Each of these releases is a trick that actually builds even more tension, until you get your release at the end. Like humor, that release has to be a surprise if it's going to work.
Another technique that's often central to both comedy and horror writing is the transportation of the audience away from whatever they consider safe. Safety inhibits surprise. At the same time, taking us too far from our safety zone eliminates much of the delight we get from a good surprise. An unsafe, unpleasant surprise does the opposite of delight. That's why people like roller coasters, scary stories, and jokes that push our limits like an uncomfortable pause without going too far. And it's why they don't like the surprise of a baseball coming through their living room window. They want a safe way to flirt with danger, to trick their brains into releasing endorphins without ever really putting them into really unsafe territory.
Let me take a break for a second to ask a question. Where might you find some of the best humor writing? Inside a good horror story. In a horror story, lots of stuff goes wrong. But if everything goes bad all the time, then you expect the bad and it no longer surprises. The tension is built not so much as a ramp as a series of steps combined with ramps, and many of those ramps are punctuated by something funny. Just like you can't know good without knowing bad, you can't know terror without knowing laughs.
Something else horror and comedy have in common? What do you do at the end of a good joke? You laugh like crazy. What do you do after a good scare? That's right.
Watch the people as a scary roller coaster pulls into the station. What are they doing? Laughing. What were they doing a few seconds ago? Screaming their little heads off. Wouldn't you love that same result in your own stories?
Here's the thing--all good fiction writing and many kinds of nonfiction writing are no different that horror and comedy. It's all about building tension until you reach the release at the end.
Both comedy and horror are often maligned (something else they have in common) as having less literary merit than more serious books. Whatever genre you like to write from picture books to literary fiction for adults, you can learn a lot about good writing by reading these "inferior" genres. If you don't usually read horror, try it. Same with humor. (Or mysteries. Or thrillers. Or romance. Or whatever.) Pay attention to the way the writer builds tension and makes you think there's relief in sight, only to twist that false relief into more tension. Then watch as the coaster comes back into the station. Pay attention to the laugh at the end as the tension is finally relieved by a surprise.
Then, no matter what you write, use fear and comedy to build the tension in your own story. Take the reader into safely dangerous territory, then let us feel the relief when that tension is released at the end. You'll delight your readers, and have a lot of fun writing.
Last Friday, I wrote about how delight relies on surprise. Things that delight us are often things that surprise us.
This week, I want to write about two genres that depend almost entirely on surprise to delight us, two genres that might be thought of as near opposites but that are really very similar. If you read the title of this post, you know where I'm going. (I never was very good at keeping a surprise.)
Comedy, as I pointed out last week in my almost worshipful praise of songwriter Tom Lehrer, depends completely on surprise. Think about jokes. Jokes, whether they hinge on a stupid pun or an unexpected resolution to a humorous situation, depend on a surprising punchline. When the surprise is gone, so is the funny. That's why a joke is only really funny--I mean gut-splittingly-drink-spittingly funny--the first time you hear it.
For comedy to work really well. You need a set up. A good set up builds tension, and the tension continues to deepen until you finally get the release from the punchline. If something in your setup fails, you end up with a premature release. It might not completely spoil the punchline, but it takes away much of the punch.
The same with horror. The best horror doesn't simply gross you out, something many of today's horror writers, and especially screen writers, never quite learned. Horror is all about building tension toward a release at the end. Sure, there might be small releases along the way, like the smaller hills on a roller coaster, but they are not really releases. Each of these releases is a trick that actually builds even more tension, until you get your release at the end. Like humor, that release has to be a surprise if it's going to work.
Another technique that's often central to both comedy and horror writing is the transportation of the audience away from whatever they consider safe. Safety inhibits surprise. At the same time, taking us too far from our safety zone eliminates much of the delight we get from a good surprise. An unsafe, unpleasant surprise does the opposite of delight. That's why people like roller coasters, scary stories, and jokes that push our limits like an uncomfortable pause without going too far. And it's why they don't like the surprise of a baseball coming through their living room window. They want a safe way to flirt with danger, to trick their brains into releasing endorphins without ever really putting them into really unsafe territory.
Let me take a break for a second to ask a question. Where might you find some of the best humor writing? Inside a good horror story. In a horror story, lots of stuff goes wrong. But if everything goes bad all the time, then you expect the bad and it no longer surprises. The tension is built not so much as a ramp as a series of steps combined with ramps, and many of those ramps are punctuated by something funny. Just like you can't know good without knowing bad, you can't know terror without knowing laughs.
Something else horror and comedy have in common? What do you do at the end of a good joke? You laugh like crazy. What do you do after a good scare? That's right.
Watch the people as a scary roller coaster pulls into the station. What are they doing? Laughing. What were they doing a few seconds ago? Screaming their little heads off. Wouldn't you love that same result in your own stories?
Here's the thing--all good fiction writing and many kinds of nonfiction writing are no different that horror and comedy. It's all about building tension until you reach the release at the end.
Both comedy and horror are often maligned (something else they have in common) as having less literary merit than more serious books. Whatever genre you like to write from picture books to literary fiction for adults, you can learn a lot about good writing by reading these "inferior" genres. If you don't usually read horror, try it. Same with humor. (Or mysteries. Or thrillers. Or romance. Or whatever.) Pay attention to the way the writer builds tension and makes you think there's relief in sight, only to twist that false relief into more tension. Then watch as the coaster comes back into the station. Pay attention to the laugh at the end as the tension is finally relieved by a surprise.
Then, no matter what you write, use fear and comedy to build the tension in your own story. Take the reader into safely dangerous territory, then let us feel the relief when that tension is released at the end. You'll delight your readers, and have a lot of fun writing.
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Delight of Surprise
by Scott Rhoades
It doesn't matter what genre you write, what age group you write for, whether you rhyme or swear or rely on pictures to tell most of your story. Whether people remember your work comes down to one thing: delight.
We've all read books that we really liked, or that had an artistry or depth or literariness that we enjoyed and appreciated, but that we didn't quite love. Likewise, we've read books that we know might not quite have the literary value of many of the books we enjoy reading and displaying on our shelves, but they've become instant favorites or guilty pleasures. A book sticks with you for many different reasons, but the books that make your eyes light up when they are mentioned have less to do with quality than they do with the sheer delight of reading them.
What creates this sense of delight varies from reader to reader, but I think most of are delighted by similar things, including:
Think of two of my favorite authors, Mark Twain and John Steinbeck. Both of these men were prolific authors whose works vary greatly in quality. Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but he also wrote Tom Sawyer, Detective and The American Claimant. Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, but he also wrote Burning Bright and The Short Reign of Pippin IV. I mention the "also wrotes" not to put them down or to call them bad, but to make a point. Twain and Steinbeck fans like those other books, maybe even love them. Why? Because each of these writers, even when relatively off, delight their readers with the way they write. Even if the characters aren't his best or the story is not quite up to snuff, there's just something about the way our favorites write that makes us forgive, or even ignore, the shortcomings of their lesser works because we know we're going to find something delightful.
That's the kind of writer you want to be.
All of this came to mind today while I was driving home for lunch, with a Tom Lehrer CD in the player. People my age most likely know a few of Tom Lehrer's songs, thanks to the Dr. Demento radio show. Songs like "The Masochism Tango" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" have a delightfully twisted humor, a darkness that makes us laugh and remember the songs. I love that about his songs. But there are a lot of funny and dark comedy songwriters. Lehrer is pushed to the top by the kind of intelligence you'd expect from a mathematics professor at major universities, like Lehrer was.
But that's not what really delights me about Tom Lehrer. I'm a word nerd, and (as you may have gathered by now) I love surprises. Few, if any, songwriters can turn a great phrase or rhyme that surprises me as much as Tom Lehrer.
How many rhymes do you know for funeral? Check this out:
When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that sooner or
Later those you love will do the same for you.
It doesn't come out right on the page. You have to hear it to believe it. He does it over and over in his songs. And it's not only the rhymes. Check out the astounding list of -ity words in "When You Are Old And Gray." The song would be hilarious without it, but with that list, it becomes something special. Or check out the unexpected place that his tender love song "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" takes us.
Lehrer's songs are packed full of surprises, usually layers of them, in his rhymes, word choices, subject matter, and twists. And so, even the songs that nobody will ever consider classics delight me. I enjoy even the songs that are not among his best, because I know they'll surprise me, even after I've heard them several times. Not many writers can do that. Dr. Seuss can. Shel Silverstein can. And now you know (if you didn't already) that Tom Lehrer can.
We all want to delight our readers so they come back to our work again and again, so they know when they see something with our names on it they can't count on a good time. Look at your favorite writers and figure out what it is that makes them mean what they do to you, then personalize that and have some fun delighting yourself as you write.
Next time I post on this blog, I'll write about two particular genres that rely on surprise, two genres that many people might think of as near opposites, but that are really very similar. But if I told you now which two genres I mean, I'd spoil the surprise, so you'll just have to wait a week.
It doesn't matter what genre you write, what age group you write for, whether you rhyme or swear or rely on pictures to tell most of your story. Whether people remember your work comes down to one thing: delight.
We've all read books that we really liked, or that had an artistry or depth or literariness that we enjoyed and appreciated, but that we didn't quite love. Likewise, we've read books that we know might not quite have the literary value of many of the books we enjoy reading and displaying on our shelves, but they've become instant favorites or guilty pleasures. A book sticks with you for many different reasons, but the books that make your eyes light up when they are mentioned have less to do with quality than they do with the sheer delight of reading them.
What creates this sense of delight varies from reader to reader, but I think most of are delighted by similar things, including:
- Surprise
- Use of language (see surprise)
- Humor (see surprise)
- Originality (see surprise)
Think of two of my favorite authors, Mark Twain and John Steinbeck. Both of these men were prolific authors whose works vary greatly in quality. Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but he also wrote Tom Sawyer, Detective and The American Claimant. Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, but he also wrote Burning Bright and The Short Reign of Pippin IV. I mention the "also wrotes" not to put them down or to call them bad, but to make a point. Twain and Steinbeck fans like those other books, maybe even love them. Why? Because each of these writers, even when relatively off, delight their readers with the way they write. Even if the characters aren't his best or the story is not quite up to snuff, there's just something about the way our favorites write that makes us forgive, or even ignore, the shortcomings of their lesser works because we know we're going to find something delightful.
That's the kind of writer you want to be.
All of this came to mind today while I was driving home for lunch, with a Tom Lehrer CD in the player. People my age most likely know a few of Tom Lehrer's songs, thanks to the Dr. Demento radio show. Songs like "The Masochism Tango" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" have a delightfully twisted humor, a darkness that makes us laugh and remember the songs. I love that about his songs. But there are a lot of funny and dark comedy songwriters. Lehrer is pushed to the top by the kind of intelligence you'd expect from a mathematics professor at major universities, like Lehrer was.
But that's not what really delights me about Tom Lehrer. I'm a word nerd, and (as you may have gathered by now) I love surprises. Few, if any, songwriters can turn a great phrase or rhyme that surprises me as much as Tom Lehrer.
How many rhymes do you know for funeral? Check this out:
When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that sooner or
Later those you love will do the same for you.
It doesn't come out right on the page. You have to hear it to believe it. He does it over and over in his songs. And it's not only the rhymes. Check out the astounding list of -ity words in "When You Are Old And Gray." The song would be hilarious without it, but with that list, it becomes something special. Or check out the unexpected place that his tender love song "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" takes us.
Lehrer's songs are packed full of surprises, usually layers of them, in his rhymes, word choices, subject matter, and twists. And so, even the songs that nobody will ever consider classics delight me. I enjoy even the songs that are not among his best, because I know they'll surprise me, even after I've heard them several times. Not many writers can do that. Dr. Seuss can. Shel Silverstein can. And now you know (if you didn't already) that Tom Lehrer can.
We all want to delight our readers so they come back to our work again and again, so they know when they see something with our names on it they can't count on a good time. Look at your favorite writers and figure out what it is that makes them mean what they do to you, then personalize that and have some fun delighting yourself as you write.
Next time I post on this blog, I'll write about two particular genres that rely on surprise, two genres that many people might think of as near opposites, but that are really very similar. But if I told you now which two genres I mean, I'd spoil the surprise, so you'll just have to wait a week.
Monday, January 18, 2010
An Interpretation of a Recent Rejection Letter
NOTE: Regular font is what the letter actually said; Italic font is my own idea about what they were trying to say. Hope that clears it up.
[Date]
[Name & Address]
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for submitting your manuscript ______ to _______ for consideration for publishing. We appreciate you giving us the opportunity to review your work
(This is just standard practice and is built into the letter template. Don't take it personally. We aren't really thanking YOU; we are simply being nice.)
We receive a great many submissions and we review each one.
(The corners of our offices seem bare without the stacks of slush pile manuscripts, and we often use them to prop up uneven tables and chairs. One employee prefers to use manuscripts for reusable coasters for her coffee mugs. In fact, we probably wouldn't have even noticed yours except for the fact she ruined a pile by spilling an entire coffee pot on it, and we had look through them to see which ones were soaked and might attract bugs. Yours was okay, and, since it was almost time to go home, we read it.)
We take into consideration where our particular segment of the market is going and what our customers are looking for when we review items for publishing.
(We are interested in making a lot of money. Our customers want books, and we want money to make the payments on our new boats/cars/RVs/summer cabins-- it's a mutually beneficial relationship; too bad you're not a part of it.)
After careful consideration, our new products committee has decided to decline the opportunity to publish your work.
(Though we all had a great time laughing over your manuscript. We all placed bets on how many typos we could find! I lost that's why I ended up writing this letter.)
Please let us know if you would like your manuscript returned or destroyed. If you would like it returned you will need to cover the postage costs. Let us know by ____ or we will have it shredded.
(If you don't take it back, we will have a great time destroying it with all the other unwanted manuscripts we receive. It's a quite a party: shredding first, then a bonfire where we roast marshmallows and hotdogs. These parties really build company morale.)
We would be happy to review any future projects you may wish to submit for publishing/distribution.
(We haven't laughed so hard in years!)
We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
(May we recommend taking up another profession? Soon.)
Sincerely,
_______
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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