I actually really like comedy, and make a point to try to make my readers laugh at least once or twice with everything that I post. In a one-shot I posted a while ago,
Scrabble, most of the story is propelled along by comedy - or, to be more specific, the banter being thrown between Chantal Claret-Euringer and her husband, Jimmy Urine, or between Jimmy and Gerard Way. There are serious moments closer to the end of the story, but overall it's just a fun, silly fic about some rock stars sitting down and playing a board game.
In
No Man's Land, it's a little different. An actual plot is in place for that story, and it's what moves things along chapter by chapter. But I still try to make people laugh, whether I'm writing about a character getting drunk and ranting about how squares are the work of the devil but rectangles are amazing, or throwing in a little bit of historical humor, like in this scene:
- No Man's Land; Chapter 39:
- “They had these little, like…action figures, I guess? But for historical authors and poets and stuff. They were in a novelty shop, and me and Mikey were looking at them for a while because they seemed kind of cool, and they had a lot of different kinds.”
“You don’t say? What did they have? Like, painters too, and stuff?”
“Yeah. I remember, they had a Vincent Van Gogh one,” said Gerard, still rummaging through his bag.
“Did it come with a detachable ear?”
“An extra head, that was missing an ear. And they also had an Edgar Allen Poe one, which was pretty cool.”
“Did it come with a detachable sense of angst?”
“No, a little raven for his shoulder. But out of all of them, I just had to get you this…” Gerard rolled over again, now proudly displaying the product in his hands—a packaged Oscar Wilde action figure. Jackie almost yelled out as he sat up and grabbed it from the man’s hands.
“Does it come with a detachable little boy?” he asked in delight, turning the packaging over in his hands and admiring the rather small, painted plastic figurine.
The thing about comedy, is that a lot of people seem to think that randomness = comedy. And it
can, but then a majority of those people also assume that writing randomness that's also funny is very easy - and it's
not. If a character suddenly runs around screaming, "I AM THE MUGGLE QUEEN OF GUMMY BEARS," it's not very funny at all. (Unless we're all suddenly back in elementary school.)
Building such things up as inside jokes, and then revealing the all-out comedic moment about it does make it funny, though. Such as what I mentioned about the rectangles - there was no real reason behind it, except that a character got drunk and started mumbling about it. Then, as things progressed, another character joined in and, already knowing that said character has a thing about rectangles when intoxicated, made some cracks about it. “Awesome! I know how much you like your oblong quadrilaterals!” And it's just a weird thing to say, but the fact that the focus was on rectangles during the main part of the conversation made it
funny. (At least, it did in my opinion, but my readers seemed to like it too.) The same thing about Oscar Wilde. The character had mentioned before that Wilde was one of my favorite writers, and people liked to make fun of him for it in reference to Wilde's reputation with call-boys in his life. I added that quote up there in a later chapter, and the earlier references made it funny.
You do have to build up to randomness, in writing. I know how weird that sounds, but it's true. Call them "inside jokes" for writing, if you have to, but randomness just doesn't
work without that build-up. I once read a story (on another website) that used it in an almost painful way - all of the characters burst into Hogwarts and introduced themselves as "The Unicorn Princess of Gumdrops!" or "The Muggle Queen of Garden Gnomes" and it was...almost painful to read. I felt awkward and embarrassed
for the author.
I also agree that writing comedy, as a whole, isn't always easy. I tend to excell at it, but at the same time...I need a lot of work on how I write angst and drama. Likewise, I know several of you have said that you can write angst and drama easily, but struggle with comedy. We all have our strong and weak points in our writing.
- druscilla; imagine.:
- I like stories that are funny, but not so much in an "LOL" way.
Where it's more, you start grinning because they're just casually funny things that are natural and happen everyday.
Also agreed. Not everything has to be side-splittingly funny for the situation, as a whole, to earn a few laughs. Being able to relate to the funny situation at hand sometimes makes it even funnier.
EDIT: Christ, I didn't realize I wrote that much. If you read that, give yourself a pat on the back, sheesh. :XD
