Writing and comedy & editing:
“Today is done. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. From
here to there funny things are everywhere.” (Dr. Seuss)
While it is true funny things are everywhere trying to write
comedy, funny conversations or funny characters can be difficult. Personally I
am not one of those people with the innate ability to be able to pull out a snarky
come back at the exact moment that I need one. I am not a Chandler (from Friends). I am more the, stew
about the conversation for hours and mull over what my response should have
been when someone said blank to me. (I am in essence Ross, from Friends 😉).
This is one of my favorite parts about writing different character personalities for a novel. In life you can’t press that awesome delete button a few hours later and insert a different word, (what you should have said.) But while writing I can think about a conversation between characters over and over in my head and if I suddenly have a brainstorm and think of something funny that I want one of the characters to say I can go back and add it.
When I wrote the Elven Quest series all of my characters had
different personality traits that I liked and enjoyed writing but Mauve’s
sarcastic quips were some of my favorites to write. Mauve is a classic case of
a person that feels overshadowed in her big family but once she is on her own
she really lets her true personality shine. And her real personality, it turns
out, is the type of person that can make even a burly gypsy man blush. She is
a kind that takes chances but always within reason. She is steadfast, strong,
honest and fairly sarcastic. When writing Mauve I always tried to think of what
I would say and do if I were brave enough to talk like her and say what I
really feel. (I also thought a lot about my sister, who is this type of person.
Mauve was sort of a copy of her. Love ya sis. ;))
It was, at times, hard to write Mauve. Sometimes I started
to second guess myself and thought, I think this is funny but will anyone else
or will readers think its lame? Its tough to trust in your writing sometimes,
but at least for me, it came down to the things that made me smile in the book,
I decided I wanted to keep. Even when it came to editing the book and cutting
out large chunks of unnecessary sections to make it more readable and
marketable I was honest enough to say, “I know I could cut this out and make it
shorter but I feel like it would make this section lose some personality and
flavor so I am going to keep it in.” I was stern enough to decide when cutting
anymore would hurt the integrity of the story. I didn’t want that to happen
because I knew I wanted to be proud of the novel. Thankfully, I feel that I
accomplished a good balance of cutting and keeping and now I am very proud of
all of my novels in this series.
So, do I think I can write the next best seller comedy movie
or TV series? Not at all, but I do enjoy writing scenes and conversations and
quips that I think are funny. I hope they make my readers smile too. And how
about you readers? What are your experiences with comedic writing? Thanks and
good luck to all the aspiring writers out there. Until next time dear readers
remember, writing=happiness ;)
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