Monday, September 1, 2008

Absolute Write Blog Chain

If you are a writer, the Absolute Write forums are worth a look. I have been visiting almost daily for many years now and am now also a moderator for the erotica and non-fiction subforums. I bring this up today because I am continuing a blog chain by a number of forum members. The post immediately before mine is Testing the Funny at Polenth's Quill.

My own approach to humor is a cautious one. After being encouraged by my editor at Loose Id I attempted to add some humor to my writing in the story Tongue Tied. To this day I find it hard to gauge how the book was received. Some found it to be extremely funny, others don't comment much on that aspect.

People seem to vary a lot in what seems funny to them. I personally don't find kids that funny (sorry, and again), spam just irritates me, physical or broad humor doesn't normal work for me--I experience any sense of embarrassment, even in sympathy with a fictional char cater, far too acutely to really enjoy the humor in most cases. But I do like absurdest and word play humor (think Eddie Izzard) and some elements of farce, and that was what I tried to work into my story.

But I also agree with the next post back in this chain that underneath the humor I like there is an element of exposing the truth of things. I have at least one planned sequel to Tongue Tied which is probably my most successful ebook so far in terms of initial sales. But until I get a better sense of how to write humor I am hesitant to start work on it.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the humor in Tongue-Tied, and those gay zombie penguins comics.

Polenth said...

I don't enjoy embarrassment humour either. I empathise with the person being embarrassed, not the people laughing at them.

FreshHell said...

I can't stand scenes in movies where food is destroyed. There seem to be a lot of them - people being flung across a huge table full of cake and other food. I don't find the waste funny at all. But, I find my own kids hilarious. You either laugh or cry, most days.

Anonymous said...

I also dislike the idea of destroying food to make a movie scene funny. In my part of the world, you can see poverty and hunger all the time and all the places. So, really, I cannot find wasting food amusing.

Rafael said...

I can relate to what you're saying about writing humor. I can't really tell you what is or is not funny about what I write. I try to inject a levity here and there, but you never know until the reader gets a hold of your work and reacts to it.

Carol Kabat said...

Funny is so subjective. I love most of it, some I don't get though, like Brit-coms. My MIL adores shows like "Keeping Up Appearances" and "Are You Being Served?" but the humor (or I should say humour) just goes whizzing right by me.

Rafael said...

I prefer British comedy shows to American ones. American TV doesn't take any risk, it is so by the numbers. I know the punchline to every joke even before the characters open their mouths.