I'd like a little advice if you've got it.
I have these two stories I've been bandying around for years. They're both pretty silly, or they were supposed to be. Recently, I've gotten to a point in my life where I really did have the opportunity to just sit down and write one of these, and I picked one. I'll call it story A.
Now, I have a lot of bits and pieces of both of these stories, in two different folders on my desktop. I've been plugging away at story A and doing fairly well, maybe, for the last few months (I'm an agonizer), but the other night, I thought of something in story B that I thought might be better off in story A, so I went digging for it.
I ended up spending the whole evening reading everything I had on story B. And it was hilarious.
I mean in comparison. Here I was thinking I was doing so well, and story A isn't funny at all. It's slightly goofy, but
story A is a little more realistic than story B. Story B has anachronisms and slap stick. In story B, the humor gets carried away and makes the characters start doing things they wouldn't otherwise do. Sometimes even, it gets carried off into the plot. Maybe I had less of an idea what I was going to do with the plot in story B. In story A, though, I know the plot, and I can't just have random things happen. The characters seem a bit more real and there are fewer marauding pirates sailing around in tallboys with the drawers pulled out, for instance.
So here's my question. How do you write an established plot with fairly "real" characters and have it still be funny? Or is that even possible? The plot itself isn't overly realistic, or even the setting, but it's hitting me more as whimsical than humorous. Maybe I'm just looking for encouragement. Or suggested readings. Anything, really. How do you do it?
I have these two stories I've been bandying around for years. They're both pretty silly, or they were supposed to be. Recently, I've gotten to a point in my life where I really did have the opportunity to just sit down and write one of these, and I picked one. I'll call it story A.
Now, I have a lot of bits and pieces of both of these stories, in two different folders on my desktop. I've been plugging away at story A and doing fairly well, maybe, for the last few months (I'm an agonizer), but the other night, I thought of something in story B that I thought might be better off in story A, so I went digging for it.
I ended up spending the whole evening reading everything I had on story B. And it was hilarious.
I mean in comparison. Here I was thinking I was doing so well, and story A isn't funny at all. It's slightly goofy, but
story A is a little more realistic than story B. Story B has anachronisms and slap stick. In story B, the humor gets carried away and makes the characters start doing things they wouldn't otherwise do. Sometimes even, it gets carried off into the plot. Maybe I had less of an idea what I was going to do with the plot in story B. In story A, though, I know the plot, and I can't just have random things happen. The characters seem a bit more real and there are fewer marauding pirates sailing around in tallboys with the drawers pulled out, for instance.
So here's my question. How do you write an established plot with fairly "real" characters and have it still be funny? Or is that even possible? The plot itself isn't overly realistic, or even the setting, but it's hitting me more as whimsical than humorous. Maybe I'm just looking for encouragement. Or suggested readings. Anything, really. How do you do it?
