Writing Excuses Episode 21: Humor

2011-01-31T22:48:00Z

Posted by: mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses Episode 21: Humor

from http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/06/30/writing-excuses-episode-21-humor/

This episode is about humor, how to make people laugh, with a particular focus on writers. How do you write humor, why do we write humor, more suggestions about how to write humor, and a writing prompt to get you started. Now if we can include cute, naughty, bizarre, clever, recognizable, and cruel elements in our jokes, we'll get the laughs. Like a brick doesn't.
( Watch for laughing bricks . . . )
And the writing prompt: write something funny in which strong profanity is appropriate but doesn't happen.

See you next week.

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Writing Excuses, Episode 2

2011-01-27T22:30:00Z

Posted by: mbarker.livejournal.com

Episode Two of Writing Excuses: Blending the familiar and the original

From over at http://www.writingexcuses.com/

This was kind of hard to summarize - lots of great ideas and interplay. So this is rough notes, not a nice transcript or summary, but I think it gives an impression of the episode.

Key Points: First, some discussion about what is meant by combining an ordinary idea and an extraordinary idea to make something unique. Then some discussion of how this juxtaposition changes. Postponed discussion of writing the story you want to write for another time as a can of worms. Third was some talk about keeping up with trends and anticipating them.
( Lots of stuff . . . )
Parting thoughts that were excellent: Don't just stand on the shoulders of giants and look around at the view, look far out and take a leap! To improve a book explain the heck out of one unimportant thing, then don't explain some important thing at all. Make sure your original is really original -- if you have a strong familiar, you can probably take a few more steps with your originality.

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Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses Episode 21: Humor

Writing Excuses, Episode 2