 Comedy: April 26, 2006 Issue [#998] |
  Comedy
This week: Edited by: Melissa is fashionably late!  
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Life throws us curve balls, running us through a gambit of emotions. The best emotion of all is happines, and nothing envokes happiness more than laughter. There is a science to making others laugh, and it is through that science that comedy has evolved.
This topic of this week's Comedy Newsletter is |
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In October, I started eating according to the Weight Watcher's plan. You get so many points per day, based on your weight, and 35 extra points a week to do with as you please. I've lost more than 25 pounds, since then, and have about 15 more pounds to go before I'm done.
The reason I tell you that is to tell you this:
I was at Weight Watchers last week, and the meeting leader asked what we do for fun. I, naturally, said that I was a moderator on Writing.Com and that I wrote for two newsletters, one of which was comedy.
This naturally progressed to people assuming I was a jokester by nature, and that I must know a ton of jokes or have some kind of stand-up comedy routine tucked away in the back of my brain to pull out at a moments notice.
"Say something funny," one of the girls in the circle group demanded.
I stared at her, dumbfounded. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"Tell someone to say something funny and expecting something funny to come out of their mouth is like asking an overeater to not eat the blueberry muffin you just sat in front of them for the sake of torture."
"So then you're not funny?" The rest of the group snickered, because apparently the conversation was funny, to them.
"I don't know. I guess it depends on your sense of humor. But I'm not funny when I'm trying to be funny, if you can understand that."
Apparently, she couldn't, because when the group leader went around and asked various members of the groups what they had learned, this particular group member said, "Well, Melissa writes for a Comedy newsletter on Writing.Com, but she's not funny."
"No," I chimed in. "I'm not funny. I'm horrible and dull on purpose so the other newsletter editors will look good."
*Insert chirping cricket noises here.*
They all stared at me, for a moment, as if they were trying to guage whether or not I was serious. I don't know how they could have possibly thought so, given that I had a huge grin across my face as I spoke.
I guess maybe I'm not as funny, in person, as I sometimes am in type. (I say sometimes because I'm not always as funny as I try to be.) There's something about my sense of humor that dries up around others, I suppose.
Either way, this applies to writing because you sometimes have to remember to give your readers cues to know how you're trying to come across. In example:
You place a character in a serious situation. Your character is almost always serious, but you have that character make a witty comment that is meant to lighten the seriousness of the setting.
You may have to lead up to the witty comment or follow it with an action that allows the reader to understand that your normally serious character just attempted a joke.
Stephen King does this very well in the last book of his Dark Tower series (which I just completed reading). I would use it as a prime example, but this newsletter isn't an appropriate medium for the rating of the comment! 
Anyhow, I'll end this newsletter by thanking you for the comments and wishes of luck from my last newsletter. Unfortunately, my husband and I have decided to stay where we are. The housing market is too oversaturated and we won't get what we would like for the house we're in now. But thank you for your support all the same! |
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