HUMDINGER LITERARY E-ZINE DECEMBER 2005 WRITING ARTICLES
Scroll down the page to read each selection or click on an article title to go directly to it. Visit Humdinger’s Brief and Bizarre Bio page to read each author’s wacky bio. Click here. Learn how to write with a sense of humor. SEVEN WAYS TO CONNECT YOUR WRITING AND YOUR LIFE Discover new ways to become a better, more realistic writer. I say Chlamydia By Andrew Madrid By special request, Andrew Madrid explains how to write funny material. A must read for writers! You say Comedy I say Chlamydia By Andrew Madrid It feels pretentious to write about writing comedy, which is to say that I know something others don’t. Like all writers and performers I believe that nothing I do is funny, and not much is worth looking at twice. With that said, I have been very successful over the years, writing and performing comedy, and I have no idea why. Like most comedians I am a student of the art. I understand and follow what makes certain comedians successful, and what makes others brilliant. In my humble opinion, there are three types of comedians: the guessers, the great guessers, and the knowers. Most comedians are guessers. They move through life guessing at what is funny, and depending on their intuition and drive can be successful or horribly unsuccessful. These comedians can go on streaks very much like gamblers in Vegas. They can hit a vein for a period of time and really believe that they’re doing well until the public stops accepting the set up and therefore the punch lines that follow. In their case, it can be a long and hard road, as like most in their position, they have a predetermined route in life that they feel empty without. This, I believe, is how we get bumper stickers, key chains and hallmark cards, as they are probably the lowest form of comedians trying to eek out a living while continuing to write. The second type of comedians is the great guessers. These are people that can write, find a vein, lose the vein and find another one just as suitable. They write work that they believe might be funny and then test it. Stand-up comedy is the most suited to this kind of comedian, as they can nightly test bits of new material without blowing an entire show on bad work. Writing comedy like this is hit or miss. Once you send a piece of work to an editor, either it has a good standard of comedy or it does not. You cannot edit bad comedy to make it good. You can change plot lines until you’re blue in the face, but a bad premise will always be a bad premise. Great guessers usually know what will work and what won’t, but sometimes they fail miserably. Getting back up, that’s a completely different article all together. The third and final type is the knowers. I could probably name only three of these off the top of my head in the last twenty years, and only one of them is still alive, Bill Cosby. These guys aren’t really even writers inasmuch as they don’t sit down and plan out what they’re going to say. They just say whatever comes out of their mouths, and it works. They probably don’t even know why they know, and couldn’t sit down and tell you how to write comedy, they just do it. The old saying “you either have it or you don’t” was written about these types. I don’t believe these guys do it for anything else other than it comes easier than being a plumber or an engineer. They’ve made enough money doing it, so why stop? They know because it comes naturally, and they know nothing else. So when someone asks me to explain how I write comedy, I say, “I guess, a lot.” Sometimes I’m wrong and sometimes I’m right. I go with instincts. I understand that a set up that pulls the audience in one direction will probably have a punch that goes in the complete opposite direction. Sometimes I write with a plan, and sometimes it just flows out. I know the things that make me laugh, and given my high standards, will probably make someone else laugh too. That is, I hope it will. I’m guessing okay right now, so I’m going to stay at the table and see if I get a few good hands. Here are a few things to try when you’re writing comedy. If they don’t work, pray that you don’t love doing it, because if you do, it’s going to be a really lonely and discouraging life. 1. Keep notes. The best comedy comes from just living, but you better write it down, because like any of the other billion thoughts that flash across your mind everyday, you will not remember them all, I promise you. 2. Get a system. I work late at night, after everyone has gone to sleep and the stress of the day has passed. It’s usually me, Tom Waits, a pack of smokes and my fingers typing away in my dark garage office. Use things that give you inspiration, and go back to them often (films, songs, certain places). 3. Do not listen to your friends; they will not give you an honest answer. It’s not that you have crappy friends, it’s just that they’re . . . well, your “friends.” I suppose this goes with any type of writing. Comedy that works is comedy that can get a laugh from a total stranger(s). Write your work, and send it off to get seen. They’re a lot of people out there looking for comedy pieces (probably the way I found this magazine!) 4. Grow seven more layers of skin because they’re about to get flayed off. Comedy is a very personal thing, and the idea that your writing comes from your heart means even the smallest comment can crush your bones like a wet pair of Nerf breasts (What? I don’t know, it just slipped out; why they had to be “Nerf” and why “wet,” I don’t know. It just felt right). If you’re not cut out to write comedy, you’ll know it soon. That’s about all the technical information I can give you. The rest is speculation, and weird intuition. Like the pitcher that doesn’t change his socks during a World Series, or that aforementioned gambler that refuses to play in anything but the © Copyright 2005, Andrew Madrid Click here to read Andrew Madrid's Brief Bio. Click here to read Andrew's hilarious short story, the latino flash.
SEVEN WAYS TO CONNECT YOUR WRITING AND YOUR LIFE In this very helpful article for writers, Steven Barnes teaches how writers can write more effectively by being true to themselves. SEVEN WAYS TO CONNECT YOUR WRITING AND YOUR LIFE By Steven Barnes What are your deepest fears? Remember that fear underlies most anger, and fear turned inside-out inspires most comedy. What comic or horrific use can you make of your own most secret fears? Create characters with the same concern and needs. I promise you: plenty of your readers will have the same problems. Die Hard and a hundred other movies a year punch this button. We fear dying, disfigurement, abandonment, old age, and disease—all survival values. All superb story sources. What turns you on? Sexuality can be an important aspect of your character’s lives. What was your first experience? Best? Worst/ Most recent? Least ethical? At what point do you feel you began to have mature sexual relationships? When do you think that sexuality is appropriate or inappropriate? What people in your experience have been uplifted, healed, damaged or debased in their sexual interactions? Every one of them is a character, and an opportunity for you to express your opinions and philosophies. The movie A History of Violence used sex brilliantly to help us understand the powerful bond between the leads. What is your physical condition? What does it say about your actions, values, and priorities? Craft characters with distinct physical attributes and allow their life history to express itself in their movement and appearance. Rocky and Million Dollar Baby utilize dynamic training and fight scenes to express depths of passion and desperation. While physical power is the most basic form, this evolves into financial and political power—any form of control over self, family, or others. Explore your own attitudes toward these kinds of power, and begin to craft characters who breathe. What is love? Mature affection as opposed to immature “puppy love”? Love for one’s children and family? Love for country? For all mankind? What is the difference between love and sexual attraction? What is the price you see people paying for their heart space connections? What are the greatest advantages and disadvantages of human contact? Forrest Gump is about a man with a beautiful loving heart . . . and the mind of a child. His life is better than almost anyone he ever meets, despite their advantages. What is your belief about education and perception? What is our obligation to communicate with clarity and honesty? What kind of mischief is caused by miscommunication? Is verbal communication better, more immediate and more honest than nonverbal? In Billy Budd, an inarticulate character strikes a man dead, largely due to frustrated communication. What are your intellectual strengths? Weaknesses? When have you had to modify your world view because reality didn’t match your theories and beliefs? Creator, with Peter O’Toole, tells of a brilliant scientist locked in an intellectual prison, unable to deal with the death of his beautiful wife long ago. He must either change his map of the world, or his heart will die.
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By Steven Barnes
How can I build a career and simultaneously be true to myself? It’s an important question, and during the twenty years I’ve taught writing, hundreds of students have expressed the belief that success and personal integrity are mutually exclusive.
The Lifewriting™ approach to fiction suggests that not only do these two qualities overlap, but that the safest, surest, most satisfying path to discovering your true voice, your deepest creative flow, and ultimately crafting the most satisfying career, is to be true to yourself. It suggests that Aristotle’s famous debate concerning the relative merits of plot and character is a trick: plot and character are actually two sides of the same coin. Character is best revealed through action. And plot is merely what happens when a given character engages with a specific situation. It is not only possible, but advisable, to shift back and forth between those perspectives, seeking to create a seamless whole.
How do you, personally, define character? You MUST have some theory or feeling for the human condition, or you’ll have nothing to write about. The best and simplest way to learn characterization is to study psychology. And the best psychological study is of yourself. Why? Because you have more information about yourself than you will ever have about what makes anyone else tick.
What this path demands is the honesty and courage to look deeply into your own life, and some model to organize the different aspects of your personality and emotional history. Then, you need some mechanism to help you apply your discoveries to your writing.
The very finest model of the human condition is the 6,000 year old model from
The Chakras represent survival, sexuality, power, emotion, communication, intellect and spirit. Let’s take a peek into the way each of these levels can be used to connect your inner emotional world, and your writing.
1) Survival.
2) Sexuality.
3) Power
4) Love
5) Communication
6) Intellect
7) Spirit. What are your spiritual beliefs? Are you an atheist? Agnostic? Buddhist? Christian? What do you see as the spiritual and philosophical differences? If you didn’t use the specific labels, could you create characters of each type and demonstrate the differences? If so, why? If not, why not? Have you ever had a crisis in faith? Ever felt a prayer was answered? Did it happen in a way you expected, or otherwise? Ghandi dealt with a man of great spiritual commitment who found the strength to loosen the grip of the greatest empire the world has ever seen.
Once you have thought through each of these levels as they apply to your own life, you are now able to create characters of uncommon complexity and depth. And you have taken a huge step toward releasing your true writing potential . . . whether your intent is artistic, commercial, or, most wisely, both.
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This article may be reprinted in full only, without changing the resource box or author information
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N.Y. Times best-selling writer Steven Barnes has written for The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and Stargate among many others.
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