{"id":709,"date":"2016-03-02T08:05:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T13:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=709"},"modified":"2016-03-02T08:05:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T13:05:57","slug":"aaa-ha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/02\/aaa-ha\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaa! Ha!"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, I\u2019ll hearken back to my recent post about poetry. In my final (sob) class of poetry school, we\u2019ve been assigned a textbook that I think may interest people on the blog who\u2019ve caught the poetry bug. It\u2019s Introduction to Poetry<\/em> by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia–high school and above–very comprehensive. There are a few poem prompts but not many. The value is in the discussion of all the topics in poetry and the selection of poems, from classic to modern. Also phenomenally expensive, so I\u2019d suggest asking your library to get it for you or buying it used. Try to find the latest edition, which contains the most up-to-date poems.<\/p>\n

On January 27, 2016, Bookworm wrote, I need help with some things in my novel. I have it pretty much figured out, but the scenes seem to zoom by. I don\u2019t think my MC is really getting enough challenge in some of the scenes.<\/em><\/p>\n

I also need some help with a side MC. He\u2019s the main comedian, and I don\u2019t have many jokes and puns for him. I could really use some help to get some good puns and jokes. Can you help me?<\/em><\/p>\n

First question first. Writer of Magic\u00a0weighed in with, What I would do to make it more challenging is to go through each sentence and see if you need more detail. Example: Her jeans ripped. Or: The seam on her jeans ripped. Blood seeped out. Sorry for the gore.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m all for detail, which does more than add length. Detail puts the reader in the scene. There\u2019s nothing like it to increase tension. What do the jeans rip on? How deep is the cut? How painful? Who sees the event? Is anyone there to help? What else is going on? Does our MC–let\u2019s call her Rose–have time to see how badly injured she is? Is she in danger of passing out from loss of blood? If a lot is happening, we can slow down to a kind of play-by-play.<\/p>\n

A scene won\u2019t zoom if we present our details through Rose\u2019s head and heart. What is she thinking? Is she worrying about something even more pressing than bleeding? Is she phobic about blood? What\u2019s her state of mind when the injury happens? Is she angry? At whom? Frightened? Sad? Even happy? Maybe cutting her leg solves some other problem for her. Now she thinks she won\u2019t have to spend a week with her despised cousin. She wonders if she can make the injury worse.<\/p>\n

Detail also contributes to humor. Rose\u2019s jeans rip, revealing the laughing frogs on the long underwear her mother makes her wear. A dot of blood seeps through the flannel and reddens a frog\u2019s nose. Can she conceal the whole disaster? What can she wrap around herself? A tablecloth! Can she pull it out without disturbing all the dishes, the way they do in movies?<\/p>\n

And\u00a0how might we challenge our Rose more?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re always finding a balance between barriers and abilities, locks and keys. Leaving behind the\u00a0bleeding situation, let\u2019s say Rose is loyal to Queen Lorraine, but a lot of people are dissatisfied with her rule. Attracted by the noise, Rose joins a crowd surrounding\u00a0a street speaker who\u2019s inciting the\u00a0mob to storm City Hall, where the queen\u2019s representatives hold sway. The mayor happens to be away, leaving Rose\u2019s mother, the chief constable, in charge with only three guards to help her. Rose decides she has to persuade the crowd not to attack.<\/p>\n

Suppose we want Rose to fail ultimately. The\u00a0Hall will be attacked, which will propel our plot into its next phase. But we don\u2019t want her to fail quickly. We want to make the most of our dramatic situation.<\/p>\n

We might consider what Rose has going for her and what her obstacles are, but let\u2019s start with the obstacles. The anger of the rabble rouser is infectious. He\u2019s a good speaker with valid arguments on his side. The queen\u2019s subjects are tired of a war that\u2019s continued for a decade\u2013although she\u2019s been on the throne for only six months. Many able-bodied people have been forced to become soldiers. A promised school in the town hasn\u2019t been built.<\/p>\n

Rose thinks the queen should be given more time. If the throne is overthrown, who will step in? Chaos will follow, and the enemy is sure to take advantage. Rose has made this argument to a few friends, whom she\u2019s persuaded to agree with her. Plus, she knows a lot of the people in the crowd, and she\u2019s well-liked.<\/p>\n

Going back to obstacles, she\u2019s soft-spoken. No one will hear her if she speaks up. So we start the scene. Rose clears her throat. \u201cExcuse me.\u201d No one hears. What is she feeling? Thinking? Who\u2019s standing next to her? What\u2019s the weather?<\/p>\n

We use these details to create a scene with ups and downs and plenty of challenges for Rose. When one effort fails, she tries something else, seems to make progress until some other upset comes along. We end with her the loser, but she isn\u2019t entirely defeated.<\/p>\n

Moving along. When it came to jokes, Writer of Magic asked, What era is this? Then I could probably make up some jokes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bookworm answered, The era is modern times, but the action takes place in different dimensions. For example, there\u2019s the real world, then there\u2019s Destiny Forest, and another dimension is Musical Hills. There\u2019s not more than one of the MC though, like a doppelganger.<\/em><\/p>\n

Humor helped poured in.<\/p>\n

From Mary:
\nWhat type of bagel can fly?<\/em>
\n A plain bagel!!!<\/em><\/p>\n

NPennyworth:
\n What\u2019s brown and sticky?<\/em>
\n A stick!<\/em><\/p>\n

Two man walk into a bar. One turns to the other and says \u201cOuch.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA train just passed by here!\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cHow can you tell?\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cIt left it\u2019s tracks!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDid you get a haircut?\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cNo, I got all of them cut.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

If you need more try searching Google.<\/em><\/p>\n

As for puns I find that they work best in the situation. If the character drinks chicken soup they can say it tastes \u201cfowl.\u201d Fish is always really heavy because it has so many scales. Cheese has many \u201c Gouda\u201d puns attached, and can be \u201cgrate\u201d to use. Horses also have many puns attached. (Behooved is a good word, and people can mention neighbors, both of which can be used in many \u201ctales.\u201d) A mention of eyes can lead to many puns, such as \u201ceye see,\u201d mention of pupil(s) (for teachers or students), and complaints that people will always \u201clash\u201d out. Cars are \u201cwheely\u201d good, and if you\u2019re getting \u201ctired\u201d of my examples Google can help with some more specific examples. I hope this gives you a few ideas!<\/em><\/p>\n

These are great! I\u2019d just add that a list of homonyms (words that are spelled and sound the same but have different meanings, like bear<\/em>) and homophones (words that may be spelled differently but sound the same, like plain<\/em> and plane<\/em> in Mary\u2019s pun or bear<\/em> and bare<\/em>), which you can google, can be helpful for thinking up puns. Heteronyms (words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently, like bass<\/em>, the fish, and bass<\/em>, the low musical pitch) probably won\u2019t be as useful, because our puns will probably crop up in dialogue, but there may be times when we can use them, too. Of course, some puns are pure inspiration, which can arise only from sub-basement Y of our brains, like the joke about the chicken, the frog, and the librarian, which is best said out loud. If you don\u2019t know it, here\u2019s a link: http:\/\/allaboutfrogs.org\/funstuff\/jokes\/lbrry.html<\/a>. For best effect, sound like a chicken for her lines and like a frog for his (hers? its?).<\/p>\n

Here are prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 I find it helpful to think of categories when I fool around with puns. So, looking at your googled lists, come up with three puns in each of these categories: food, occupations, and animals.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Remember a time when you were injured: sports injury, clumsy injury (as most of mine have been), kitchen injury\u2013whatever. Not life threatening, because we want to take something with medium intensity and deepen it. Write it and milk it for every smidgen of detail you can dredge up: the moment before the event, how it happened, how it felt and looked, who was there, who said what, what you said and thought, what made it better, what made it worse, plus whatever I\u2019m leaving out. Now move into fiction. Make yourself a character, and make the other people who were there characters, too. If it fits, turn one of them into a villain. By using detail, make this a scene that doesn\u2019t zoom by and that maintains tension.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Injure your MC in your WIP and use some of the moments from your life and your fictionalized version of your life. Write the scene.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write the scene in which Rose tries to calm the crowd.<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, I\u2019ll hearken back to my recent post about poetry. In my final (sob) class of poetry school, we\u2019ve been assigned a textbook that I think may interest people on the blog who\u2019ve caught the poetry bug. It\u2019s Introduction to Poetry by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia–high school and above–very comprehensive. There are a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[197,23,21,291,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}