Category Archives: Writing

The Genuinely Humorous Comic Novel

It’s really hard.

No, it’s really really hard.

Writing with humor. It’s just hard. Trust me on this.

Physical humor, that’s relatively easy. Live humor, before a supportive audience, that’s kind of easy, too.

As for live TV, Letterman, Leno, O’Brien, Kimmel and the rest have lots of writers. Dozens of writers. Even so, Letterman and Leno haven’t been very funny in … oh … say a decade or so.

A weekly or bi-weekly humor column (a la Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry), that’s pretty easy, although the writers eventually burn out. Heck, even a bi-monthly religious humor and satire magazine (say, for instance, choosing one at random here, like the late, lamented Wittenburg Door) wasn’t ulcer-inducingly difficult to produce. We had our moments.

Even doing a weekly comedy show (be it Carol Burnett or Saturday Night Live) is reasonably easy, if you’ve got a talented cast and great writers (and keep them).

 

Humor in movies, at least when the writing and acting is good, that’s somewhat easy. Of course, for every Annie Hall, A Fish Called Wanda, Some Like It Hot, or Local Hero, there are lots of really really unfunny movies. We’ve all seen ‘em, alas.

But I venture to say that writing books that are honest-to-goodness, slap-your-pappy, laugh-out-loud funny, now that’s hard.

It’s hard for a lot of reasons. You don’t have the continuity humor of a great comic strip (like Bloom County or Calvin and Hobbes or Doonsbury), you don’t have the physical humor or facial expressions (think Charlie Chaplin or Richard Pryor), you don’t have the explosive, unexpected humor of improve (think Jonathan Winters or Robin Williams). You sure don’t have the timing, the dramatic pauses, the roar of the crowd (think Chris Rock or Ellen DeGeneres). You only have the printed page.

In fact, you just can’t write jokes. Jokes are only funny once. And God forbid you should write puns …

No, writing funny books … or at least chronicling the funny things and actions of otherwise sane characters that you care about while you’re advancing the plot, it’s about as difficult as it gets in the writing biz.

I think that writing funny nonfiction books, be they a collection of essays or actual narratives, is relatively easier. I’ve read very, very funny books by Mike Yaconelli (even in the midst of some very serious messages), Joe Bob Briggs (John Bloom), Woody Allen, Robert Flynn, Ann Lamott (again, while making heart-breakingly vulnerable observations), Lynda Stephenson, and others.

All that to say, I have read some genuinely comic novels. And no, I’m not making a distinction between comic novel and humorous novel.

To me, the true test of a novel blessed with great, insightful, unpredictable humor is this: Am I willing to read it again? The novels below, in no particular order, I am willing – eager, even – to read again someday (and some I have read more than once):

 

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O’Toole

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Parts of just about anything by Charles Dickens

The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie

The Liar by Stephen Fry

Parts of several fantasy novels by Fritz Leiber

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Bellweather by Connie Willis

Just about anything by P.G. Wodehouse

MASH by Richard Hooker

Quicksilver and Confusion by Neal Stephenson

Any of the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Just about anything by Mark Twain

Parts of several Kurt Vonnegut novels

The Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

Parts of several “novels” by Douglas Adams

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

I’m sure I’ll think of more such novels tomorrow. And no, I do not unreservedly recommend them all. Humor is such a personal thing. There are some things that I think are funny that probably nobody else would think is funny. There is stuff that’s so funny to you that you laughed so hard that milk came up through your nose while you read it … but I would only be mildly amused by the same passage. That’s OK. A lot of humor is derived from experience. If we don’t share those experiences, we probably don’t find the same things funny. So if you ask me to recommend one of the above books, I’ll have to consider what I know about you … and what you’ve considered funny to this point in your life.

Still, I’m always looking for more absolutely great, expansive, uproarious, hilarious, joyous, goofy, transcendently funny novels.

Know any? I’d love to hear about ‘em from you.

 

 

 

 

 

She Waved at a Japanese Pilot

It was in an obituary in The San Antonio Express-News on July 9. Her name was Gloria Chisholm and, according to the obit, she was a “breathtaking beauty” and a big band singer in San Antonio in the years before World War II. But then Gloria (then Swanson) met air cadet Lt. Henry “Hank” Chisholm on their first and only date. They married shortly thereafter. The young couple’s first posting was Hickam Field, Hawai’i, near Pearl Harbor. They lived in a residential area near the base. Shortly after arrival, on that fateful Sunday morning, when Japanese Zeroes roared out of the sky, the air was filled with explosions and the bitter smell of acid smoke. Like the other dependents in the neighborhood, Gloria ran to their front porch – trying to comprehend what was happening.

And this is where the obituary takes a fascinating turn. As she stood there, the waves of Japanese planes wheeled to make another base on the burning battleships. One pilot flew so low that he was barely above the treetops. And, according to the obituary, the American housewife and the Japanese pilot locked eyes for a long moment and Gloria – perhaps still in shock — waved. Then the pilot abruptly pulled upward, heading again for the carnage at Pearl Harbor.

The obituary doesn’t say anything else about the incident and Hank and Gloria lived a long and happy life together. The obituary doesn’t add what she thought when her eyes met the gaze of the pilot, what she felt. Perhaps Gloria told those things to her friends and family in the years and decades that followed, perhaps not.

I don’t know the Chisholm family. But Gloria’s spontaneous reaction to the eye contact with her unnamed, unknown Japanese pilot fascinates me. The story must have intrigued her family as well, since it was included in her obituary amid all of the other important facts of her life.

Regardless, in her surprise at that moment, Gloria did the human thing. She waved at a fellow human being. Perhaps later, when she discovered the horrors of the surprise attack, she wished she’d given him some other universal symbol of defiance or anger. Perhaps not.

As for the pilot, here was someone who had doubtless just contributed to the deaths of thousands of people, many of them dying horribly from the flames or drowning. I’d like to think that there is a chance that Gloria’s simple wave impacted him somehow. Suddenly, he wasn’t bombing and strafing faceless foreign devils. He was murdering human beings. People like Gloria, the “breathtaking beauty” who impulsively acknowledged their shared humanity.

And perhaps … just perhaps … that gesture and that eye-contact shook him. And on his next pass, he purposefully kept his finger off the trigger of his machine gun. Or perhaps he dropped his last remaining bomb too soon, away from the hundreds of helpless human beings beneath his bombsight.

It’s probably wishful thinking on my part.

But then, that’s part of what obituaries are for. Yes, they’re written to celebrate a life. Yes, they provide closure to those who have been left behind. But sometimes they also generate “What if?” and “Why not?” stories. Everybody has a story. Sometimes lots of stories. As writers, it is our job to recognize and write those stories.

Wherever they are found…

Thanks to Gloria’s family, the first two acts of a great story were saved. It’s now up to the artists and musicians and writers to create that great third act.

 

Thinking About Writing

Last week, I received the following email from a former student:

Hey Professor Darden:

I wanted to know what books I should read to become a better fiction-writer? I want to try and write fiction books.

A.T.

This was my response:

Dear A.T.:

Glad to hear you’re writing! I always recommend the same two books for people who are serious about writing:

Anne LaMott, Bird by Bird

Stephen King, On Writing

But since I’m a professor and what I do best is professing, here’s some general advice as well:

Continually read the best writers in the genre you want to write in.

Don’t write what you know. Write what you WANT to know. Writing will help you figure stuff out.

Think BIG.

Tell a story, first and foremost. Everything: dialogue, description, action should be designed to help tell the story. Exclusively. Avoid unnecessary dialogue, description, and action that are designed to show off your writing skills.

Write stories that YOU want to read.

Work from an outline.

One of your main characters must CHANGE by the end of the story.

Write for the sheer joy of it, not for getting published (that will happen if you do). Write every day. Write when you don’t feel like it. Just write. Get something on paper/get some pixels on a screen.

Use strong noun/verb sentences.

Do your homework when it comes to finding a published home for your writing.

Know that you’ll get lots of rejection letters/emails. It’s OK. It’s what we do.

Finally, Bird by Bird is so beautifully written, it is hard to extract quotes from it. On Writing, on the other hand, like most of Stephen King’s work, lends itself to anecdotes. Here are some of my favorite excerpts, some of which I Xeroxed when the book first came out. I can’t find my copy of the book (probably loaned it to someone), but I still have the Xeroxes:

Get the first draft done quickly…

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity.

On rewriting…

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

Second drafts can only help so much…

“A movie should be there in rough cut,” the film editor Paul Hirsch once told me. The same is true of books. I think it’s rare that incoherence or dull storytelling can be solved by something so minor as a second draft.

Formula for success: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%…

Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggest cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings)…

I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: “Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.

Some meaty detective-fiction similes…

My all-time favorite similes, by the way, come from the hardboiled-detective fiction of the forties and fifties, and the literary descendants of the dime-dreadful writers. These favorites include “It was darker than a carload of assholes” (George V. Higgins) and “I lit a cigarette that tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief” (Raymond Chandler).

On writing seminars and the desire for “the right writing environment”…

In truth, I’ve found that any day’s routine interruptions and distractions don’t much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.

What scares the so-called master of fear?

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

I’ll end with a truism. In my classes, I have good writers and I have young people who want to be good writers. Invariably, when I talk about books, the good writers have generally read those books. Good writers read. Lots. Always have.

One last quote from King’s On Writing:

It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.

Amen and amen.

 

 

 

When Smokey Sings …

Debonair lullabies in melodies revealed/In deep despair on lonely nights/He knows just how you feel/The slyest rhymes — the sharpest suits/In miracles made real

Like a bird in flight on a hot sweet night/You know you’re right just to hold her tight/He soothes it right — makes it outtasight/And everything’s good in the world tonight

When Smokey sings — I hear violins/When Smokey sings — I forget everything

I heard this today in the pharmacy. Getting Krill Oil, of all things (doctor’s orders), and when this song came over the sound system, I was transported.

OK, I admit it. I’m a sucker for the New Romantics — especially ABC ‘s “When Smokey Sings” (with “Be Near Me” a distant second). Poetry in motion. The lyrics are filled with allusions to Smokey Robinson’s sublime lyrics, the music is both timeless and wonderfully, hopelessly dated to a certain point in time in the ’80s. 

Transcendence. That’s what we’re looking for. Even once a week would be wonderful. Twice would be divine.

It had already happened earlier in the week in — where else — The New York Times in Jim Dwyer’s delicious, detail-filled column, “Businesses Too Loved to Fail.”  A short feature on a couple of well-loved, but struggling neighborhood businesses in New York. Concise, specific, punchy, full of memorable people and, just as importantly, effortlessly making an Important Point without reading like a writer trying to make an Important Point.

If I could teach my students to write like this, to appreciate feature writing of this caliber, that would be a life’s goal. Heck, if I could write like that, that would be a life’s goal.

When Smokey sings …

That effortless grace, be it ABC’s career-defining song or Jim Dwyer’s turn of a phrase comes from more than just practice, it comes from passion. Every note, every beat, the right note, the right beat. Every word, the absolute right word. Nothing else will do.

That’s what creates transcendence … that momentary whiff of heaven that comes from the creation of something original, of something special. It’s when we create that, perhaps, we are closest to the Creator.

Luther croons/Sly’s the original — originator/James screams/Marvin was the only innovator/But nothing can compare/Nothing can compare/When Smokey sings …

A Little Love for King Saul …

The Witch of Endor, the Ghost of Samuel and King Saul
The Witch of Endor, the Ghost of Samuel and King Saul

People who know me know I’ve been kicking around the idea to write a novel based on the life of King Saul, my favorite Old Testament character.

            A little love for King Saul, if you don’t mind. Remember: Here’s a guy who didn’t want the job as King of Israel. He spent his entire reign hounded by that weasel Samuel. He never personally profited from his position. He unified 12 feudin’, fussin’ tribes into a nation. He was heroic in battle.

            And he was a good dad.

            Really.

            Today, King David gets all of the good press. By if you line them up side by side, David’s sins dwarf Saul’s. (And Saul always genuinely repented.)

            And there’s the business of the children. But more on that later …

            When Samuel publicly announced to the Hebrew people that Saul had been chosen as their first king, they found hiding behind the luggage (1 Samuel 10:22). Afterwards, instead of demanding a lavish new tent or mansion, he simply went home.

            When the evil Nahash the Ammonite besieged the Hebrew people, messengers found their new king quietly farming with his oxen. (1 Samuel 11:5)

            Saul declined to mercilessly slaughter his defeated enemies. And when he triumphed in battle, he always shared the spoils with his people. Thus by example, King Saul slowly built a stable nation.

            Throughout it all, Saul remained modest and obedient, eschewing the trappings of wealth and power, always trying – despite his many failures – to do what’s right.

            Which brings us back to the dad business.

            We don’t know much about Mrs. Saul. But we know a lot about Saul’s son, Jonathan. Beautiful, loyal, courageous Jonathan. He’s one of the few characters in the entire O.T. who gets a free ride from the chroniclers. He’s always shown in a positive light. And we know David loved him.

            Saul, apparently alone among his kingly successors, managed to keep a good balance between work and family. When he was king, he was king. When he wasn’t protecting the entire nation of Israel against hordes of iron-wielding Philistines, he was back home farming and spending quality time with the kids.

            Jonathan doubtless noticed.

            We can guess from Jonathan’s life that Saul tried to provide a good example, as best he knew how.

            Even during Saul’s darkest days, when faced both with David’s rebellion and the external threats from a dozen powerful neighboring kingdom states, he behaved with moderation and restraint.

            God eventually chose David and so Saul’s reign came to a bloody end. But even then, Saul’s innate nobility and decency shone through. In the time of his country’s greatest trial, he consulted the Witch of Endor, desperately seeking advice on how to save his people. Not for his own benefit, mind you. He risked damnation to help his people. But even from beyond the grave, Samuel chose instead to taunt and humiliate him. (1 Samuel 28: 1-19).

            Some people need to just get over themselves.

            In the end, a massive force of Philistines overwhelmed the loyal soldiers who remained. On that awful day, King Saul stood virtually alone on Mount Gilboa with his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchishu. He could have taken his sons and have fled with the royal treasury. And his sons could have slipped away the night before.

            But they didn’t. They remained steadfast and shared their father’s fate.

            There is more to the story, no doubt, more to Saul we just don’t know:

             The Bible says that Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD; he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a medium for guidance, 14 and did not inquire of the LORD. So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse. (1 Chron 10:13-14)

        Um, doesn’t that seem a little extreme?

        Think what you will of King Saul, but he must have been a worthy, loving father for those closest to him to remain faithful unto death. How many kings of Israel will be able to say that in the centuries to come?

            And in that, if nothing else he is an example to us today: There is no difference between your life at work and your family life. You can’t be ruthless, corrupt, and dictatorial at the office and yet be gentle and loving at home and expect your friends and family not to be impacted by your example. You are called by God to be equally responsible in both.

There is no separation between the two.

There was no separation during the time of King Saul and there isn’t any such separation now.

It simply can’t be done.

           

On “Found” Writing

 

quartetDavid Licata’s always thoughtful “A Life’s Work” blog has an interesting essay on the use and philosophy behind using “archival” or “found” footage in something like a documentary. In this case, adding archival footage of gospel artists to augment the interviews and “B roll” of his interviews with me talking about The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project.

I know I’D certainly welcome some good gospel music if I was watching a documentary about a white guy who was obsessed with saving gospel music!

As I was reading it, thinking about the differences between a film-maker and a writer, I realized that using “found” documents and stories is exactly what I do in my work, fiction and non-fiction alike. Very little of my work is autobiographical — like most middle class kids, I’ve had a pretty uneventful life — so I am dependent on the stories and vignettes I can find from others to illustrate my writing. Sometimes that information comes from a direct interview. More often, it is something I’ve found in a book, magazine, newspaper article or (more recently) on the Web. Without these “found” moments, I’m sure my writing would be very drab, indeed.

As I tell my fiction writers, The Hero’s Journey model is ONLY about those who respond to the Call to Adventure. They great mass of us don’t respond, choosing to live vicariously through the adventures of others. As a certain Hobbit says when Gandalf shows up unexpectedly outside his hobbit-hole: “No adventures for me today, thank you! Good day!”

Why We Gather … and sometimes link

“Will they explore a wider, more creative space through social interaction or through outside command? Though the answer should be obvious, consider the case of the heart surgeons from five hospitals in New England who spent 1999 observing each other’s practices and talking about their work. The result was a stunning 24 percent decline in mortality rates in bypass surgery, the equivalent of 74 saved lives, a result they could never have obtained through the traditional continuing education regimen of listening to lectures, reading articles, or even logging into artificial ‘knowledge management’ systems … as one biologist quips, ‘I link, therefore I am.'”

Thomas Petzinger, The New Pioneers (1999) … from the chapter titled, “Nobody’s as Smart as Everybody.”