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Structure kitsch and screed

Just a reminder to the one and a half people reading this blog (mom only gets half credit): I’m new at this. While I’m not new to the physical act of writing, I’m new to the physical act of fiction writing. To the snarky among you, no, a day career in financial services management does not mean I’ve always been an author of fiction.

The truth is that ALL of my writing experience is taking factual details and putting them on paper, hopefully in a form that compels you to accept my argument. Whether that was writing history term papers or drafting proposals to spend money on projects, it’s pretty much been the same for two decades.

So writing for fun, developing a story, and trying to make it amusing is fundamentally different. I’m getting rather well-acquainted with that reality this morning. Let’s ponder two things briefly – humor and storytelling.

The humor is already a struggle. I’m not someone who would strike you up front as really funny. But as you get to know me and spend time with me, I’m likely to make you laugh regularly. I’m amusing in my own way. But I’m also in my forties and a dad, and lately my humor has taken a hard turn toward dad humor. Partly this is an effect of my work environment. One of the folks I work with is a master of puns and I’ve started to enjoy that art. Taking a simple concept, comment or phrase and turning it, short-form, into something funny is great amusement. However, puns are cheap, just like sarcasm is cheap. I’ve learned to rely less on the latter and maybe I should do the same with the former. It’s true that I’m finding already that a kitschy pun that sounds hilarious as you insert it into your characters’ banter may not read as well later. So many of them are being erased as I edit that I’ve started taking a new approach that matches good relationship advice: no funny stuff until the relationship is developed. (See what I did there? Wonder if it will survive the edit?)

While there seems to be no end to the number of bad jokes I can insert into the prose, the harder task is the storytelling and I need to focus on it instead. Good story now, humor later. I have no issues getting on a topic and writing a paean or screed that runs into the hundreds or thousands of words. For me, the challenge is keeping the story moving, ensuring good pacing and reader interest. I’ve begun to recognize the value in scenes to the writing process. While I initially thought of writing as drafting a smooth story with no lumps or irregularities, I am now thinking that my approach needs to be the development of a sequence of events that carry the plot. Since the novel template in Scrivener assumes this, I guess I’m not alone in that need.

In addition to the basic scene format, I’ve started to add two notes for each scene. The first note is specific to my protagonist’s character arc and is meant to facilitate the humor that I’m steadfastly avoiding inserting into the story yet. I’m calling the first note the “central experience” and it describes something that we’ve all experienced and that lends itself to humor. For those of you with kids, if you saw Zootopia you certainly remember the sloth characters at the DMV. The DMV is a central experience and the slow pace of work there is funny and relatable. So, for each protagonist scene, there will be a central experience included (I think the antagonist is inherently funny and scary, so no central experience is necessary). The second note is what I’m calling the “plot driver”. The plot driver note is to ensure that every scene has its place in the story so I don’t get bogged down in exposition, which is really easy for me to do. Between the two of those notes, I hope to keep the story interesting and on track. I’ll report my success or failure as it is determined.