No Whine, Just Champagne Discussion #84

I didn't think it stopped it cold. I learned a lot about greengages and now I want them desperately. ;o)

I'll be here.

I'll be driving to Minnetonka, MN today for a conference tomorrow. I may be able to sit in tonight.

I'll try...

Hello Pat! I'm interested in hearing about everyone's week.

Hi everyone.
I wrote about two posts this week. Which is better than last week, in which I wrote zero.

Hi, Deb. Hi, Angela. I'm glad to see that I won't be the only one here.

Hello, anybody here? I did not do any writing today because I was at the beauty shop for over 4 hours. The really sad part is that it didn't help. My operator says she's a beautician not a miracle worker. (Drum roll). I think I'm looking for comedy writing. I go in spurts and starts between light hearted, goofy to serious, deep writing (and reading) I'm never really sure which track I'll take but I let it all come out on the paper and wait to fix it at the editing stage.

I will pop in from time to time. I'm trying to mutlti-task.
I have to get three posts done. Plus some snippets for Rene's Snippet group. (Posts 30 words or less)

Hi, Nancy. Glad you could stop by. We missed you last week. Did you send your manuscript out?

It's out. I feel a great relief to (hopefully) be finished with it. Will start the rewrite on Echoes soon. Congrats to Deborah on Staccato, and Pat, I noticed you have three books on Second Wind. That's great, I will be ordering them soon.

I just wrote, 3 sets of snippets for Rene's challenge this month. It's called, Cut the crap. What I wrote made me giggle!

I'm not writing either. Don't know what the problem is. Maybe too many late nights doing internet promo stuff? Perhaps.

I must be tired. I keep writing comments and then deleting them when I realize I'm whining, and the whole point of this group is NO WHINING!!! I put that in capitals so I'd remember.

Where is that Angela? I need a giggle, too.

Good for you, Angela. If our writing doesn't make us smile, it won't make anyone else smile, either.

Nancy, have you ever considered writing humor?

Here's one of my snippets:

I begged, I pleaded, I seethed.
No matter how many times I tried,
You won’t cut the crap(ing) in my yard!

Next one:
Sam had to leave.
His cat had a disease.
Where is he, do you ask?
Outside, telling the cat, cut the crap!

And, last but, not least:

Our cow failed to produce
For two whole years.
Then, we gave her whole wheat.
Now, all my husband says these days is..
Cut the crap!

I'll just throw this out. When doing research for my supporting character, who is from Louisiana and into Santeria, I read the bood: Voodoo Dreams, the story of Marie LaVeau. Very interesting and fun stuff. Does anyone have any recommendations along these lines?

They made me smile, too, Angela.

Nancy, my third book, Daughter Am I, won't be published until later this month. I got the final proof, so it's almost ready to go.

And no, I haven't read anything recently about voodoo or Santeria. I know I read some books a long time ago, but I can't remember any titles.

Yes Pat, I have written comedy. The problem is my comedy turns into goofiness and it just doesn't go over all that well. I cut a lot of the silly, goofy stuff out of Vendetta and it is a better book for it. I notice Janet Evanovich has really gone over the edge in her latest books with the silly, goofy and I got really bored with it. There are so many different types of humor. Something to look into, eh?

I truly love humor in the romance novels I read. If it's tasteful then, it's fine with me.

Thanks Angela, crap cutting extraordinaire. First there was pooper scooper and now there's crap cutter. Gonna clean up this neighborhood!

Nancy, I got tired of Janet Evanovich after about the fourth book. Just the same jokes/silliness over and over again.

That's really great Nancy! Maybe I should make that our neighborhood slogan.
Te he!

I think humor is one of the most difficult forms of writing -- not just to make it funny, but to keep from repeating the same effect over and over again. That's what I'm afraid I'm doing in my WIP. It's supposed to be a whimsically ironic apocalyptic fantasy (I wonder if that's a genre?) but how many times can one guy react to a constantly changing world without it beginning to grate on the reader's nerves? I think I need another gag for the second half of the book, or forget the humor. But the humor was the point -- to learn to write it well.

You will be loved by your neighbors. Maybe you'd be in great demand, too. Very fragrant job, but truly rewarding.
Pat, do you like Elmore Leonard's humor? I think his is more "grownup", or clever. There is a big difference between his and Evanovich's.

And then there's Hiaasen's humor. His characters are funny, but in different ways. I know what you mean Pat. But Hiassen seems to express different forms of humor. I know of slapstick, straightman, the reaction type that you're talking about, satire. What else?

Hi. Just got over here from our great reveal in the wombat DB contest. I wrote a Dan Brown spoof called Codex Principus.

Here's a paragraph I liked that I had to drop from the text due to word limits. The words are written about a priest named John McNeary.

He’d broken off dinner with the attractive Mrs. Bloom to come here. The woman threatened to turn him into a sinner. He felt an indelicate rapture in her presence, lured by her gossipy tales of the parish and a full madonna’s bosom.

Humor is the most difficult thing for me to write. I can come up with some humorous dialogue, but that comes more from what that character funnels to me than my attempt at funny.

What a great snippet, James. Very wry and insightful. Love that this came from a priest.

I love that, James. That kind of writing would keep me turning the pages. It's fun and very expressive.

Nancy -- well, there's irony, saying one thing and doing the opposite (don't know what that's called), and then there's leading people to expect one thing and giving them the opposite (don't know what that's called, either.)

James, I like that. Which makes me think of another form of humor -- contrast. Gossip and madonnas make an interesting contrast.

Okay, I gotta run.
There's much writing to do, and another chat tonight where I have a chance to win points.
I need all I can get!

Here's some of the 'humor' I cut from Vendetta. I think I have a ways to go in the humor department. Another type of humor is with a description like I attempted to do here:
Junior was just dropping off Megan when I arrived home around eight thirty the next morning. Today she had her Ninja Matron outfit on. The same red dishtowel was wrapped around her head, the hair looking even more barbed and lethal. A black muscle shirt revealed surprisingly solid, large upper arms. A baggy black granny skirt made a big tent to the ground. The skirt I guessed was loose enough to allow her to perform fully stretched out leg kicks. I had a suspicion that when no one was around she practiced the art of demolishing some guy’s ‘goodies’. She shot me a big, fish eyed look. “You been out all night, Tina?” she said.
“Yeah, Megan. I was on surveillance.”
“Hmmph,” she rested her hands on her hips and blocked the doorway. “You remind me of that alley cat I had who’d go out cattin’ all night. Your hair’s all mussed up, and I’ve never seen you grinning so much from a night of surveillance.” She gave me an all-knowing, all-seeing kind of look. “You’ve been rollin’ around all night with a man, haven’t you?”
“That information is confidential,” I said, trying to look outraged and knowing all too well that I was not succeeding.
“Not no more, it isn’t,” she said, grinning. “Cause you just answered my question.” I followed her on into the house and just about rear-ended her when she stopped............

Hullo all...

Writing? What's that?

Thanks for stopping by Angela. I hope your new apartment is working out.

I have written nearly zero fiction in the past few months (apart from the occasional Genre Shortie here). I did manage a few pages of something new a few weeks ago but the muse has clearly moved on from this domicile.

You can read more about the infamous Father McNeary here.

The deletion of the line I wrote above is an example of editing in action. It really helped ot round out this character, but in a short story with a word limit it wasn't essential to the main story line. So -- snip.

I edit for other people, I write crap for work... but my writing? A distant memory! *sniffle*

That being said, I need humor -- not broad, slapstick stuff, but wordplay.

Nancy, if you tightened the description a bit, that would be stellar!

I love to be zapped by something subtle -- not "hey lemme tell ya a joke" but more along the lines of the sample you posted, James.

Nancy, the lines you've chosen do tell us a lot about the the two characters. They could be tightened up a bit, but the descriptions are vivid.

Hmmm, thanks Pat. Maybe it'll go into Echoes. Since I cut the scene from Vendetta where Tina was attacked and Megan was trying to teach her some self defense moves it really didn't have any place in there. I'll trim down that description and see how it goes.

Thanks, Tracy. Yes, for a little spoof, I poured a lot of energy into those few lines. The counterpoint of having those kinds of thoughts coming from a priest should make the reader wonder about his moral character.

Thanks James, I'm on my way to read more about Father MCNeary. Will say goodnight, I have another early morning tomorrow. Will come back later and read the posts.

Just a tad, James. :-)

Looks like it was ME who stopped the conversation cold this time!

Tracy, sorry, I got sidetracked.

Aren't you going to get another book published?

After I left the chat, my computer went down. I had to restart it two times!
Finally got it up and running...
Tomorrow, I'm going to go get a few disks and make backup copies from my hard drive.
I don't want to lose everything I've ever worked on, that's for sure.

Angela, hope it works out. Even a failing disk drive usually has enough time left so you can get backups off of it.

Pat, another fun chat. I had to scoot to read to my son.