What Is My Novel Trying To Be?
My third draft, once done, is the one that I'll be sending out for feedback. It's been in my mind and my laptop for far too long now, time to let it out into the real world. And there's an especially good reason for this.
There's comedy in it.
Yes, as well as trying to write a mystery, I try to write it so it's funny. Hopefully some of it works. And that's the difficulty with writing comedy. It has to work.
Sure there are guidelines to help you split people's sides: exaggeration, fish-out-of-water, understatement, contrasts, surprises. That's all well and good, but the only way to see if comedy is working is to test it. On people.
Soon, it will be time to do this. Yes, soon.
And now I must run off into the distance, cackling like a human vampire cross-bred with a hyena in the dead of night.
The cackling gets quieter with each step.
Quieter.
Until I fall.
And whimper.
Then I get back up and launch in to self-deprecating laughter.
Much like Chevy Chase used to.
6 comments:
Yes, like Mel Brooks used to be.
Funny is good. Especially when you're dealing with really dark things, like dead bodies, torture and Vegemite. I swear, I don't understand how an entire continent manages to eat that stuff. Gack.
Hope you get some good feedback on it.
Actually, it's a little scary admitting that I'm trying to write comedy. I should probably just call it a 'quirky' mystery.
Christ, don't do that. Quirky mysteries have little old ladies with cats who talk to their dead husbands, or single twenty-somethings looking for Mr. Right and stumbling across corpses in between shopping sprees.
Alright, you scared me off it. I don't really like the term 'mystery' to begin with, because that's exactly the kind of stuff it makes me think of.
Twee crap.
So...
Crime comedy. That's what to call it.
Alliterative, punchy, and NO CATS.
I understand your dilemma. I'm in the same boat. I've missed my exit for Thriller, and Mystery, and am trying to find my way back from Literary Lover's Lane.
Good luck with round 3.
Mmm, comic crime. I'll tell you what it is when I read it ;-) LOL at the vegemite comment, I hate the stuff *blergh*!
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