SPA News Autumn 2012 - Shell UK

WRiTE RULES 6: NO LAUgHINg MATTER...
You may not regard yourself as a comic
writer but even serious stories need
moments of levity to lighten the mood.
Sometimes a comic scene is deliberately
placed before a moment of tragedy to
heighten the drama through contrast.
Sometimes a funny character can create
variety. We don't think of Jane Austen
as primarily comic but her ironic analysis
of human foibles and creations such as
Miss Bates and Mr. Collins demonstrate
her great skills as a humorist.
There is a broad spectrum of comedy
from gentle, observational social comedy
to far-fetched, fast-paced farce, to blacklycomic
realistic drama. Farce is the staple
of TV sit-com but novelists like Tom Sharpe
use similar tone and techniques with slapstick
elements and frenetic plots.
Satire can be farcical but also uses parody
and wit as weapons for social commentary.
The satirist appears to approve of the very
thing he wishes to attack, often reversing
expected norms. A good example is The
Thick of It, a TV political satire which uses
the 'fly-on-the-wall' documentary form to
depict bad language, bullying and callous
dishonesty as the norm among politicians
and their aides.
Here are some more comic techniques:
1. Create identification with the
central character – we share their
viewpoint; we empathise with their
discomfort; we enjoy their bad behaviour,
e.g. Kingsley Amis' lecherous, drunken,
young academic Lucky Jim (1954). We
live vicariously and wickedly through
our favourite, naughty characters. We
may not want Victor Meldrew for a next
door neighbour but we enjoy his outbursts
on everyday irritants; he says what we
think: "I don't believe it!!"
2. Create two dimensional
characters, larger-than-life stereotypes
with exaggerated personality traits, so
we do not take any harm that befalls
them seriously; in fact we enjoy their
misfortunes – Victor Meldrew again.
3. Comic names – these can be
seaside postcard silly, e.g. Mrs
Shufflebotham, or reflective of character
like snobbish Hyacinth Bucket,
pronounced, of course, "Bouquet".
4. bathos – use high-flown, rather
pompous language to describe a very
ordinary event; apply Olympic jargon
to the school egg and spoon race:
"Tension mounts in the playground as
after months of intensive training and
precision egg-laying..."
6. Exaggeration – slapstick action,
improbable emotions and attitudes signal
to the reader that you intend to be funny
so they don't react in the usual way to, for
example, violence. When an unfortunate
chap in a Tom Sharpe novel inadvertently
puts his most "precious possessions" in a
blender we laugh, whereas if this were to
happen in a Mafia story it would be an
horrific torture scene.
7. Fish out of water – placing a
character in a situation alien to them is a
common device, e.g. the sophisticated
Flora amidst her simple country cousins in
Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm
(1932), or Evelyn Waugh's unworldly
nature diarist, William Boot, mistaken for
a foreign correspondent and sent to a war
zone in Scoop (1938). Role reversals are
funny too: in Absolutely Fabulous we enjoy
sensible Saffy playing the adult to her
delinquent mother, Edina.
8. hyperbole – over-blown figures of
speech. Blackadder excels in this when
he tells Baldrick his brain is so small "that
if a hungry cannibal cracked your head
open, there wouldn't be enough to cover
a small water biscuit".
9. irony – the use of words to convey
meaning that is the opposite of its literal
meaning, e.g. “You're marrying your fifth
wife?! What excellent experience for a
marriage guidance counsellor.”
10. Parody – a humorous imitation of
serious literature or a specific genre such
as Jane Austen parodying the gothic novel
in Northanger Abbey. Austen builds
tension with gloomy corridors and strange
wRITINg TIPS
Ardella draws on her experience as a stand-up comedian and script-writer to look
at the serious business of using humour in your writing.
noises but when young Catherine Morland
finds an ancient parchment our expectations
are brought down to earth with a bump
– it's a mundane laundry list.
REcOMMENDED READS
COMEDY OUT OF DARKNESS
Born in London in 1928, after serving in
the Royal Marines, Tom Sharpe moved to
South Africa in 1951, where the unjust
apartheid regime inspired him to write
satire. He was imprisoned, then expelled
in 1961. He wrote Riotous Assembly
(1971), in which the murder of a Zulu cook
sparks off intrigues that lead to ostriches
exploding on city streets. Next came a
sequel, Indecent Exposure (1973), and
Porterhouse Blue (1974), which sent up the
inner workings of an ancient university.
His biggest success was Wilt, written whilst
teaching at a technical college. Wilt, a
lecturer, is accused of murdering his wife
after he is seen trying to hide a blow-up
doll. Sharpe wrote the first draft in 24 hours
(although he spent six months revising it).
Sharpe admires P G Wodehouse but his
dark humour derives from hearing First
World War veterans tell grim jokes of life
and death in his youth. He recalls a joke
about two privates marching up a hill. One
asks the sergeant for a rest. He replies:
“What do you want a rest for now, lad?
You'll be dead in half an hour!'"
Now 84, Sharpe is writing his
autobiography. His most recent book
The Wilt Inheritance (2010) is available
in paperback.
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