Thursday, June 07, 2007

More about Humor

Kelly is right. The way to find out if your writing is funny is show it to other people. The very best technique is to do a reading and see if people laugh in the right places. Next best is to hand the m.s. to several readers.

I think all of my writing is funny, but I realize -- thinking about the topic -- that humor, neat ideas and sense of wonder are all pretty closely related in my mind. Even a bleak idea is can be funny, if it's really neat. Terry Pratchett's clowns are both bleak and funny.

Chick Lit humor, which I know only from Tate's novels, is a category of its own and seems to require lightness. I might be able to do Chick Lit humor, if a gun was put against my head, but it would be difficult and I might well get blown away.

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