Writers in the Storm

Writers in the Storm welcomes back James R. Preston with tips on how--and when--to add humor to your WIP, no matter the genre. Here he is with a fun-filled Laugh?  I Thought I'd Die WriterStrong post.

by James R. Preston

There's this PI investigating a murder at a nudist camp in the hills above LA . . .

See the possibilities?  Maybe you do and maybe you don't.  Stay tuned.

But seriously, folks, I want to talk about funny stuff, why I like it and try to use it, and offer some suggestions on how to handle it.  I use examples from movies as well as books, because even a bloated, three-hour modern screen epic is more accessible than, say, Moby Dick, or even Notorious Nineteen.  (And, BTW, how many essayists can mention Evanovich and Melville in the same sentence?)

What's in this for you?  Fair question.  I can't make you funny, but I can point out examples and show you how to look for humor in places you might not have considered.  At the end of this essay you will have places to look for some laughs.  You will be alert for humor and I'll bet most of you travel with a notepad and pen and jot stuff down, and if you decide you want to add a chuckle to your work you'll have places to look.

I will offer rules for inserting banana peels into your stories.

Why should you listen to me?  Well, I am proud when people tell me my mysteries are funny as well as emotional.  And once when I was teaching a computer class at ConAgra one of my students asked me if I'd ever been a stand-up comedian.  Um, that was a compliment, right?

I was sort of hiding from two guys who either thought we were in business together or who wanted to kill me.

"Sort of hiding" because I was fairly sure that the guys in question would take Door Number Two and try to shoot me, a lot.

That's describing Read 'Em and Weep, one of my Surf City Mysteries.  Humor is about tone, and that bit tells the reader I'm not Mickey Spillane.

Most of the readers of Writers in the Storm write genre fiction.  Love is important; so is murder.  Why do we need funny incidents?  Well, your readers want to be entertained, to spend a few hours away from the kids, the boss, the chores.  If you do your job well, the issues the people in your story face are serious.  See the fine blog from Fae Rowen for more on just how serious those issues need to be.

So a dash of pie-in-the-face provides a break.  What you need to decide is whether or not you want to provide that break.  Not everybody does.  Wow, read Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, or Silence of the Lambs, but brace yourself.  They are, by intent, grim reads.  Wonderful, but like a cup of black coffee.

For a really hilarious bit in a classic giant-bug movie, look for Fess Parker's brilliant, hilarious bit in Them.  Ask yourself why it's funny, and why the punch line, where the FBI agent promises to speak to the doctor about his release -- and then tells the doctor to keep him locked up -- caps it off.  More importantly, ask yourself why it's there.

I got a million of 'em.  You want another monster movie with at least one laugh?  Check out Alien.  No kidding.  It goes by very quickly, but one of the characters is testing the creature's blood to see if it really is acid.  He borrows another character's pen, sticks it in the puddle of blood and the end promptly melts.  Yep, deadly acid.  He calmly says, "Here's your pen" and returns it to the owner, whose expression is priceless. Contrast that with Aliens, which is described by the creator as "40 miles of bad road."

Or contrast any of the Stephanie Plums with any of the Reacher books.  Both writers are enormously talented, one likes a good laugh, the other tells a harrowing story.

In this example my Talented Amateur has followed two suspicious characters as they buy some beer.  He loses them, and then . . .

. . . from the smell they'd finished off the malt; from the looks on their faces they were ready to start on me. They slammed me up against the wall and pinned my arms to my sides. On tv Sonny Crockett or Magnum would have lashed out with a shoe, smashed their kneecaps, and then beaten the truth out of them whether they knew any truth or not, all on his way to saving the girl and getting the woman. Guess what? I tried to lash out with my shoe and break a kneecap but they moved out of the way and slammed me back against the wall again which hurt a lot, only because my ribs were still sore, normally I'm a lot tougher, so I held still, hoping they would get scared wondering what I was planning and run away. I guess they were able to control their fear, since they didn't run away.

"Are you following us, asshole?” The taller one seemed to do most of the talking, maybe because he knew more words.

I believe there are two basic rules for using humor.

Rule Number One:  Decide ahead of time whether the tone of your work will allow for humor.  If it won't, don't force it just because your favorite author is a very funny lady.

Rule Number One, Revisited:  Tell your story and let the people in it decide if they are funny or not.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Two rule number ones?  I make no apology.  Writing is serious, difficult work.  It is also, by definition, complex.  There are many roads to And They Lived Happily Ever After.  And only you can pick which one to take.  That's your job.

Me?  Why, I was penning serious, thoughtful adventures until my hero started talking and would he take me seriously?  No-o-o-o.  Some characters just got no respect for Us Serious Authors.

Rule Number Two: Be consistent!

If you write a series and it's hilarious, keep it that way.  Stephen King is a treasure, a genius, but in Needful Things he gives up all his wit and warmth and, well, for my money it's a mean, mean book, completely different than of the rest of his work.  Ditto for Laurence Sanders and The Case of Lucy Bending.  Evanovich, Crais, John D. MacDonald, all are consistent.  Unless you are a genius I suggest the same to you, and if you are a genius you certainly don't need my advice!

Okay, we've talked.  What can you do?  Here's your assignment.  Look for humor in what you read and watch, and make some notes.  Very quickly you will see a pattern, things that tickle you.  Or you will find that whoopee cushions are not your cup of tea.  (And if anyone can top that for Mixed Metaphor of the Week, let me know.)

I've put my guy, T. R. Macdonald, through some funny incidents like yelling, "Bad dog! Bad dog!" as he is getting his pants ripped by vicious pit bulls, but I have yet to top one of the masters.

Remember that PI at the nudist camp?  From the pen of Richard Prather, in Strip For Murder and with thanks to Kara Lennox for her bookends advice in “Plot Fixer: Weak Black Moment and the End Does Not Satisfy.”

Fleeing from thugs, Prather’s hero Shell Scott escapes by grabbing onto to a huge helium-filled balloon and releasing the rope holding it down.  He clings to the slowly-deflating gasbag as he floats down out of the hills and over the city.   After a while he notices that people are staring up at him, pointing and laughing.  Then he drifts to a gentle landing on a window ledge at City Hall, into the arms of waiting police.  Naked.

I haven't topped that.  Maybe you will.

Send in your humorous discoveries.  I think we will find them v-e-e-r-y interesting.  Ah, Laugh-In.  Gone but not forgotten. But seriously, how do you approach humor in your WIP? What is the funniest situation you've ever gotten your characters into?

James R. Preston has written four books in the award-winning Surf City Mysteries series.  The most recent is Pennies For Her Eyes, the story of a young woman who wants T. R. Macdonald to help her surf Maverick's.

His next signing is July 20, at Book Carnival in Orange.

First, our hearts go out to those directly affected by the bombing at the Boston Marathon.  We all have indirectly been affected by this act of terror--life is not as carefree as it was this past week-end. 

Today's blog is part two in a series of posts by Fae Rowen about the science of attachment styles and how we can use the research to help our characters fall in love and connect that emotion with our readers. Here's the link to Part 1, if you missed the information about the secure attachment style.

Part 3 of the series, Ambivalent/Anxious Attachment Style, is due on Monday, April 29.

by Fae Rowen

Attachment Style 2: Avoidant Insecure

The Backstory: How does someone "acquire" one of the three insecure attachment styles?  The same way a secure attachment style is formed: from the interaction between a child and the caregiver.

You didn't do anything--bad or good--to acquire your style.

Your attachment style was determined by your parent's and caregiver's behaviors and attitudes. Most probably those folks loved you and did the best they could at the time, given their adult circumstances.

With the Avoidant Insecure Style, the caregivers often showed evidence of love and caring. But through their own fear, perhaps fear of doing something "wrong" in child-rearing, they were not available enough for "interactive co-regulation," where the adult provides messages through actions and words, which lead to secure attachment.

Examples of caregiver behaviors and attitudes contributing to Avoidant Insecure Attachment:

• Distant or emotionally absent
• Neglectful, rejecting, or hostile
• Ineffective or insensitive to child's  needs
• Communication towards child not age appropriate
• Incoherent language and facial expression
• Leave a child alone too much

Here are characteristics your adult characters might display with this style. Choose what works for your story.

1. Holds no clear memory of childhood because memory-making is impaired.
2. Minimizes importance of relationships in life.
3. Lives on his or her own.
4. Believes in hard work and extreme independence.
5. Send signals to partners that they don't need them, even though this may be far from the truth.
6. Partners may feel as if they don't matter.
7. Lives in an "emotional desert" lacking in emotional connection or affectionate touch.
8. May dissociate rather than feel own needs, wants, feelings, or desires, including sensations in the body.
9. When needs, wants and feelings arise there is an extreme level of vulnerability.
10. May dislike partner's emotional expression, due to their own unconscious repression of emotion.
11. Feels superior in not needing anyone.
12. May feel so isolated they cannot reach out to someone, even though they want connection.
13. Trust is easily violated.
14. They expect to be hurt or disappointed by others.
15. They love their partners and children (and others), but find connection stressful.
16. May be unaware of how deeply disconnected they are from others.
17. Often feels stress when loved ones approach them uninvited--and relief when they leave.
18. Seems initially rejecting when approached by partner because they experience stress.
19. Needs time to shift from disconnection to reconnect.
20. Needs to learn approach behaviors rather than follow automatic reflex to withdraw or avoid.
21. May initially feel relief or separation elation at break-ups or separations, but then become very depressed when the loved one is no longer available or gone too long.
22. Minimizes how much they really need their partner.
23. Need to realize the level of neglect that seems normal from their childhood.
24. Feeling the loss of of a deep relationship can bridge to a natural healthy longing to bond, which is the bridge back to secure attachment.

Avoidant style characters might minimize proximity seeking, reduce expectations or deny their needs. They'll have a lack of richness or depth in autobiographical details. They never felt special to their parents.They'll have difficulty with self-reflection, so having them deliver an internal monologue will not be authentic. And they use very few words, so make their dialogue count.

Even if your primary style is not avoidant, I'll bet that you resonant with a few of these traits. And that you can recognize how it would be easy to fall in love with someone who helps you "repair" these behaviors to promote a secure attachment style.

What kind of "repair messages" help build a bridge to secure attachment for our avoidant style character?

Words or actions that say: 

• You belong here
• I'm glad you're alive
• What you need is important to me
• I'm glad you are you
• I celebrate your existence
• You can feel all of your feelings
• You can feel your body
• It is safe to be vulnerable and reach out

A soft gaze, or "kind eyes," goes a long way with this style to convey many of the sayings above. Show this behavior across the dining table or at a coffee house. You can show how your character changes and feels after receiving these repair messages.

The repair message can be given through actions or "acts of love." With these acts of love, you can show how the secure attachment bridge is formed between your characters. And, voila, they have fallen in love.

How can you use repair messages to show your characters falling in love? Do you have one that resonates for you? Do you recognize a repair message that a loved one has given you?

~ Fae

A Thank You to our readers:

This is our 400th post. Of course, when we started all this blogging business, we should have anticipated this moment, but we're feeling rather grown-up today. Thanks for reading!

Writers in the Storm welcomes back Anne Cleeland to share tips on writing Secondary Characters. Anne last helped us sort through the accuracy for details of our historicals.

by Anne Cleeland

A story with compelling secondary characters engages the reader by adding another layer of interest to the story.  Whether they are sidekicks, lovers, or shadowy villains, good secondary characters help make the story three dimensional instead of flat, and also make it a lot easier to beef up that all-important word count. As an added bonus, the secondary character often provides the hero with opportunities for bantering or bickering dialogue--always a reader favorite and an easy way to establish likeability.

In most stories, however, there are certain protocols that are expected and probably should be followed when it comes to secondary characters. The writer has to be careful not to violate these unspoken rules at the risk of annoying the reader, because an annoyed reader is not a happy reader.  Here are three that work for me:

1. Don’t kill off the secondary character everyone loves.

The death of the secondary character is often used to ratchet up the stakes.  The late, great Blake Snyder famously said that the hero’s best friend always dies around page 71 of the screenplay—it’s a tried-and-true literary device.  But the death should stir the reader’s sympathy on behalf of the hero, not make the reader feel betrayed because they’ve invested in the character.

The red-shirted crewmen on Star Trek were famous for being doomed from the start, so no one missed them when they dutifully got themselves killed by a gorn or something.

Sometimes you get the feeling that the writer was staring at his laptop, out of ideas, and decided to kill off a beloved character so as to be “edgy,” or to “allow the story to go in a new direction” (read: out of ideas.) To me, these deaths always seem too contrived; shock value for the sake of shock value and not authentic.

Examples of “good” secondary character deaths that evoked sympathy for the hero: Beth in Little Women; Rue in Hunger Games; Horatio in Hamlet; Helen Burns in Jane Eyre.

Examples of “bad” deaths that made the reader recoil:  Dumbledore in Harry Potter; Boromir in Lord of the Rings; Lady Sybil in Downtown Abbey.

2.  Don’t make the secondary character’s role unclear.

As a reader, I want to fit the character into the appropriate slot, so I don’t like it when the writer muddies it up.  No one expects Dr. Watson, Sancho Panza or Samwise Gangee to take a turn at being the hero. No one expects Falstaff to start speaking of weighty matters, and no one expects Obi-wan to start wise cracking --everyone should instead stay in role.

Exception: I suppose there is an exception to this rule when the secondary character’s role is supposed to be unclear.  Examples are The Wizard in The Wizard of Oz; Rebecca in Rebecca; Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Examples of secondary characters who break role and cause general confusion: Star Wars had more than a few, including Anakin Skywalker and Lando. You’d think an epic good vs. evil plot would stay within the lines, but you’d be wrong—and again, you got the feeling that the writers were out of ideas, and floundering around.

And speaking of which, remember Paradise Lost?  If you do, you probably remember Satan more than you do the protagonist, you-know-Who.

Peter Pan’s Captain Hook is another ambivalent villain, as is the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, or Snape in Harry Potter. Either they’re secret good guys, or they’re villains, but make up your mind, for heaven’s sake.

3.  Don’t let the secondary character outshine the hero.

Every writer knows this feeling; the secondary character develops a life of his own. The writer has a choice; beat the character back into submission, or allow him to take over the story and hope for the best, as was the case with Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, Huckleberry Finn from Tom Sawyer or Jacob Black from the Twilight series.

However, in most cases I prefer that the writer keeps everyone firmly in their chosen role. Storytelling involves certain expectations and you don’t want to cause confusion or annoyance, see Rules 1 and 2.  

Georgette Heyer wrote a wonderful book called Cotillion, where the archetypal hero turns out to be not-so-heroic, and instead the dorky secondary character turns out to be the hero. Heyer was a master, however, and caution is advised before trying this on your own.

Examples of secondary characters who outshone the hero:

Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Think about it—weren’t you just flipping the pages, waiting for him to show up again?  Amy in Little Women is another example. I know we were supposed to applaud Jo’s choice of husband, but Amy’s beat him to pieces. Lestat, in Interview with the Vampire (who arguably started this whole vampire thing), and Long John Silver from Treasure Island (what is it about pirates?)

Can you think of other rules, or examples?

Anne's Regency novel, Tainted Angel ,  is due out in June (is that a gorgeous cover, or what?)

Anne Cleeland holds a degree in English from UCLA as well as a degree in law from Pepperdine University, and is a member of the California State Bar.  She writes a historical fiction series set in the Regency period as well as a contemporary mystery series set in New Scotland Yard.  A member of the Historical Novel Society and Mystery Writers of America, she lives in California and has four children.