{"id":187,"date":"2013-06-18T13:14:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T13:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/2013\/06\/18\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_18-3\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T12:22:17","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:22:17","slug":"tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_18-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_18-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nWriting
\nhumor isn\u2019t as easy as it looks. If it were, everyone would be a comedian. For this
\nreason, authors should use caution when labeling their work a romantic comedy.
\nHere are a few editing tips for writing humor:<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nDon\u2019t overthink the punch line:<\/b>
\nActually, when writing humor, the punch line should be seamless and subtle.
\nAuthors are not comedians on the stage. They are, in a sense, playwrights,
\nsetting the scene in their readers\u2019 heads. For comedy to work, there are two factors
\nthat should be reviewed.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n            Characterization<\/b>:
\nNo, characters don\u2019t have to be clowns in order to pull off a humorous scene,
\nbut we must see something in their nature that makes the scene funny. For
\nexample, if someone is by nature a bitter person, they wouldn\u2019t just rip out a
\njoke to make someone laugh. No, the humor would come from their sarcasm.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n            The
\nSetup<\/b>: The setup will make or break a comedic scene. Again, this may involve
\ncharacterization, but it also involves the location, the event that is
\noccurring, and even the character\u2019s personality. If these areas come together,
\nit takes only one line (the author\u2019s punch line, if you will) to bring out a
\nguffaw.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nLet the humor flow: <\/b>This goes
\nhand-in-hand with not overthinking the punch line. If an author knows his
\ncharacters well enough, the humor\u2014if it is meant to be a part of the story\u2014will
\nflow easily. I have on several occasions finished a draft, and when I\u2019ve gone
\nback in to edit, I\u2019ll see that the humor flowed without my intention to do so.
\nAuthors should let their characters rule in this regard.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nKeep it clean<\/b>: Recently, I\u2019ve seen so
\nmany posts on Facebook and on Pinterest that could be very funny.
\nUnfortunately, some folks mistake shock value for humor. The best jokes are
\nthose written without sexual innuendo, without racial slurs, and without four
\nletter words.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nOne of
\nmy favorite characteristics of God is His understated sense of humor. It\u2019s
\nalive and well, and we could do well to model our humor after His. I think of
\nthe story of the ten plagues. Yes, it was a sad time in Egypt for Israel and
\nfor the Egyptians, but in the midst of this drama, God allowed something
\nhumorous to happen.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nGod
\ndidn\u2019t overthink the punch line. In fact, it is very subtle. No, he brought
\nsome characters into the mix and played the setup quite well. Who were these
\ncharacters? They were Pharaoh\u2019s magicians. What was the setup? The location was
\nEgypt by the Nile. God had introduced plagues that mimicked the gods of the
\nEgyptians. One of those plagues was frogs.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nI
\ncouldn\u2019t imagine the smell of dead frogs littering the ground, the house, and
\nevery corner of Egypt. To prove that God had nothing over on them, what did the
\nmagicians do? They brought forth more frogs. I get this clear vision of Moses
\nand Aaron walking away from that one, shaking their heads and laughing.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nSo,
\nwhen editing for humor, an author should make sure the comedy is not forced,
\nthat the humor flows naturally from characters and from the setup, and he
\nshould always double check his humor-meter to assure that it is not offensive
\nto others. The best way to do this is to ask several people to read the scene\u2014without
\nauthor comment\u2014and to see if it works for some of them. Remember, humor, like
\nbeauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone will get it, but the
\nmajority should.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing humor isn\u2019t as easy as it looks. If it were, everyone would be a comedian. For this reason, authors should use caution when labeling their work a romantic comedy. Here are a few editing tips for writing humor: Don\u2019t overthink the punch line: Actually, when writing humor, the punch line should be seamless and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[22,135,136,161,162,163],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-editor-tips","tag-editors-tips","tag-editors","tag-fiction-writing","tag-genre","tag-writing-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}