April 6, 2016

Making (Book) Sausage

Yesterday, I presented to 60 booksellers the story of how I became a writer. It was the first time I'd shared in public the truth of how I came to write fiction, and where my story ideas (mostly) come from. Doing so shot me pretty far out of my comfort zone. Jupiter-far. Historically, when asked the inspiration for my first published novel, <i>May Day</i>, I tell a version of the truth, usually slanting toward funny:

• I lived in the country and had poor TV reception and decided to write to entertain myself. (true/not true)
• Janet Evanovich wasn't writing fast enough, so I wrote my own funny mystery. (true/not true)
• I'd tried writing a literary novel, and it turned out stinky, so I turned to mystery. (true/not true)
• My kitty brain likes swatting at puzzles, and mystery writing provides that outlet like nothing else. (true/not true)

But not yesterday. Yesterday I told the truth, with only a thin microphone stand to hide behind. I'd been writing about it for a while, but that's a different animal; I can write about anything. But to say it out loud, into a microphone, in front of a breakfast crowd of strangers? Oof.

Coincidentally also yesterday, my friend and kick-ass writer Lori Rader-Day posted a link to this article penned by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, where he writes:

Artists frequently hide the steps that lead to their masterpieces. They want their work and their career to be shrouded in the mystery that it all came out at once. It’s called hiding the brushstrokes, and those who do it are doing a disservice to people who admire their work and seek to emulate them. If you don’t get to see the notes, the rewrites, and the steps, it’s easy to look at a finished product and be under the illusion that it just came pouring out of someone’s head like that. People who are young, or still struggling, can get easily discouraged, because they can’t do it like they thought it was done. An artwork is a finished product, and it should be, but I always swore to myself that I would not hide my brushstrokes.

I like that. I like the idea of not hiding our brushstrokes in life. Back in the 90s, I worked at an import store on the West Bank of Minneapolis. My coworker, Aeon, put it like this, "When I was a kid and would trip in front of people, I'd get so embarrassed, like I'd been a four-legged creature putting on airs and had just gotten found out for the fraud I was. Now when I fall down, I laugh and get back up. Life's more fun that way."

Those words have stuck with me for 20 years.

So, yesterday, I stood in front of 60 booksellers, my voice shaking, and told them how my husband's 9/11 suicide is what truly made me a novelist. His unexpected death left ripped-up memories, a churning brain, terror, questions, shame, and more questions, and they didn't all fit into my head and so I poured them into a book. A mystery, specifically, which is to say a book centered around a question that at the end gets answered. And it healed me, or came close to it. I haven't stopped writing since.

All 60 booksellers grew super quiet when I shared my raw truth. Some heads started nodding. A lot of eyes connected with mine, some of them so full of love that I teared up a little myself, some curious, others--clearly and beautifully--wondering what stories of their own it would be okay to tell. Yesterday's talk was one more step on a path that leads to my June TEDx Talk, and (I hope) continues outward and upward after that. Because I really do believe that when we show our brushstrokes, when we laugh and get back up no matter how dramatically we've just fallen, life gets easier.

For everyone.

Everyone.

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Jessica (Jess) Lourey is best known for her critically-acclaimed Murder-by-Month mysteries, which have earned multiple starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist, the latter calling her writing "a splendid mix of humor and suspense." She is a tenured professor of creative writing and sociology, a recipient of The Loft's 2014 Excellence in Teaching fellowship, and leads interactive writing workshops all over the world. <i>Salem’s Cipher</i>, the first in her thrilling Witch Hunt Series, hits stores September 2016 and her agent is currently shopping <i>Better than Gin: Rewrite Your Life</i>, a guide to recycling life experiences into compelling fiction.

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April 1, 2016

How to Write Funny, Part 2 (A Writing Whip-It)

Specific Is Funny

Hey you. Thanks for showing up! My last blog post promised that this next blog post would begin to share the tools of writing funny. That this would be the first of 8 tools, matter of fact. It is! Here's the first tool: be specific.

If it seems easy, it is. Specific is more funny than vague. Let me give you two examples.

This first is a past blog post from the consistently hilarious Bloggess:

You know how when you’re having a dream you sometimes get angry, or frustrated, or delighted or calm…but you almost never get utterly baffled.  A giant purple ostrich walks into your house, which you’ll later realize (upon waking) is not your house at all but is actually a bakery you peed at once, and instead of thinking, "When the fuck did I get an ostrich?" you think "I wonder if it wants me to scritch it on the head?"

You can argue whether or not the above is funny (it is to me), but there is no debate that it's funnier than merely writing, "dreams are so weird!" Let me give you another example of how specific is funny in writing, this one excerpted from Carl Hiaasen's <i>Bad Monkey</i>:

On the hottest day of July, trolling in dead-calm waters near Key West, a tourist named James Mayberry reeled up a human arm. His wife flew to the bow of the boat and tossed her breakfast burritos.

“What’re you waiting for?” James Mayberry barked at the mate. “Get that thing off my line!”

The kid tugged and twisted, but the barb of the hook was embedded in bone. Finally the captain came down from the bridge and used bent-nose pliers to free the decomposing limb, which he placed on shaved ice in a deck box…

Louise Mayberry's gaze was fixed on the limb. "What could have happened?" she asked.

"Tiger shark," her husband said matter-of-factly.

"Is that a wedding band on his hand? This is so sad."

"Fish on!" the mate called. "Who's up?"

James Mayberry steered his bride to the fighting chair and the mate fitted the rod into the gimbal. Although she was petite, Louisa Mayberry owned a strong upper body due to rigorous Bikram yoga classes that she took on Tuesday nights. Refusing assistance, she pumped in an eleven-pound blackfin tuna and whooped triumphantly as it flopped on the deck. Her husband had never seen her so excited.

Hiaasen is the master of this type of specificity--"breakfast burritos," "bent-nose pliers," "shaved ice in a deck box," Tuesday night Bikram yoga classes that account for Ms. Mayberry's strength and possibly her vapidity. Hiaasen sprinkles these laser-focused gems throughout his writing, not too many so they load it down but enough that you should pay attention. Here's the thing: consciously using specific language is a good writing habit in general, but it's food, water, and air when it comes writing funny.

I'll prove it with an exercise. Pull out the last potentially funny (or actually funny) paragraph you wrote. Scour it for vague words. Replace them with one or two specific details. Hiaasen could have written, "Regular exercise gave Louisa Mayberry unusual strength." He instead wrote, "...Louisa Mayberry owned a strong upper body due to rigorous Bikram yoga classes that she took on Tuesday nights." Do the same find-and-replace in your paragraph, but go lightly--specific is like salt in that a little bit goes a long way, and if you oversalt, that's all anyone notices.

Hmm. That has me weirdly hungry for a hamburger. Specifically, a salty juicy burger dripping with melted cheddar, topped with butter-sauteed mushrooms, a diced jalapeno pepper, and raw onion. Yum! It's probably because I'm doing this ridiculous 5/2 fast with Terri Bischoff. Sigh. I'm off to drink water and crunch celery.

Happy writing.

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Jessica (Jess) Lourey is best known for her critically-acclaimed Murder-by-Month mysteries, which have earned multiple starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist, the latter calling her writing "a splendid mix of humor and suspense." She is a tenured professor of creative writing and sociology, a recipient of The Loft's 2014 Excellence in Teaching fellowship, and leads interactive writing workshops (including "Writing Funny") all over the world. <i>Salem’s Cipher</i>, the first in her thrilling Witch Hunt Series, hits stores September 2016 and her agent is currently shopping <i>Better than Gin: Rewrite Your Life</i>, a guide to recycling life experiences into compelling fiction.

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March 30, 2016

How to Write Funny, Part I (A Writing Whip-It)

I am a crap at telling jokes face-to-face. My timing is off, I rush the punch line, and I laugh out of turn. I possess only two good go-to jokes, one for kids and one for adults (cover your eyes on the second one):

Rated R
What's the last thing you want to hear when you're giving Willie Nelson a blowjob?
(yep--already laughing)
"Um, I'm not Willie Nelson."

(Still laughing.)

Oral joke telling is a hard art, and I admire those who can do it. I have zero skill in that area. Writing funny, though? That's my jam. I write magical realism, YA adventure, and nail-biting thrillers, and they all transport me, but when I'm writing funny? My wings are strapped on and I'm FLYING. While walking my goofy dog Juni this morning (and to whoever let their fiber-eating brontasaurus poop outside my front gate, karma doesn't forget), I realized that I hadn't written funny in over a year. That explained why I'd been feeling unbalanced, carrying a low-level anxiety like maybe I'd forgot my keys somewhere. I immediately began outlining Maniac Monday, a Murder-by-Month novella. Stress I'd been carrying for weeks began to melt off. Or, at least it didn't get so much space on my shoulders.

If maybe writing funny can work its magic on you like it does me, balancing the heavy with its light, I'm going to share the methods I use. In the spirit of keeping these Writing Whip-Its short (you're busy, man), I'm splitting this into a ten-part series. Today is an overview of Writing Funniness, the next eight installments are the tools of writing funny, and the tenth post will show you how to bring it all together in your own writing.

Writing Funniness Overview

Because my Murder-by-Month Mysteries are funny (five-time Lefty-nominated for best humorous mystery), every conference I go to, I'm put on the Writing Funny panel. I love it because I know I'm going to laugh. A lot. But the same question comes up from the audience every time: "I'm not a good joke teller, and nobody really thinks I'm funny. Can I write funny?"

Yep. And you should. My friend, screenwriter, novelist, and the fricking funniest story teller you'll ever meet, Johnny Shaw, tells a story of one of his screenwriting professors reading an early draft of Johnny's work, nodding approvingly, and saying, "Funny is money." It is. Funny sells. Besides being lucrative, laughter makes the world a better place. It just feels good to make someone laugh. And the beauty of writing funny, unlike being live-action funny, is that you have time to perfect and revise it. So yeah. You can write funny.

The second question that comes up on these panels: "Different things are funny to different people. How do you make something funny for everyone?"

You don't. You tickle yourself, and I guarantee you'll tickle others. They might be weirdos like you or me, but the weirdos (especially the weirdos) need to laugh, too. There is an audience for your humor. Over the next eight installments, we'll figure out what humor tool(s) fit best in your hands so you can refine your funny voice and subsequently find your people. If you're not interested in writing funny, you're welcome to hang out here anyways. I promise laughs.

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Jessica (Jess) Lourey is best known for her critically-acclaimed Murder-by-Month mysteries, which have earned multiple starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist, the latter calling her writing "a splendid mix of humor and suspense." She is a tenured professor of creative writing and sociology, a recipient of The Loft's 2014 Excellence in Teaching fellowship, and leads interactive writing workshops (including "Writing Funny") all over the world. <i>Salem’s Cipher</i>, the first in her thrilling Witch Hunt Series, hits stores September 2016 and her agent is currently shopping Better than Gin: Rewrite Your Life, a guide to transforming life experiences into compelling fiction.

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