Guest Blog Post - Teresa Frohock

As the final of our January guest blog posts, I'd like to introduce Teresa Frohock. Teresa is a fellow OWW critter and the author of some deliciously creepy horror, and she also runs a very informative and helpful blog for aspiring writers. I'm happy to leave you in her capable hands as she talks about the "Quiet Moment".


When writing fantasy or horror, I think we often focus too heavily on the action and adventure aspects of the story to the point of cheating ourselves and our readers of a very special moment. It's when the protagonist experiences the psychic change that carries him or her through the story's climax. This turning point is as pivotal as the inciting incident that sets the story in motion, and handled well, gives the reader a logical reason for the protagonist's actions as the story is propelled toward the climax.

The quiet moment of your novel is where your protagonist stands in the eye of the hurricane and makes a decision that will affect him, and those around him, for the rest of his life. All action stops in a freeze frame as you enter your protagonist's mind and show the reader a reflection of his thoughts and your theme.

Here you must use the lightest of touches, the simplest prose, and the fewest words to convey what can sometimes be a complex emotional choice. Too much, and you're beating your reader over the head, too little, and your protagonist's actions won't make sense in the end.

Since I use the three act story structure, I like to place the quiet moment between the second and third acts of my story. This is the portion of the tale where my protagonist has been brought to his knees by the events around him; things could not possibly become worse.

All the pain, all the grief my protagonist has suffered coalesces until he has no choice but to change or die. I want him to reach inside himself and draw from an inner strength he either didn't know he had or forgotten he possessed. This is the point where my protagonist begins their emotional journey back into the light. Sometimes it's a sentence, a paragraph, or even a brief scene, but the character dictates the moment.

I love reading and writing the quiet moment in a novel. What about you? Does your novel contain a quiet moment? How do you handle the pivotal moment of your protagonist's change in your novel?

Guest Blog Post - Lindsay Buroker

To continue the January Guest Blog Post theme, I'm happy to introduce Lindsay Buroker, who I have asked to write about comedy in fantasy. Lindsay is another OWW comrade-in-arms and has been a great encouragement in my writing. She has, however, been responsible for me repeatedly showering my computer monitor in coffee, so I can safely say she is more than qualified to speak on the subject of humour.

Take it away Lindsay....

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Have your characters ever been called flat? Your stories boring? Your voice bland? Adding a splash of humor to your prose might be just the solution. Laughing readers are rarely bored readers.

If you feel humor has no place in your writing (you must write science fiction or “epic” fantasy), then you can skip the rest of this post, but if you’ve ever longed to have sample readers email you LOL about your tales, then read on. We’re going to talk about some tried-and-true ways to add the funny to your stories. They are the Setup and Punchline, the Rule of the Three, and the Callback. Even if you haven’t employed these tactics before, you’ll surely recognize them. Every comedian, sitcom writer, and witty genre author keeps them in the armory.

Setup & Punchline

Every joke is made up of a setup (the straight road) and a punchline (the unexpected curve). Let’s take a look at a Dungeons & Dragons classic (yes, I only quote the best!):

How do you know a dwarf raided your pantry?
Only the bottom halves of the shelves are empty.

How do you know an elf raided your pantry?
Only vegetables and fruits are missing.

How do you know an ogre raided your pantry?
Pantry? What pantry?

The first five lines, while funny in their own right, are the setup. The last is the punchline. You can see how everything before that builds the anticipation. Without the setup, the punchline wouldn’t be funny at all. This format is so familiar, that your readers are already primed and ready to laugh when they see it.

Okay, but who stops their stories to tell jokes? No one, we hope. But you can use the setup/punchline tactic to inspire laughter right in your narrative. Perhaps the dire, serious, tense situation is the setup, and then something unexpected happens (the fierce mercenary army is prepared to storm the hidden passage when the mage stands before the locked portal and cries, “Open Sesame!” and... everyone’s swordbelts unclasp and fall to the ground). Or maybe the personality of one your characters is the setup. Just think of how often you’ve seen the straight-man/funny-man set up. Or the adventuring party’s joke-cracking sidekick. Mixing serious characters with more lighthearted folk is a recipe for fun.

Dialogue provides the ideal opportunity for joke placement. In the vein of not-so-subtle self-promotion, I’ll delve into one of my own Goblin Brothers short stories for an example.

...A rolled piece of light brown paper slid out. Malagach grabbed it before it could fall into the water.
“It’s a map,” he said after a quick perusal. “A treasure map.”
“How do you know?” Gortok asked.
“All the traditional indicators are here: topographical representation of terrain features, a dashed line depicting a route, and a black X marking the final destination.”
Gortok leaned over Malagach’s shoulder to look. “And it says TREASURE MAP at the top.”
Maybe it’s not the instant classic of D&D joke, but it’s an example of setup (everything until the last bit of dialogue) and punchline used within the natural flow of a story.
Let’s move on to the next way to inject humor into your stories, the Rule of Three.

The Rule of Three

Fact of life: things are inherently more funny in threes. The “Rule of Three” is a classic structure in which a joke is set up, the setup is reinforced, and the punchline breaks the pattern.

Why is this funny? Who knows? Mathematically speaking, three is the smallest number you can use to establish a pattern and break it. But math is boring, so let’s just agree to accept this proven method.

Example:

You’re reading this post to further your education, to improve your writing, and because you’re bored at work.

Punchline, reinforcement, and unexpected curve.

The perspicacious readers will notice the dwarf, elf, ogre joke from the earlier example not only demonstrated the Setup and Punchline but also obeyed the Rule of Three. Now you know why you were helpless to keep from chortling.

The nice thing about the Rule of Three is that it’s easy to work into your writing without slowing down the pace. It only takes a sentence, so you don’t fall into the trap of having characters banter on for pages without plot advancement (not that I would ever be guilty of this, no, not me...).

Try using it in a setting description; it’s a great way to add zip to what might otherwise be a bland bit of prose. Example: Several indicators suggested this was not the most luxurious ski lodge: the broken hot tub, the peeling paint, the yellow snow.

Now that we’ve mastered the Rule of Three, it’s time to double the laughs with one of my favorites, the callback.

The Callback

The callback is simple; it’s just a reference to a joke you made earlier. It’s easy to implement, and people love it. And why not? If something tickled you once, wouldn’t you be delighted to relive the moment? Also, it can make for a satisfying conclusion to your story.

I’ll plunder my own work again for an example.

The first joke takes place in the middle of the story:

Robhart tilted his head and seemed to truly look at Malagach and Gortok for the first time. “You’re not like city goblins I’ve met.”
“Actually,” Malagach said, “we’re not particularly like mountain goblins either.”
“Ma says we’re especial,” Gortok said.
Malagach looked at his brother. “When did she say that?”
“Last month, when I added that extendable door-flap opener to the hut.”
“The thing she tripped over in the middle of the night?” Malagach asked. “I believe what she said was we were especially trying.”
Next, we’ve got some action, conflict resolution, and otherwise exciting stuff, and then we join the heroes again in a bit of denouement:

“...the stories told about us would have to be named after me, and I’d be the star,” Robhart said. “The hero, the main hero, can’t be a goblin.”
“Why not?” Gortok asked.
Robhart chuckled. “Who’d want to hear stories just about goblins?” He waved a quick goodbye and hustled off to turn in his orc hair.
Malagach and Gortok stared after the human.
“I’m middling sure people wouldn’t mind stories about us,” Gortok said. “Me, for sure.”
“Why you?” Malagach asked.
“I’m the cute, lovable, especial one.”
“That was especially trying,” Malagach reminded his brother.
“Close enough.” Gortok winked.
The callback is an economy of sorts. Set a joke up once and then milk it for all its worth. (If I were a better humor writer, I would have tapped into the Rule of Three and used that joke three times in my story!)

There you go: three humor-writing tricks of the trade that will never let you down. Always remember, laughing readers are never bored readers (and they writer nicer reviews, too).
Three Ways to Add Humor to Your Stories

Guest Blog Post - David Douglas

I'm on holidays, the cricket¹ is on, and I have a fridge full of VB². Alas, in the face of such noble and manly pursuits, this blog has taken a bit of a back seat (temporarily, of course).

But fear not! David Douglas, fellow OWW critter and blog follower, has kindly stepped in to fill the breach with the first ever Cackling Scribe guest post.

Many thanks, David! I shall now leave you in his capable hands while I go and get another VB....

¹ A game played in short bursts between long ad-breaks.

² A type of beer. Brewed in Victoria, but actually quite nice.

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First of all, thanks to Peter for the opportunity to post here. My name is David Douglas. I write a travel & photo blog, and have just self-published my first fantasy novel, Demon’s Bane. PDF sample available here or check out where to buy here.

Every fantasy writer must be James Cameron. We have a lower budget, we lack CGI unless you count WYSIWYG on the word processor screen, and we don’t even have colors (much less 3D) to capture our reader’s imagination. But we start from the same place as Cameron did with Avatar: building a world in our minds, which must captivate the reader and bring him or her to a faraway land.

How to create a new environment? We can either start with what we know and modify it, or research something we know little about. For my first book, I just started thinking and let the world flow out (and later, the words). So quite a lot of it is based on my own North American culture, with a bit of European flair thrown in (as I’ve lived in Germany for five years now). When I moved into new areas I didn’t understand, I researched with Google and Wikipedia to keep my facts straight.

Take the setting, for example. The tale starts off in a deciduous, temperate forest, much like where I grew up in the eastern US. There are chapters where the characters are sailing, and a lot of terms were familiar (I learned to sail on the River Charles as a teenager). I had to do a bit of research there, however. In the following sections, the characters travel through prairies where I never lived (more research). In cities, my European experience came into play: almost every big city here has an “old town” area that dates from medieval times. A few still even have the city wall surrounding them, and there are many (sometimes crumbling) castles the likes of which most Americans have only seen in movies. My weekend tourism here has greatly improved the descriptions of the cities my characters encounter.

What about the characters themselves? North Americans hardly think about it, but players in the books we read generally follow the same social conventions we do. We shake hands, clap each other on the shoulders, or give a bear hug to an old friend we haven’t seen in years. Many Europeans give the two-kisses-on-the-cheek as hello, which we might also recognize. But Asian cultures are more likely to bow in greeting... when was the last time you saw that in a novel that wasn’t set in the Far East?

Treatment of women is another sticky subject. I’m all for fairness, and that shows in my novel (where women can be clan leaders, and are treated equally). But throughout history, the fairer sex was not often in a position of power. Even today, many cultures treat women in a way I find offensive (including most of the Middle East). It’s fascinating to see how writers address this in their novels; Westerners often have to use their imagination (or do research) to come up with a subordinate-female culture. Slavery and indentured servitude are also themes that fantasy writers can consider when writing about a less-civilized, ancient society. Even though they are (thankfully) far from our realities, they add a lot of depth and realism to a fantasy world.

One interesting cultural (and linguistic) aspect in my book is a character who likes idioms and expressions, but always gets them mixed up. I’m suspecting that Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis would also get the references (a bird in the hand... rocks in your head... the bigger they are, the harder they fall...). However, non-native speakers would understand these just about as well as I get the German idioms. Courtesy of a friend’s quotes-post: “The middle of nowhere” becomes “There, where the foxes say good night to each other.” And “Don’t get carried away!” becomes “Leave the church in the village.” I can only imagine what Asian sayings might be like, after I bought a magnet in Hong Kong that says “You are my love, my angle [angel?], don’t treat me like potato!”

In my next book, I plan to add an Asian flair, as the characters will be on a new continent with strange customs. It won’t be based on any one Asian culture, but on what I’ve learned from various trips to the Far East (China, Malaysia, Taiwan...). I have a feeling I’ll have to do a lot more research than I did for Demon’s Bane... but there will still be some western style mixed in. That’s what fantasy is all about: whatever we dream up can become real on the page! Just make it interesting and consistent, and each new world can be as compelling as Cameron’s Pandora.

To those who are writers, good luck! Do you have any interesting cultural tips you’d like to share from your own writing experiences?