Well, hello there

How goes it?

It’s been a month of much swimming: in the sea, the river, the local pool.

And in writing news, I am nearly at the halfway mark of my latest creative Quest: 100 places, 300 pages. This week is Place 49. These were treasures I saw while writing about place 47…

Next time I’ll share learnings from the halfway mark, but in the meantime, this is what I captured at 25 places in.

Comedy Craft / Story Fiending

Last month, I dug into creating comic characters. It was fun to get your responses, and yes I’m happy to share more.

These are some of the takes on character from the first 3 seasons of my Comedy Masterclass podcast—ones that I still think about, and that inform my writing.

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John Vorhaus on ego and inconsistency: ‘A comic character in a comic world will always do things in service of their self-image. And that desire to serve the self-image, the ego, if you will, is really the fuel that drives the comic engine.’

‘In terms of finding comedy from people I'm watching, I'm always looking for hypocritical patterns of thought and action where people will say one thing and do something else. I'm always poking fun at that… inconsistencies, lies, nonsense.’

Sherice Griffith on mismatch: ‘One thing I really like to do with comedy is think of who would be the worst possible person to go through this situation.’

Keith Giglio on opposites: ‘Everything comes out of character. And you always have to have unity of opposites. You can't have the same characters. You have to have different types of people, saying things different ways, bumping into each other.

 Zanandi Botes on vices and embarrassment: ‘I like finding a character's vice, first and foremost. I think if you can find your character's vice, it just unfolds. Because I think that's what makes people the most interesting. What we do with our vices a lot of the time is we hide them… so you pretend. You can find a lot of comedy in there. Because it's also a source that can be embarrassing, or can make people do silly random things. So ask what would this character not want anybody to know about them? And that usually is a good source for some comedy to naturally happen.’

Tim Ferguson on active qualities: ‘Ask yourself the simple question, what is the main character’s most active and identifiable quality? And if you can't name it, or if it's 10 different things, the character is shit and it has to be thrown in the bin.’

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If you’re interested, I’ll share more next time, from seasons 4-7. Just hit reply and let me know

The Catch

Something that caught my attention…

I love Ronny Chieng’s comedy specials, so I was interested to watch his Harvard address. It’s part inspiration, part roast—way more of a roast than you usually get in commencement-type speeches! Interesting to watch, particularly as I find roasts tense-making at the best of times.

I did love these takeaways:

‘Make sure your offline world is better than your online world.’

‘Create more than you complain.’

‘Whatever your chosen profession is, don’t let AI rob you of the fun part.’

Pretty good advice!

Stash: things I love

Pamela Ribon is already in my Stash of things I love - for her comedic animated short film, My Year of Dicks. (You can watch it here.)

You might also know her for her writing on Nimona and Ralph Breaks the Internet? Now she is working on this one act documentary…

Pamela’s been a really fun guest on the Scriptnotes podcast multiple times. You’ll need a premium subscription for older episodes e.g. #606, where she talks about character and story fit. But you can read the transcript here.

For example, this quote: ‘I think I am drawn to characters who know who they are, but the world doesn’t understand them.’

Who else loves a misfit?

Connecting the dots…

In last month’s letter, I mentioned reading and enjoying Alison Espach’s The Wedding People.  

I love this as an example of characterful setting. I say this as someone who’s own vision tends to be laser-focused on people’s faces, to the degree that I unintentionally blur out backgrounds, both in real life and when watching films.

This is part of the impetus behind my latest Quest (100 places, 300 pages). It’s a fun adventure getting to go to the different places, but it mainly comes from wanting to strengthen my observation and description muscles as a writer—as applied to setting.

I’ll share more next time with my halfway round up, but I’d also love to know from you—how do you think about setting for your stories? What helps? And how does this fit with comedy?

Until next time,

May your summer days stretch as long as my neighbour’s cat…

PS: Thanks for reading my Seriously Ridiculous letter. All feedback is welcome, as I only want to do this if it’s useful or fun for you to read. You can hit reply and it will wing its way to me.

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