What’s Up?

August. Summer. Love it.

And also, life is life—so I have been driving loved ones to airports, and hospitals, and helping them move house, and all the stuff that we get to do as a human with loved ones. It’s given me some time to listen to Eric Maisel’s Ten Zen Seconds on audiobook. which has been a suitably calming choice! (Eric was a guest on my Comedy Masterclass podcast. He is very wise.)

One of the unplanned hospital visits was to get my husband’s ribs x-rayed—he slipped down some stairs. Very painful for him, but I have thanked him for how good it’s been for my self esteem, as his rib clutching has made it blatantly clear how many times a day I make him laugh. 😊 

Additional thanks goes to the following mood boosters, as I continue to revise act 2 of my novel, Beth Raises Hell…

Comedy Craft / Story Fiending

In June’s edition I highlighted John Truby’s ‘Comic Cyclone’ concept—as one I’ve found useful when thinking about the ending of my own novel, Beth Raises Hell.

This sparked a few different conversations about endings. I don’t know about you, but I think about endings A LOT! So, I’m going to share another resource I’ve found helpful.

This one is from Michael Arndt, the writer of Little Miss Sunshine. He created this ‘lecture’ when he was working on Toy Story 3 at Pixar. He digs deep into the topic of Endings: the Good, the Bad and the Insanely Great, using examples from Star Wars, The Graduate and Little Miss Sunshine.

I love that he starts off with the note that it's ‘Tools, not Rules’. There’s no one right way to think about anything.*

What Michael offers is a way to chart three kinds of stakes—external, internal and philosophical—as you build to your end. I think I’d struggle to do this all upfront, in an outline. But I love having tools that help me pull a messy draft into better focus.

What helps you to figure out and refine your ending?

(*Sidenote: I just had to Google the origins of the phrase: there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Apparently it relates to catfish? But I think both cats and catfish deserve to keep their skins. So. maybe…there’s more than one way to skin a banana?)

The Flip

I’ve been continuing my weekly Quest—to visit a place, spend two pages describing it, and then one page describing it through the lens of a character. This 3^rd page, where I do a POV (point of view) switch, has been such a fun flip!

I’ve described a place from the POV of:

 ✏️a person driven by their to-do list

✏️a pigeon

✏️someone considering buying the house

SO FUN!

It’s like I literally get a new set of eyes when I look back at the place through this specific lens.

What are some of your favourite creative flips that help you see the world in whole new ways?

Stash: things I love

I read and loved The Rom-Commers, and like the nerdy obsessive I am, I then did a deep dive into Katherine Center’s work. Next I read The Bodyguard, which I also loved. Both are smart, funny, delightful reads—great characters, dialogue, action and heart. She makes it look easy, but I know it’s not!

There is a tonne of craft that goes into creating this reader experience, and from what I can see from her blog posts, Katherine is quite the craft geek herself, dissecting rom-coms and examining what she does and doesn’t love.

For any fellow craft geeks interested in rom-coms, there are two episodes in my Comedy Masterclass podcast series that focus on this:

Billy Mernit, author of Writing the Romantic Comedy: The Art of Crafting Funny Love Stories for the Screen. (Episode 40) 

Jane Lovering and Rhoda S. Baxter (Jeevani Charika) authors of How to Write Romantic Comedy: A Concise and Fun Guide to Writing Funny Romance. (Episode 34)

While I’m writing a non-rom-com myself (it’s a break-up comedy - a Valentine’s weekend from hell!) I always learn so much from anyone who thinks intensely about what makes things work.

For example, I love this quote from Billy Mernit’s episode:

Dare Bears

Continuing my new obsession with Katherine Center, I read and loved her essay about reading for joy.

In it she says: ‘Stories are a kind of play for adults’.

Agreed!

Like a lot of writers, when I was a kid stories were my favourite kind of play. And the best part of my school week was ‘project time’—when you could read and write what you wanted on your chosen topic. Apparently, when I was five, I was all about Greek mythology…

I know it’s not always easy amongst life pressures, but this kind of joyful, absorbed play is still something I prioritise, no matter what. Even when I’m tired and don’t feel like it, I know that if I can just start, I’ll have a great time, and wind up with more energy.

So, I will leave you with a final dare to have a tonne of fun with your reading and writing. No matter what. Your flavour of fun. Sometimes that’s mazes and minotaurs. And sometimes it’s a quick dose of pony, pony, Tony’s Chocolonely to fuel you up for the next chapter revision.

Until next time,

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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