Creative writing

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New York literary agent

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my novels. All feedback,  whether good, bad or indifferent, is welcomed and appreciated.

So what about humour?

Humorous novels are tricky. I've read a number of books generally cited as being among the world's funniest, and couldn't raise a smirk. Other times, I've laughed aloud at passages and at characters that friends found dull and deadly serious.

As ever, the important thing is to create characters with whom your readers identify. But you can't accurately target specific readers. It doesn't work like that. The best you can do is trawl your humour net in the literary waters and see what you catch.

This particular novel was intended as something of a black humour tale which, by its nature, flirts constantly with bad taste.

I've included this excerpt not as an example of great, or even of good, writing, but simply to show how one particular writer (i.e. myself) handles this kind of stuff.

My general feeling about humour is that the ordinary situations in life are the funniest. Which means there's usually no need to go to extremes.

Also, try and keep your characters very individual and distinct. They don't have to mirror each other. Far from it, in fact. The best comedy characters are always in tension or disharmony. This disharmony can be subtle or not so subtle and is why classic TV sit-coms like Steptoe and Son, or The Likely Lads work. It's the same with a hundred other successful comedy shows or books.

Tension, disharmony followed by absurdity.

Also, give your characters both hidden depths and hidden shallows. Make them fallible. Show their weaknesses. And strength.

One more tip; your characters don't always need to be talking directly to each other. Allow them to muse a little and speak to themselves, either aloud or not. Give the reader access to their private thoughts.

Playing against type

Comedy characters don't need to be obvious "types". You might have a clown who isn't funny (which, paradoxically, can be very funny). You might have an hilarious undertaker with odd views about death. Or a policeman that doesn't want to arrest anyone. Or a murderous doctor (which doesn't sound funny, but can be if handled right).

All humour is tension. When a cartoon character runs off a cliff and "paddles" his feet in the empty air, there's a moment of tension. Then he plummets, pulls out a parachute (at the last moment) and flutters safely to the ground.

Then a piano or something falls on him.

It's the same with comedy novel. Put your characters in jeopardy, rescue them, then drop a piano.

So to speak.

Accountants are typecast as dull. So make you accountant interesting. If you've created a magistrate, you might make him wickedly liberal.

So challenge stereotypes. Reverse roles.

Experiment.

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Sample 2

Sample 1         Sample 3         Sample 4         Sample 5

CRUISING

The title of this novel was tentative. It's a light hearted tale about a couple who dream up a new kind of holiday for a market sector neglected by mainstream travel agents. I never submitted it anywhere, partly because it needs work, and partly because you need to put a lot of "drive" and energy behind a book. And if you don't feel that energy, it probably means something's not right.
     However, I've included this chapter to show how I handle dialogue and humour. Also, the style is a little different from most of my other stuff. That said, there are inevitably writing nuances and "strings" holding it all together; the little habits and tricks that all writers have.
     You need to keep an eye on those or they'll take over leaving you parodying yourself (consciously or otherwise) the way established film actors do after their first half dozen or so movies.
     This chapter needs some cutting. It starts to ramble towards the end, and because I haven't had the time (or perhaps just the enthusiasm) to deal with it, it's pretty much as I originally
wrote it.
     Anyway, here it is. If you like it or hate it or have any insights, you can drop me an email and speak your piece.

Chapter One

I’d like to be able to say that it was all my idea. But the truth is that it was Mave's.

Most of the good ideas were.

It came to her the night her Uncle Ivan died. We were in bed draining a bottle of Chilean red and lamenting his passing and saying how he was too young to have popped his cork (one of mine, I’m afraid) and how he had so much to look forward to, and so on and so forth.

Mave was studying the five by seven that came with the letter. It showed Ivan aged somewhere between twenty-five and forty-five straddling an old motorcycle. A Panther I surmised. Something of that ilk, anyway. There was a sidecar attached to the machine, and squashed like sardines into the selfsame sidecar was Ivan’s legendary brood, including his pretty wife, Edna, who was holding the twins.

Ivan himself, wearing his Sunday best, flat cap and goggles, was smiling and revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth, some of them white. He looked exactly how I remembered him.

Only younger.

‘He was only fifty-nine,’ said Mave.

‘He was sixty-five,’ I reminded her. ‘The same age as your father as I recall.’

‘Well he was – ’ hic! ‘ – fifty-nine at heart.’

I didn’t argue. She was much too drunk, and whenever she was under the influence of the bottle, she was apt to say anything purely for intellectual sport.

Instead, I poured more wine and held my glass to the light and decided that Tesco had excelled this time. Which was just as well because we’d bought six bottles in order to get the five percent discount.

Then, a little thoughtlessly, I said, ‘It’s just a pity that the man didn’t do more with his life, really.’

Mave looked round. Shocked.

‘Well it’s true,’ I said. ‘None of your lot have exactly ... lived on the edge, have they?’

That shocked look deepened.

‘All Ivan ever did—nice chap that he was—was keep pigeons,’ I continued, ‘disgusting creatures that they are.’

‘Norman Castle!’

‘Your Uncle Charlie was the same. And your Uncle Ted—and they’re not even on the same side of the family.’

 ‘Norman Castle!’ repeated Mave, horrified at what she was hearing. ‘How dare you say something like that about poor old Uncle Ivan. He’s probably not cold yet. I’ll have you know that—’ hic! ‘—he lived his three score year and ten to the full.’

‘Three score year and five,’ I corrected.

Or five score year and nine from her confused way of thinking.

She was about to protest, then lost the thread of what she was going to say and looked back at the picture instead, her eyes shining.

‘He saw a lot of life, did poor old Ivan. A lot more than—’ sharp elbow in the ribs, ‘—some people will ever see.’

I angled my head towards her and put on my superior look.

‘I climbed Kilimanjaro, in case you’ve forgotten.’

 ‘So he climbed a mountain,’ she told the walls. ‘Now he thinks he’s Edmund Hilary.’

I smiled and held out my hand.

‘May I?’

She hesitated, then passed the photograph. I studied it. One man. Evidently an ex-coal miner. Short. Round. Rugged. Robust. But otherwise perfectly nice. Perfectly decent. And terminally dull. Maybe that was what killed him, I wondered.

I said, ‘I can’t imagine what life he could possibly have seen? He was half a mile under Sheffield for most of the time.’

‘He lived through the war,’ said Mave.

‘War? Which war would that be? The Falklands?’

‘The Korean, of course. He lived right through it. He told me. Or was it Vietnam?'

‘He was a soldier?’

It was news to me.

‘Well, not exactly ...’ she said. ‘But he dug for Britain.’

‘Ah!’ I said, smiling. ‘Well you can’t deny him that. It probably shortened the outcome by minutes.’

And she elbowed me again in the ribs and snatched the picture back in her curiously delicate, wonderfully feminine way.

‘Uncle Ivan had his moments,’ she said softly. ‘And it were a good life.’

The old Yorkshire accent out on the prowl again, I noted (she does that whenever she’s up for a fight. Or nine tenths drunk).

‘Aye,’ I said, falling back onto my Monty Python’s impression. ‘And we were happy for the price of a cup of tea.’ And after some argument and spilled wine and threats and various forms of marital abuse we finally kissed and hugged and agreed that yes, Uncle Ivan had his moments and that working his lungs out half a mile under Sheffield was a life of sorts, and that life was whatever you made it, etc, etc.

Then Mave, having won the argument, decided she wanted to win the peace too and (typically) capitulated.

She said, ‘Still, you’re right in a way, Norman. He never really did all that much with his lot.’

‘No,’ I agreed, thinking of Kilimanjaro.

‘He just went back and forth down there like a pit pony for the best part of sixty years and then keeled over in his back garden.’

‘Best way to go,’ I mused. ‘Out like a light.’ And in a lower tone of voice, ‘Albeit one with a forty watt bulb ...’

She elbowed me again for that and we drunk another toast to Uncle Ivan.

It was about half an hour later just as I was pulling the cork on the next bottle that Mave, still on the subject of Ivan, said, ‘Still, if we’d known that it was going to happen, maybe we could have ... well, done something.’

I looked round.

‘Done something?’

‘Yes. Done something. For him. We could have made his last moments happier.’

‘Last moments? He was dead before he hit the ground, you stupid woman. He had a massive, third degree coronary and finished himself off with a broken nose.’

She gave me a slap for that. A proper, stinging slap on the shoulder. But it was true. Uncle Ivan fell flat on his face and never even knew what hit him. Or, at least, didn’t care. The whole thing was seen by his neighbour who said that he “went down like a telegraph pole”.

We were silent for a bit and I refilled the glasses and climbed naked out of bed and put another record on. On the return journey, I helped myself to a slice of chilled pizza and came back and stared at the walls. We were living in Kennington then in a grotty little studio flat for which we’d paid over the odds and couldn’t find a buyer for; not without taking a massive hit.

That was one of my ideas.

Then Mave said, ‘You know, there must be an awful lot of other lonely Ivans out there.’

‘Millions I should think.’

‘I mean, lots of other Ivans who don’t get out of it quite that easily.’

I wiped my feet and crawled back in beside her.

‘Out of what?’

‘Out of life, of course.’

‘Oh,’ I said, pondering the possibilities. ‘Yes.’

But before I’d got very far, she said, ‘It’s just a pity that people never get to live properly before they die.’

‘Some do.’

‘I mean really properly.’

‘Some do,’ I repeated.

‘And plenty don’t’.

‘Well what can we do about it? We’re just little people.’

She nodded soberly (so to speak) and poked her feet from the bottom of the sheets and studied them. They were pretty feet, as feet go.

She said, ‘He never even left the country. Not even to Wales or Scotland. In fact, I’m not sure that he even left Yorkshire. Did you know that?’

‘No, actually. I didn’t.’

‘I asked him once why that was, and he said that he just never got around to it.’

‘Well he’s journeying now. Perhaps the greatest journey of them all.’

She saw the look on my face and laughed.

‘Poet.’

I gave her a hug and we sat like that for a while enjoying each other’s company.

I said, ‘I don’t suppose he ever really wanted anything other than what he had. Ivan, I mean. He’s one of the lucky ones. Unimaginative, but comfortable.’

Mave nodded agreement.

‘I’m not like him at all,’ she said.

‘No,’ I agreed.

‘I mean, I am imaginative and uncomfortable.’

I started to adjust the pillow, but she stopped me and said that that wasn’t what she meant. She was talking about being spiritually uncomfortable. Always had been. That was why she married me.

‘Thank you for that,’ I said, trying to be positive about it.

And we talked some more about all the imaginative, uncomfortable and therefore unfulfilled people of the world and lamented the fact that most left this earth never really having experienced life.

‘How many,’ I said, ‘have climbed a large mountain?’

‘Or a small one, for that matter?’

‘Or have had a poem published in The Times?’

‘Or had tea with the Prime Minister?’

I looked round. ‘Oh yes. I forgot you did that.’

‘Or have spent a night in Holloway Prison?’ she continued.

‘Or had a threesome?’

‘Or even a foursome?’

I looked round again. ‘Have you?’

‘Possibly,’ she replied.

I said, ‘Well there’s nothing we can do about it. Not for Ivan anyway. His time has gone and he’s been consigned to the great dustbin of history, recycled for posterity.’

‘Mm,’ agreed Mave. ‘Posterity.’

I was about to say something else poetic, but she slapped a hand across my mouth; the signal to shut up.

She said, ‘You know something? I’ve just had a rather good idea.’

‘No,’ I said, flatly. ‘I’m not making chips. It’s much too late. And there’s still some pizza left. Have a bite.’

‘No. Not food, fool.’ She pushed my hand away. ‘I’m talking about a business idea.’

I looked round.

‘The last business venture we tried failed,’ I reminded her. ‘And we’re still paying for it.’

‘That was one of your ideas, Norman Castle. Mine are always profitable.’

‘While they last ...’ I said dryly, suddenly not wanting the pizza and tucking it away under the bed.

 ‘In fact, as I recall, my last idea made us almost twenty thousand pounds.’

‘Only nineteen thousand.’

‘Nineteen thousand five hundred and sixty one pounds. And that’s nearer twenty than nineteen.’

I sighed. Defeated. ‘Let’s hear it then, love,’ I said, doing my best Ringo Starr impression.

But before I finished, she was up on her feet and rushing (naked) out of the bedroom and into hall moving like the wind.

‘And if you’re going to throw up,’ I yelled at her, my eyes on the warm pink curves of her still not very gluteus maximi, ‘you might consider closing the door this time!’

But instead she went into the lounge, rummaged around for a while, and came back a few minutes later with a pen and some notepaper and a gleam in her eyes.

She grabbed the bottle, took a swig and squatted (still naked) on the edge of the bed and explained the whole thing in detail. The concept. The campaign. The financing. Everything.

I listened as intently as was possible (in view of my not inconsiderable state of inebriation, and in view of the view that I was getting), and when it was done and said, I didn’t quite know what to say.

‘Just say “yes”,’ suggested Mave.

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ I told her, already trying to complicate things. ‘There are ... well, there are issues to consider.’

‘I’ve already considered all the issues. It can’t miss.’

‘And there may be moral considerations. Not to mention a few legal ones.’

‘You know you like the idea,’ she said, undeterred.

I looked at the cold pizza, looked at what was left of the wine, looked at Mave, and looked at the possibilities.

‘Say it, Norman Castle,’ she persisted. ‘Say that you like it. Say yes.’

I held out for another fifteen seconds or so, watching her eyes grow wider and wider in anticipation.

‘Yes,’ I said, putting her out of her misery. ‘I like it. Sort of.’

She smiled and threw the pen in one direction and the notebook in the other.

‘Right then. You can make love to me now.’

I drained my wine glass. Put it on the bedside table.

‘How do you want me then, love,’ said Ringo, turning out the light.

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