[lin]

Not so much about analysis and such: I get provoked getting told to shut up. But I hear you.

[Banger]

No, I'm not trying to provoke. And I see by your subsequent posts that you are really bought into this academic analysis approach to humor. Okay, fine. I have a hard time seeing it getting you anywhere. It reminds me of the essay Robin Williams told his kids to tear out of the their books in "Dead Poets Society", and with good reason. Humor and comedy are notoriously, and more than any other of the antic arts, resistant, if not impervious to analysis... and much more so to a studied construction.

Robin Williams's character in Dead Poets Society wasn't denouncing all literary analysis. He was denouncing one form of analysis - the one in the introduction to their textbooks - and promoting instead his own romantic analytical framework. Why do you think he was making them read Herrick's "To the Virgins..." and Whitman's "Oh Captain! My Captain!" rather than, for instance, the later poetry of John Donne?

What someone finds funny may be very subjective and thus difficult (but hardly impossible) to analyze, but we're not just talking about what is or isn't funny. We're talking about humorous stories, and stories can be analyzed and are constructed. This forum is about the craft of writing as much as anything else that has to do with writing. My comments about my own story were about its structure and subject matter, not about how funny (or not) the story is.

KatG already pointed out the subjectivity of humor. I think that's understood by everyone here.

[lin]

Robin Williams's character in Dead Poets Society wasn't denouncing all literary analysis. He was denouncing one form of analysis

So was I.


Is this something you feel is a good idea to rake back up?

[Banger]

So was I.

That's right, you were denouncing my "academic analysis approach to humor" :p

Of course, using terms like black comedy, light comedy, mock epic, satire, irony, parody, comedy and humor is not limited to the academy - everyone uses these words to describe comedy and its different forms.

And as already stated, humor is subjective. In fact, I made no analysis - "academic" or otherwise - of the "funniness" of my story, other than to say that I think it's great, which is a purely subjective statement.

So then what you are really denouncing, this "academic analysis approach to humor," is just something that you made up in your own head and decided to pin on me.

Is this something you feel is a good idea to rake back up?

I'm not raking anything back up, I'm responding to the things you posted that Rocket Sheep did not delete, which I assume means that Rocket Sheep thought them pertinent to the thread's discussion. Obviously you feel the same way, since you're still posting.

[lin]

No, I quit posting because this has become a two-way "conversation" with somebody who doesn't seem to grasp the things I'm saying, blows them out of perspective and gets drama-queen about them, and keeps gnawing away at it and I find unpleasant to chat with.
I hope that's okay.

I had thought that a moderator stepped in, chilled things out. I said heard and was willing to drop it. You apparently aren't. But feel free to continue without me.

[SheepSalesman]

For a thread about writing comedy SFF, this thread has become very much not funny. I suppose there's a certain irony to that. Irony's funny, though. Am I right?

[James Carmack]

It can be, at times. Sometimes it's just funny-interesting instead of funny-ha ha. I guess I'll take my funny in whatever gradation I can get.

Now, I reckon you could get a laugh out of the modest spat going on, but that strikes me as schadenfreude territory. Schadenfreude. Ostentatious German words are funny, too, right?

[Banger]

Actually, I'd say that it's hyperbole leading to bathos :D

[KatG]

What I would say is that it is a case of mutual misinterpretation of posts, which happens. I had stepped out of the conversation for a bit and Sheepie is now off and away, so you got your rounds in and let's not have any more, thanks.

If the conversation can get back to comedy, I've got another book for you to look at, SheepSalesman. It's a satirical contemporary novel, not SFF, but it is combining the funny and technology very well. Hari Kunzru is an award-winning and bestselling novelist (see, I keep telling you they exist,) and his novel Transmission is a very funny, very biting and yet bittersweet story about an Indian computer programmer who comes to the U.S. and through hapless circumstances, ends up unleashing a very destructive computer virus. It might help for techniques on how to balance the science with the comic and the characters, since your physicists are sort of in the same boat.

Banger, I'm sorry you haven't been getting a better response to the story you have, but with magazines, they are always looking at the overall mix of stories they want to present, which often means a good story is turned away as not a right fit. You might want to consider going outside the SFF market as well, into the lit mag market. It has the same ups and downs as the SFF market and they don't all take SFF stories, but quite a lot of them do now and they may have a better understanding of what you are doing.

Christopher Moore, who we previously mentioned, is not, technically, a category SFF author. His books have been published outside the SFF market as general fiction since his first novel. They continue to be published as general fiction, though now they sometimes appear in the SFF sections of bookstores too (that crossmarketing thing they do a lot now.) Humorous SFF material frequently finds a home in the general fiction market and is an option to consider.

[Banger]

I'm just a misunderstood genius: on these boards, in the literary world, in school, at the local supermarket... at times I aspire to the dubious dignity and prestige of a Kilgore Trout :D

I last sent out the story to Fictitious Force, but with its arcane online submission mechanism, I'm not even sure whether they received it. I guess I should send a query :p