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BY ELLEN MEISTER

When my adult writing students confess their struggles with self-doubt, they usually look panicked. I can’t possibly be a real writer, their eyes seem to say. I’m just never sure what I’m doing is right.

That’s when I explain that self-doubt is the fuel that drives us forward. Show me a writer with unshakable confidence, I tell them, and I’ll show you a lousy writer.

No one proves this more than Dorothy Parker. Though arguably the greatest literary wit of the twentieth century, she battled those demons of doubt every day.

In 1956, when interviewed by Paris Review and asked about the period in which she wrote poems, Parker replied, “My verses. I cannot say poems. Like everybody was then, I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Millay, unhappily in my own horrible sneakers. My verses are no damn good. Let’s face it, honey, my verse is terribly dated—as anything once fashionable is dreadful now. I gave it up, knowing it wasn’t getting any better, but nobody seemed to notice my magnificent gesture.”

No damn good? I beg to differ. Dorothy Parker’s poetry still resonates with freshness and wit. Even her darkest verses, such as Resumé, have legions of modern fans.

But her self-deprecation didn’t stop there. In a 1945 telegram to her publisher at Viking she wrote: ALL I HAVE IS A PILE OF PAPER COVERED WITH WRONG WORDS. CAN ONLY KEEP AT IT AND HOPE TO HEAVEN TO GET IT DONE. DONT KNOW WHY IT IS SO TERRIBLY DIFFICULT OR I SO TERRIBLY INCOMPETENT.

The telegram referred to an introduction she had agreed to write for a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work. And it followed on the heels of an even more painful period of inertia, as she had been unable to fulfill her contract to write a novel. This was a lifelong thorn in her heart. Parker wanted desperately to write a novel, but couldn’t seem to get out of her own way. Her perfectionism may have been the culprit, as she was a relentless self-editor. In that same Paris Review interview she explained that it took her six months to write a short story, saying, “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

Clearly, she found the process more filled with despair than joy. It’s no wonder then, that she offered up the following advice: “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

If that gives you pause, consider an even more famous quote from Parker: “I hate writing, I love having written.” Even if your feelings aren’t quite that extreme, the message is clear—the doubt isn’t going anywhere, so you may as well put away the panic and get to work.

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Ellen Meister is a novelist, essayist, public speaker and creative writing instructor at Hofstra University (Hempstead, NY). She runs a popular Dorothy Parker page on Facebook that has almost150,000 followers.

Her fifth novel, Dorothy Parker Drank Here, is in stores now. To connect with Ellen, visit ellenmeister.com, and for daily quotes from Dorothy Parker, follow her Facebook page.

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There are humorists whose words are assaults—funny, perhaps, but mostly acidic, pointed, seething. Anger lies at the core of such humor. A hint of retaliation.  A hope, perhaps, that by glossing a story with the ha-ha funnies no one will notice what the tale is really about, or how deep the damage runs. 

There are humorists, conversely, whose jests come at the expense, mostly, of themselves.  Childhood was funny to them; childhood was a boon.  They grew up awkward or they grew up confused, and anyone who happens to stand in their wit's way has (it's clear) been tenderly assessed.  They will be getting ice cream later.

I prefer Humorist Type 2, and Haven Kimmel is a star among them.  Consistently funny, highly literary, surprisingly facile in her rhythms and subject matters.  For those looking for something to do on this hot-across-the-country day, I recommend her deservedly famous memoir, A Girl Named Zippy.  You'll forget that you are sitting alone by the window fan, your lemonade glass empty.  You'll stop praying for a breeze.

A passage to get you started lies below.  Before I get to that, though, I feel that I must say this:  I love the little girl above, whom I snapped one day at an event.  The only thing she has in common with Haven's description below is that she is, obviously, a dear, dear thing.

We tried a variety of hairstyles in those early years.  The really short haircut (the Pixie, as it was then called) was my favorite, and coincidentally, the most hideous.  Many large predatory birds believed I was asking for a date.  I especially liked that style because I imagined it excused me from any form of personal hygiene, which I detested.  I was so opposed to bathing that I used to have a little laughing reaction every time a certain man in town walked by and said hello to me and I had to respond with "Hi, Gene."

After a year as a Pixie, my sister decided what my hair needed was "weight."  Melinda executed all the haircutting ideas in our house and, in fact, cut off the tip of my earlobe one summer afternoon because she was distracted by As the World Turns.

The weight we added to my hair made me look like a fuzzy bush, a bush gone vague.....

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Liesa Abrams and Alan Silberberg teamed up to discuss how authors and editors can best work together. Liesa is executive editor at Aladdin, and Alan is the Sid Fleischman Award-winning author of MILO: STICKY NOTES AND BRAIN FREEZE.

Even before the session started, we could see the deep rapport these two have. No wonder they fired their therapists.

MILO is about a quirky, weird wonderful boy coming to grips with the death of his mother, something Alan related to because he experienced that loss as a child. Initially, he thought the book was going to be funny, but as he delved deeper into his memories, the book got more serious.

"The book has changed my life in so many ways," he said. "My life changed because my agent was able to take this manuscript and hand it over to Liesa."

Liesa related to the book because it was her husband's story, as well. His own mom died of cancer, and he'd spoken about it in similar ways. The closest thing she could come to healing her husband's loss was to work on this book. She really, really wanted to work on it and felt anxiety that it might not come to pass.

"This is the book that will make me feel my entire career has meaning if I can edit this book."

He read from the editorial letter Liesa wrote him, and we all got choked up. "I hadn't just found a way to get Milo published, but I had found this connection with this personal story."

One challenge was to separate themselves from the story a bit. Alan, who illustrated MILO, experimented with characters that looked less like him. Being able to have Liesa put a little distance between himself and the material allowed him to edit it from a safer place.

"I don't mean to get all therapy on you," he said, "but I really needed to feel safe to go back into these memories."

Liesa gave an example of how they shaped the story: the Milo character wrote about headaches making him think of drafting a will. It's not a kid point of view to think that way, so he wrote that Milo felt scared instead.

Liesa never asked which scenes were autobiographical (they were all emotionally true, but some were fictionalized). She was glad to have that distance, which let her look at it as a work of fiction.

"The reader only knows what's there on the page. They're reading that book. You're not there. It's not that actions can't be contradictory--you have to understand why the character is contradicting themselves."

"It's not just about the advance and the royalties," Liesa said. "It makes a world of difference to have a relationship like this... the writing is the most personal thing you can do."

Alan and Liesa made us all cry when they talked about the healing this book had brought about. “Not every editor relationship requires tissues, you know.”

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It's hard to imagine two funnier, kinder people than Lin Oliver and Henry Winkler, the co-authors of the bestselling Hank Zipzer series—and now, the GHOST BUDDY series from Scholastic. 

Neither needs any introduction, of course: Lin co-founded SCBWI, and Henry is one of the best known actors in the world. Their collaborations—18 novels worth—are hilarious and full of heart, as was their session on writing.

Lin Oliver and Henry Winkler deep in discussion. Note: This picture isn't as funny as the panel. Blame the fish.

When they collaborate, they meet in her office. Henry paces the carpet and talks while she types. When she gets an idea, he stops talking and she writes. He likes the new, larger carpet in her redecorated office (no word on whether this will lead to longer novels).

Henry revealed a secret about their new series, GHOST BUDDY. The voice of the ghost is the Fonz, and the boy who finds the ghost in his closet is Richie. Aaaaay.

On finding your emotional center: Henry confessed he had a hard time with his parents. "They were very, very, very short German Jews." His father spoke 11 languages, and in those 11 languages, 15 times a day, would urge Henry to take over the family business: buying and selling wood.

But Henry always wanted to be an actor. The same emotional insight he brings to his acting, he brings to his writing.

"The thing is, when you write who you know, when you write your emotional truth, nobody is going to say 'how could you have written me into your thing, your masterpiece, your book.' They never recognize themselves. They say, 'My goodness, you have a good imagination."

Your emotional life feeds you. You're writing what you know. "The emotional truth jumps from the page and into the eyes and mind of your reader."

If you write the truth, somebody is going to say, "Wow, how did you know me?"

Lin on what's funny: If you want to write with humor, you have to go to your deepest emotional part and stay there until it's funny. It has to come from something that's true and heartfelt. If something is sad and funny at the same time, it's the strongest funny you can have."

Henry on loving your characters: When you're writing, you love the people you're writing about. When you're acting, you have to find the humanity in the bad guy. Otherwise, you're just playing one dimension.

Lin on getting the humor deep: You can't lay a joke on top of a situation. It's better when the situation is inherently funny. You can anticipate the comedy when the situation is inherently funny. For example, when a dyslexic character triples the amount of chili in a recipe and gives it to an evil teacher who later shoots across the room as though she has a rocket beneath her skirt.

• Follow Henry Winkler on Twitter: http://twitter.com/hwinkler4real
• Follow Lin Oliver on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/linoliver

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The humor panel's moderator, Leonard Marcus, you have to sing his name like a song from FUNNY GIRL — "Leonard Marcus! Leonard Marcus! What a beautiful, beautiful, byooooutiful naaaaaaame!"

Lin calls Leonard our residential scholar and a national treasure.

He's the author of among others, DEAR GENIUS, A CALDECOTT CELEBRATION, THE WORD AND THE WAND, and his latest, FUNNY BUSINESS, all about writing humor, which we'll get a taste of in the current panel of Mo Willems, Lenore Look, and Marvin Terban.

Leonard says we have three of the most talented and funniest people in our field on this panel. Mo Willems, picture book artist and writer. Everyone of his books is an event. Lenore Look, a very versatile writer with two series of chapter novels and various picture books. She's written about girls and boys, entertaining her audience while introducing them to Chinese culture. Finally, a change at the last minute, sitting in for Douglas Florian is good friend and fine writer, Marvin Terban. He's known as Mr. English for kids, Scholastic refers to him as "Professor Grammar."

Leonard asks us what makes funny funny? It's well known if you have to explain a joke, that's a problem. He brings up some funny adults writing for adults. Aristotle said we laugh at stories about people not as smart as ourselves. And Will Rogers said everything is funny as long as it's happening to someone else.

Leonard reads an excerpt from a letter Ursula Nordstrom wrote to William Péne du Bois about his illustrations for THE MAGIC FINGER by Roald Dahl "...No place does the author specify the gesture of the finger is done using the middle finger... couldn't you draw the gesture as using the index finger instead?"


Leonard reads another Ursula letter illustrating how to respond to angry letters, this time a letter to Hilary Knight:

Dear Hilary,
I hesitate to worry you, but some enemy of yours is writing me very angry letters and signing your name to them. Have a good week.

Leonard says no one at the conference or on the panel has ever been late with a manuscript or set of illustrations, but imagine receiving this letter from your editor (this went to Edward Gorey):

Dear Edward,
Thanks for your card telling me you are having a nervous breakdown. Welcome to the club. I think you know I have his and hers straitjackets hanging in my closet... If you are stuck or discouraged I might be able to help

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Marvin Terban, a gallant humor-panel replacement for Douglas Florian, has been associated with the SCBWI when it was just S, he says. He's written 35 books for kids about the English language, and is known as Mr. English for Kids. Booklist called him a Master of Children's Wordplay.

He started his panel with a question: What makes something that you write funny, and what makes you funny?

You don't have a funny persona, he says. Once he figured out he wasn't going to make his fortune based on his face, he decided to be funny.

Woody Allen cast Marvin in seven movies based on recommendation from Mia Farrow's kids. His wife's uncle is Henny Youngman. Neither Woody nor Henny was funny in person, but both are when performing and/or writing.

He recommends his book FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK for aspiring humor writers. And he recommends it again. And again.

Some things that make jokes funny:

• Wordplay makes a joke funny (homonyms, homophones, idioms--he goes over these in his book).
• The unexpected, or a reversal of expectations.

He told us a story about being near an Egyptian bus accident that killed eight people, and noticed how, not long after the wreck, the survivors were gathered around in a circle, telling funny stories. "Laughter can take us, hours after a tragedy, and lift our spirits."

He encouraged us all to put humor in our books, even the really serious ones. (Gosh, if only someone had written a book about humor writing--that would be the one thing that would have made his presentation feel complete.)

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October is the month for characters. They appear in stores, restaurants, and on the streets; people become anyone they choose to be--from Snow White to Batman or from a Zombie to the President, with lots of characters in between.

Did you become a princess or Dracula? How did it feel to take on that persona? Perhaps you were Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ. Where did those red slippers take you?

Building a character takes that same kind of imagination. The role playing done while we were young can be used in our writing. You felt prettier or stronger when you dressed as your favorite character, and now your protagonist must be bigger and larger than life. She needs to be flashier, wiser, prettier or faster than all the other people in the work of fiction. Remember, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

A writer wants their characters to be memorable. A strong enough character to bring a person to tears when the hero fails or to cause shouts of joy at her accomplishments.

There’s much that goes into building or becoming a character, use these points as a starting place.  

8 Comments on Faster than a Speeding Bullet-Character Building, last added: 11/2/2010

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Cher'ley said, on 10/31/2010 1:48:00 AM

I love this photo., brings back memories. Inspires me to write on.

Cher'ley said, on 10/31/2010 1:49:00 AM

Do you have a trick or treat moment to share

Anonymous said, on 11/1/2010 3:56:00 PM

I wanted to be wonder woman,lol thought cool how she could just spin and change clothes,and she always stood for good and helped weaker people.Brenda

Cher'ley said, on 11/1/2010 4:30:00 PM

Wonder Woman was a good choice. She looked pretty cool while fighting crime.

Annie said, on 11/1/2010 8:26:00 PM

I always liked Nancy Drew. I like your comment about making the character unique. Seems like in most books I've read lately, I feel like I've met the characters in another novel by a different author. It's a shame because it isn't that difficult to make a character stand out. It just takes a bit of ingenuity and persistence to keep the character on track and true to herself/himself.

Cher'ley said, on 11/2/2010 12:53:00 PM

You're right Annie. A character needs to be different, I found the same thing that you did. The same character with a different name and maybe a little different twitch, but basically the same. At the same time when a character is created it needs to be true throughout the whole story.

Nancy Drew formed a lot of young writing minds.

henya said, on 11/2/2010 2:10:00 PM

And I dress up everyday. Believe that?

What a lovely write. Great connection between writing and real life. Good going!

Cher'ley said, on 11/2/2010 2:44:00 PM

Henya, it would be fun to dress up everyday. I do sometimes.

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I'll be the first to admit: I've been less than my sunshiney self of late—lots of snow, lots of late work nights, a winter cold, not enough Zumba, and one small snafu in the publishing business that had my heart sunk real low for a spell.

It was, therefore, a very happy thing, when my friend, the humorist Anna Lefler, wrote with a bit of Zumba-quality news this week: one of her pieces was up on the esteemed literary site, McSweeney's. I wasn't just happy for this unquestionably talented, supremely hardworking blogger/writer. I was happy to have cause to laugh out loud, a sound these four walls had not heard for awhile. Funny business is hardly easy business. Anna Lefler makes it seem like it is.

(I'm not going to tell you what her piece is about, by the way. You have to click on the link and read it.)

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DONNA GEPHART: "12 3/4 Ways to Tickle Young Readers' Funny Bones"

Some hilarious higlights from 2009 Sid Fleischman Humor Award winner Donna Gephart's panel:

-- She provided handouts for everyone with a list of techniques and details to hone one's humor skills.

-- She advises taking risks. "Mine your embarrassment," she said, discussing how writers should not be afraid to talk about real life embarrassing moments.

-- "Embarrassment is funny but humiliation is not," she said. "You want to empathize with your character. Readers want to laugh, not cringe."

-- She gave a writing exercise in which conference goers had to do: List embarrassing things that happened to you or list things that embarrassed you as a kid.

-- She suggested paying attention to the "sound of language" as another tool to write humor. For example, the "K" sound is funny, such as "Chicken is funny. Roast beef is not. Pickle is funny. Cucubmer is not. Twinkie is funny. Pie is not."

-- She also advised using exaggeration and understatement as tools for writing humor. Examples included "Exaggeration: referring to a tropical breeze as a hurricane" and "Understatement: referring to a hurricane as a tropical breeze."

-- Ultimately, she says writers should not TRY to be funny. "Forced humor is no fun for anyone."

-- She also gave a handout listing funny picture books, early readers, chapter books, and MG/YA novels.

It was a packed room where people participated with a lot of enthusiasm to Donna's writing exercises. And yes, there was much laughter!

Yet another shining example of great lectures provided by award-winning writers at the SCBWI national conference.

Posted by Paula Yoo

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Humor writing continues to be in great demand = as always, comic relief keeps the darkness at bay.

Writers with the gift or innate talent to write funny lines make it look easy. It's not. As with most aspects of writing, humor writing can be taught: timing, subject matter, and how to keep from crossing over to satire. With humor writing, the reader laughs along with the characters. Satire holds human folly and vice up to scorn, derision, or ridicule and causes the reader to laugh at the characters or at least at the characters' action.

Good humor writing can blur aspects of character development, dramatic action, and even thematic significance when going for a laugh. A character can even act "out of character," if doing so is funny and furthers the story.

In the end, however, humor writing like every other genre in that the story at its core is still about the protagonist's transformation. Humor writers, like all writers, benefit from plotting out in logical and meaningful character change step-by-step to the ultimate transformation that drives the Climax. The character who delivers the punch line at the end of the story behaves differently at the Climax than the character we're introduced to in the Beginning. At its deepest level, that change is what the story is about.

At the Climax, the protagonist faces her biggest fear, deadliest antagonists, most taxing test, deepest prejudice. This is the moment the entire story has been steadily marching toward.

After the Climax, the energy of the story immediately drops. In the Resolution, the character acts in her newly transformed way. This reinforces that her new skills are fully integrated in her new life. The character, now surrounded by allies, has nothing to fear. Here, at the end, she demonstrates her new behavior with ease and great humor.

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What if bombastic director Michael Bay wrote the next Batman movie?

Spill.com has a fake script that imagines how Bay would screw up the upcoming installment (The Dark Knight) of the comic book franchise, including this choice quote: "GENERAL: Okay, I like it. But which one of the internets do we hack? [BATMAN]: All of them." 

Read it for two reasons. Number one, it's funny. Number two, a little bit of parody can go a long way in your novel. A couple weeks ago, Ed Park told us how he created fake self-help books that gave his satirical novel a new texture. 

Check out his interview, and start mapping out your fake works of art today. 

"I’ve always loved the vertiginous method of including fictional books within a work of fiction, whether the author provides tantalizing passages or just titles."

 

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"Ah yes, the noise-canceling headphones. You could lock Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly and Mullah Omar in a room together with a stack of Hustlers and 10 ounces of meth, and they couldn't come up with anything more misogynist. I storm back to my desk and type the phrases "my husband" "addicted" "video games" "HELP" into the search engine. Hundreds of links appear."

That's author Rachel Shukert turning her husband's videogame addiction into comedic gold on the pages of Salon.

In her new book, Have You No Shame?, Shukert takes that same exaggerated style to a  variety of queasy topics--I found myself laughing out-loud at things I never in a million years imagined laughing about.

Today, she teaches us how to write funny, part of my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
You take topics that nobody ever dreamed of making jokes about (the Holocaust, STD's, anorexia and religion), and make us laugh. What kind of writing process do you follow to take this serious material and make it laugh-out-loud funny? Any advice for making our prose funnier?

Rachel Shukert:
This reminds me of something: I had this teacher that told us once, when we were doing some kind of comedy scene "don't worry if you're not funny, because you'll just never be cast in a funny role.  You can't learn how to be funny, so forget about it." Continue reading...

 

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Hi. I have an odd request. I’m going to be speaking at the Access 2007 conference in Victoria BC on October 11th. I’m really looking forward to it. However, travelling there involves going from Tinytown USA to Tinytown Canada which means two small airports which means two long (or expensive, or both) trips. If anyone is driving to Access and heading either through Vancouver BC or Seattle WA on their way there and wouldn’t mind giving me a ride to the conference — I speak on the morning of the 11th, pretty flexible otherwise — I’d be happy to chip in for gas, share my hotel room if it’s logistically possible, or otherwise make it a non-sucky experience for you in the interests of saving the conference promoters money and me some time. Drop a note in the comments or find me in the usual places. I’ll be buying tickets sometime this week. Thanks.

tagless!

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