Does a comic scene in a serious work add or detract from the story? The scene does give some insight into the characters involved, so is not completely detached for the story.
Yeah, as with anything, it depends on how it's done. If the comedy is over the top or goes too far it can destroy the credibility of characters and story. And there are certain kinds of comedy that do this really badly. Probably the worst is what's called 'breaking the fourth wall' (postmodernism), where characters directly address the audience or seem to know they're in a story. You can't really do that unless the entire story is done that way. Scream makes it work, and so does Wes Craven's New Nightmare, because the entire story is built around breaking the fourth wall. The Deadpool movies also do it well. Stories like this can build some drama, it just needs to be within that framework. My go-to example for comedy that destroys all the drama and undermines the characters is Taika Waititi. He started to go that way in Thor Ragnarok, but it wasn't totally over the top. But then they gave him full control and let him be a co-writer on Love and Thunder, and he demolished the characters and dramtic situations. He just went for the joke in every situation. You need to be careful the humor isn't at the expense of any dignity your characters and situations need. Keep in mind the difference between situational comedy (sitcom) and comedy that's inherent in characters. In sitcom the enitre situation itself becomes ridiculous and characters are dragged into the shitter. Think Three's Company or Gilligan's Island. A crazy situation develops, say a misunderstanding, and people get all stupid and do things no rational or moderately intelligent person would do. Once you do that to a character nobody will take him seriously again. But a much more subdued kind of comedy is character-based. It isn't the situation itself that gets funny, it's comments people make. Like (to use Aliens again ) "It's a dry heat Sarge" or "Why don't you put her in charge?" Hudson is just like that, all the time, and it doesn't destroy the credibility of the situation or of his character, which is always making wisecracks. Now if he said "Why don't you put her in charge?" and then Hicks says "Ok, everybody, meet your new commander!" and everybody saluted Newt, that would be ridiculous situational comedy and the whole movie would be destroyed by it. That would be the SNL skit, not Aliens. Unless of course the situation itself wasn't desperate, and everybody was just playing along to provide some comic relief, to see if they can make Newt smile or something. Sometimes people will do things like that if the situation isn't too dire.
Valid points. The scene is a bit situational, when one character has what he knows is a bad idea but does it anyway. And the other character misunderstanding or misinterpreted the instructions, with a bit of a slap stick result. I'll post the scene in the workshop to see how it plays. Thanks for the feedback on the concept.
Oh, and there's also the old maxim "If you want to make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, and if you want to make 'em cry, make 'em laugh." It's a sort of pallete-cleansing between emotional states. A show like MASH did this a lot. It would veer between comedy and serious stuff. It worked because of the dire situation they were in, they were there to patch soldiers up and send them back to be shot at some mnore. It would drive you crazy if you don't blow off steam with some humor now and then. So some of the characters, especially Hawkeye, Trapper, and Klinger, would clown around and make people laugh. And the commanding officwers were ridiculous (I'm thinking mostly of the movie here, or the first few seasons of the show, before Trapper and Henry left and got replaced). Henry wasn't a disciplinarian at all as the camp commander, he mostly just wanted to screw around with his secretary (probably just in the movie) and fish and goof off. So the lesser officers like Hotlips and Frank were always desperate to try to establish order but Henry would undermine their every effort, It was a situation ready-made fopr the class clows to take over. In fact, here's my writeup about it from my blog, where I went into more detail: Anarchy vs Military Order in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H My point is, as long as you don't overdo the comedy and don't let it destroy the drama, it's a good idea to sort of alternate between comedy and serious drama. Just don't overdo either one. I mean, the drama can get really powerful at times, and some episodes will be hilarious, but just don't let one undermine the other. It's a balancing act.
I'd say it depends on the characters. Often there are some comic-relief characters in a more serious story, like C-3p0 and R2D2 in Star Wars. But the more serious characters like Luke or Obi-Wan don't get caught up in those hijinks. If one of them did and reacted stupidly for comic effect, unless he did it deliberately to break the tension or something, then he's lost all his dramatic cred.
But some characters can walk the tightrope, like Hawkeye (in MASH, not Hawkeye in Marvel). He can veer from being a clown to being seriously dramatic. It's because when he's a clown he knows he's doing it, he does it on purpose, partly as a rebellion against too much military order, and especially against hypocrisy on the part of buffoonish officers who are idiots themselves. He doesn't just suddenly become a clown for no good reason.
Actually this isn't necessarily sitcom. Things like this really happen sometimes, It depends on how it's handled.
Here is the scenario. Bored gnome thief, never a good thing, decides to teach his half-ogre friend how to pick pockets. Insert comic misunderstanding, and escape from consequences.
It depends on the full picture. Nobody can make the determination from just a brief blurb like that. Like you said, you'd need to post it in the workshop. Some factors that are important— Overall tone of the story. Is it comedic or serious, or a mix? Sometimes the writer doesn't really control the tone and it's just randomly all over the place. Are the characters serious normally, or comic relief? Has anything really serious happened to one of them recently and he wouldn't be in a joking mood? I can't list them all, it could be any number of other things. It's something you develop a better sense of judgement for as you learn and gain practice writing.
You just nailed what I was looking for here. A criteria for evaluating the fit with the rest of the story. Thanks
Yeah, that sometimes makes it hard to evaluate excerpts people post in the workshop, because we can't see how the excerpt fits into the rest of the stroy. Looking at parts rather than the whole. Of course it wouldn't be feasible to let people post entire novels on sites like this.
The server costs for that much storage would prohibit that approach alone. Not to mention potential copyright issues, for publishing.
I think dark comedy tends to lend itself well to serious stories. Be warned that a lot of people say it's hard for writers to pull off funny. I'm not sure how true this is, but inappropriate or ill fitting comedy in a serious story could really kill the piece.
There's a shotgun approach, and there's the sniper approach. You either blast a buckshot full of cheap laughs into a room and hope one pellet hits, or you get in position, take your time, adjust your sights, check the wind, maybe even that coriolis thing, and then after a two days on your belly in the bushes, you pull the trigger. That said, a little humor is everywhere. Everything is funny! Whether you want to point out the funny is a matter of reading the room, and in case of writing, reading the character. The subject of the joke decides how good the joke needs to be to overcome the severity of the subject (Everything is math! ;o) and if you're not sure your joke is good enough to do that, don't try. You damage yourself more by telling a bad joke than by not telling a joke. All of this goes for being funny in a live situation. If you can write it down for later reading, you can also have it checked by people before it goes "live".
The scene is more of a sniper approach. A situation that becomes a bot slap stick. I plan on posting it to the workshop in the next day or so, and see what reaction it gets. if it plays badly, it heads to the chopping block.
I think it depends on the kind of a serious (comic relief is often used in tragedies), and also on the type of humor. I think more serious topics would go well with existentialist and absurde humor. Or maybe completely the opposite.
A lot of the serious movies have a few comic lines, which are some of the memorable moments. I think it would bring the same results in a serious novel, although strangely I haven't found a serious novel with humor in it so far. Or maybe it's easy to miss the humor when reading a mostly serious novel?
First thing that comes to mind when I read the phrase "serious movies" are movies by e.g. Bergman or maybe Kubrick, so classics, masterpieces etc. I am not sure what genre would a serious movie or novel be, I think genre and humor are linked. And I think in serious novels, humor might stem from the situation itself rather than be found in dialogue, description etc.
Doing this from memory, I might have some parts wrong. At the time when Aristotle wrote his Poetics and defined what makes stories work, I believe there were only two genres. Of course in those days they were plays or epic poetry, and I suppose mythology/religious stories as well. No novels or short stories. But the major categories were Comedy and Tragedy. Hence the two masks you see everywhere symbolizing theatre. Comedy didn't mean just funny or humorous stories, it referred to anything that wasn't tragedy, so serious stories that have a happy ending. But I don't want to say any more without looking into it again, it's been many years since I read this and even then it was just mentioned in passing. And of course things have changed since then—genres have expanded considerably. But I think the point that's trying to make itself known to me has something to do with how we define comedy and serious stories. Today we think of comedy as something that makes you laugh, but back then it was just anything that wasn't tragedy.
Yeah, no tragic events in comedy I guess. But I think it was also used to point out the flaws in society, so it was a bittersweet kind of laugh. I understand "serious" as universal kind of topics, why do we exist etc, it can or doesn't need to be humorous.
There was also the satyr play - which mixed elements of tragedy and comedy - dating back to about 500 BC. From the Wiki page: It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is strong; satyr plays were written by tragedians, and satyr plays were performed in the Dionysian festival following the performance of a group of three tragedies. The satyr play’s mythological-heroic stories and the style of language are similar to that of the tragedies. Its connection with comedy is also significant – it has similar plots, titles, themes, characters, and happy endings. The remarkable feature of the satyr play is the chorus of satyrs, with their costumes that focus on the phallus, and with their language, which uses wordplay, sexual innuendos, references to breasts, farting, erections, and other references that do not occur in tragedy.
I also think the question of this topic could have something to do with the question of consistency - is it logical/okay to be humorous in some scenes but not throughout the novel? In my opinion, it is, but there needs to be a reason/answer/justification for it.
A lot of people think the sad endings made tragedies the less popular of the plays; in reality, it was the lack of fart jokes that did them in.
