When I write a novel, I lean on notes. This post is a description of how I use them. Maybe you’ll find something helpful here or a method you want to stay away from. Or maybe you already do just as I do.
At the start of a writing session (on my computer), I always open both my manuscript and my notes, and I toggle back and forth. If the story is going well, I don’t write many notes, but if it’s not, writing them is proof that I’m still writing and not just goofing off, even though my story isn’t advancing.
If I’ve written an awkward sentence in the manuscript, I copy it into notes, rewrite it, copy it in notes again and again, so I don’t lose a version, till I’m satisfied or till I decide the original wasn’t bad after all or till I think I just have to live with what I’ve got.
To come up with a character name or a place name, I list possibilities from a baby naming book or an atlas or my own arcane sources, then arrange and rearrange the list, narrowing my choices.
In the mystery I’m writing now, Elody, my heroine, is an aspiring actress who’s been given the chance to perform at a feast. Thespians in the kingdom of Lepai draw on fairy tales and Greek myths for their plays. When Elody wasn’t sure what to perform, I listed options for her. After consulting my mythology book and a few books of fairy tales, I found a fairy tale that had parallels with the main story I was telling, which gave Elody the chance to paraphrase Hamlet and speculate that her performance might “catch the conscience” of the villain. That was fun, but I never would have gotten it without notes.
A minstrel sings before Elody’s turn comes. I didn’t write a complete song for her, but I made up the refrain. Here are my notes for the refrain, to give you an idea. Out of the notes I pulled what I needed:
Be he huge
Be he fierce as a beast
be he three trees tall
be he broad as a bushel of barrels
be his teeth as sharp as daggers
his eyes as piercing as pikes
his head as hard as iron
his fists as
I will vanquish him
I will tame him with my love
His strength will save me
Be the giant
three trees tall
and three trees wide
with teeth as sharp as daggers
eyes as piercing as pikes
head as hard as iron
fists like battering rams
falling as fast as hailstones
May he roar and rampage
I will vanquish him
I will tame him with my love
His strength will save me
face as terrible as
face as ugly as entrails
face as frightening as
volcano
avalanche
rock slide/frightful
death
disease/dreadful
I’ve let you see the repetitions because that’s the process. It’s messy.
When I’m far along in a novel, I often get confused, so then I list plot threads in notes to remind myself of everything I’m juggling. Sometimes I list future events as far ahead as I can see. This is like outlining, except that my future events never cover the whole span of a story.
If a plot idea knocks on my brain and the story isn’t ready for it yet, I put it in my notes and highlight it with the yellow highlighter on my toolbar, so I can find it again. Occasionally, I copy the highlighted bits into a separate document, to avoid hunting through 135 single-spaced pages - really! - of notes to locate them.
At those happy moments when I’ve figured something out or done a nice piece of writing I celebrate - in my notes. When I’m bummed and convinced I’ll never finish my story, I complain and moan and carry on. Sometimes I use bad words. If my books were people, notes would be their journals.
A novel that doesn’t give me much trouble won’t have 135 pages of notes, but I doubt I’ve ever gotten away with fewer than fifty. When the notes are longer than the book, the book was a miserable, horrible, uncooperative monster, like Fairest, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, and the third Disney fairy book, which even now doesn’t have a settled title, although I finished writing months ago.
Notes, however, are never miserable monsters. They are freedom. In the manuscript itself go the shaped sentences, the chosen words, the paced chapters. In notes go the incomplete thoughts, the lousy ideas and the good ones - the eggshells of writing. A finished book is a cake with chocolate or blue or whatever-you-like icing and the title written on top in perfect handwriting. Notes are the messy kitchen where the cake was baked. No cake without the kitchen, and I - or you - never have to clean up afterward. Hooray for notes!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
I Spy
10:30 am, commuter train to New York City: Before sitting next to me, a stranger set his briefcase down on the seat so that it flopped partway onto my lap. He didn’t move it until I looked at him balefully. Then he apologized and repositioned it. Once seated, he sipped from a styrofoam cup of coffee or chai latte or whatever, then placed the cup on the floor, continuing to reach down occasionally and sip again. I’m keeping an eye on the cup. My nice cloth backpack, also on the floor, will stink forever if the cup topples and the whatever spills.
By the way, I’m typing these words with this stranger inches away, and I have no fear that he will look. Only we writers are nosy enough to care what our train neighbors do.
He just pulled his Wall Street Journal out of its plastic sheath and stuffed the plastic wrap behind him into the crack between the seat bottom and the seat back. I am almost certainly getting off the train before he does, so I won’t see if he removes the plastic when he stands up, but I am willing to bet he won’t. Ditto for the styrofoam cup. Maybe I’ll find them on my return trip. Or maybe before I leave I’ll be crazy enough to tell him to take his trash with him.
A few other details, because I don’t want you mis-imagining: gray suit, pale blue-and-white striped shirt, blue-patterned tie, shiny black shoes, gray hair cut short, probably in his fifties, tall, fit. When he was speaking on his blackberry a minute ago, very terse, soft-spoken, thank heaven.
Later, back home, in my office, hour irrelevant: I did get off the train before the stranger, and I issued no warnings. But there was a morning when I scolded someone. It’s a little embarrassing.
My routine when I take the train is to meditate and then to write, but often I fall asleep - especially delicious, the sleep that follows meditation. I was snoozing happily one day, when two men approached my seat. Through my fog, I heard them discussing, loudly, where to sit. (The train wasn’t crowded.) They decided to put themselves across the aisle from each other so that, they said, their legs wouldn’t be cramped. One sat next to me, I suppose because I’m too small to cramp anybody’s anything. For a few minutes the two exchanged loud pleasantries then lapsed into silence, which did me no good since I was wide awake.
I was absurdly angry but too cowardly to want an extended argument, so I waited till my stop came to tell the man next to me that he’d been rude and explain why. His response was that I should do my sleeping in bed at night. No remorse. No apology. And maybe he was right.
The point, of course, is character development. I could invent the lives of these three men. I could put them together and see how they rub against one another. (They just happened to be men, no special significance.)
While walking through New York City today I saw a man (male again) in a business suit and a cotton billed cap. What was up with a suit and a cap? I can speculate: Maybe he has 365 hats, all in different styles, and wears a fresh one every day. He throws each one away at night because by now it’s (ta da) old hat.
But if he’d sat next to me on the train I would have had more fodder for my guessing. People in close quarters tend to reveal themselves. On the train they talk on cell phones, ease out of shoes that pinch, play solitaire on their computers, leaf through magazines or read serious novels, and occasionally start an actual conversation.
So you might try cramming your characters together - in an elevator, a closet, a bank vault - and seeing how they react. You don’t have to work this into your story; you can do it on the side. A character who’s been holding out on you might reveal her inner nature if she’s trapped with three strangers in the back of a truck.
In my train anecdotes I was a character too. Coffee-or-tea man this morning could have been deducing about me too. What would he have learned (without reading from my laptop)? He could have seen without reading that I was writing prose, not making entries onto a spreadsheet, that I wore jeans rather than business attire, even that I think ahead, because I took out my subway Metrocard before leaving the train.
Watch yourself from the outside for a day. Spy on yourself just as you may spy on other people. What are your characteristic behaviors? Our own personality leaks into our fictional characters no matter what we do, but this time make it conscious. Deliberately give a character a characteristic that belongs to you. Put her into a confined place and use that characteristic to get her into trouble.
Have fun, and save what you write!
By the way, I’m typing these words with this stranger inches away, and I have no fear that he will look. Only we writers are nosy enough to care what our train neighbors do.
He just pulled his Wall Street Journal out of its plastic sheath and stuffed the plastic wrap behind him into the crack between the seat bottom and the seat back. I am almost certainly getting off the train before he does, so I won’t see if he removes the plastic when he stands up, but I am willing to bet he won’t. Ditto for the styrofoam cup. Maybe I’ll find them on my return trip. Or maybe before I leave I’ll be crazy enough to tell him to take his trash with him.
A few other details, because I don’t want you mis-imagining: gray suit, pale blue-and-white striped shirt, blue-patterned tie, shiny black shoes, gray hair cut short, probably in his fifties, tall, fit. When he was speaking on his blackberry a minute ago, very terse, soft-spoken, thank heaven.
Later, back home, in my office, hour irrelevant: I did get off the train before the stranger, and I issued no warnings. But there was a morning when I scolded someone. It’s a little embarrassing.
My routine when I take the train is to meditate and then to write, but often I fall asleep - especially delicious, the sleep that follows meditation. I was snoozing happily one day, when two men approached my seat. Through my fog, I heard them discussing, loudly, where to sit. (The train wasn’t crowded.) They decided to put themselves across the aisle from each other so that, they said, their legs wouldn’t be cramped. One sat next to me, I suppose because I’m too small to cramp anybody’s anything. For a few minutes the two exchanged loud pleasantries then lapsed into silence, which did me no good since I was wide awake.
I was absurdly angry but too cowardly to want an extended argument, so I waited till my stop came to tell the man next to me that he’d been rude and explain why. His response was that I should do my sleeping in bed at night. No remorse. No apology. And maybe he was right.
The point, of course, is character development. I could invent the lives of these three men. I could put them together and see how they rub against one another. (They just happened to be men, no special significance.)
While walking through New York City today I saw a man (male again) in a business suit and a cotton billed cap. What was up with a suit and a cap? I can speculate: Maybe he has 365 hats, all in different styles, and wears a fresh one every day. He throws each one away at night because by now it’s (ta da) old hat.
But if he’d sat next to me on the train I would have had more fodder for my guessing. People in close quarters tend to reveal themselves. On the train they talk on cell phones, ease out of shoes that pinch, play solitaire on their computers, leaf through magazines or read serious novels, and occasionally start an actual conversation.
So you might try cramming your characters together - in an elevator, a closet, a bank vault - and seeing how they react. You don’t have to work this into your story; you can do it on the side. A character who’s been holding out on you might reveal her inner nature if she’s trapped with three strangers in the back of a truck.
In my train anecdotes I was a character too. Coffee-or-tea man this morning could have been deducing about me too. What would he have learned (without reading from my laptop)? He could have seen without reading that I was writing prose, not making entries onto a spreadsheet, that I wore jeans rather than business attire, even that I think ahead, because I took out my subway Metrocard before leaving the train.
Watch yourself from the outside for a day. Spy on yourself just as you may spy on other people. What are your characteristic behaviors? Our own personality leaks into our fictional characters no matter what we do, but this time make it conscious. Deliberately give a character a characteristic that belongs to you. Put her into a confined place and use that characteristic to get her into trouble.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Writer Revealed
Here’s a confession: I’ve been writing poetry on the sly, not just poetry, but poetry for grownups, emotional poetry, with little held back. Some poems are lighthearted, some intellectual, but most follow my obsessions: aging, death, fairytales, family history, and my mother. You would make discoveries about me if you read these poems, although not so much that you could be blindfolded and pick me out at a party!
This is a cheerful-ish poem. Kids can read it too, maybe best at Halloween. Truncated means shortened, like a skull’s nose is. Lurid means gruesome. If you don’t know what gruesome means, look it up. You’ll be glad you did.
Invitation
I bought a wooden skull in Mexico City, big
as my own skull, weighs over a pound and a half.
I have no clue what my own brainless skull will weigh.
This skull’s home, where it doesn’t live (ha, ha, yuk, yuk),
is my bookcase. I could hang it from the ceiling,
but it’s better recessed. Its eye and ear sockets
are bright red inside, red up its truncated nose,
red outlining the mouth and each widely spaced tooth
(ten of them), pink blush on its cheekbones and blush
on its scalp where a Mohawk would be, a black line
across the eye ridge and circling the ear sockets,
flirty eyelashes, squiggles drooling down the chin,
stippled stubble under the cheekbones. The jaw, once
articulated, is stuck, but I can chatter
the teeth. If you can’t picture it, I can say it’s
lurid but likable. I named it Death, Mister
Death or Missus Death, hard to tell which, its gleeful,
gap-toothy grin alive while it croons, Come to me.
End of poem. You’ve learned about something in my office. The skull makes me happy. It’s the funny side of death
Fiction reveals the author too, although not in such a direct way as my poems do. I used to read a lot of science fiction. One of my favorites was Robert Heinlein. Looking back, I’m aware of themes in his books, of government, an individual’s relation to society and authority, and group cohesion. I wonder if his friends could detect these interests without reading his novels and short stories.
In some of his books, Frank Herbert was into group-think and hive mentality, which he portrayed in a gossamer style that fascinated me. On the other hand, Isaac Asimov seems Herbert’s opposite: logic over emotion, disciplined plotting, full of surprises, but no confusion.
The books of all three are worth sampling. Heinlein wrote for children as well as for adults. If you’re under thirteen, I’d say, stick to his children’s books. In my recollection, Herbert and Asimov are fine for kids ten and up, but check with a parent or a librarian to be sure.
These writers are dead. However, if we could know them, live with them for a while as a guest, we might nod and say Ah ha! I get it. If we could watch each of the three of them brushing his teeth on You Tube, we might see confirmation of what we find in their books. Would Asimov be systematic (front side of the upper teeth first every time, back of the upper teeth next) and fast (he was an astonishingly prolific writer)? I imagine Heinlein talking with toothpaste in his mouth, and his brush is a contraption he invented. Herbert brushes with his entire household. If I were living there, the bathroom counter would be long. I would line up with Herbert, his wife, and two sons. After a few strokes, we would automatically and unconsciously be up-and-downing in unison.
What can you learn about yourself from your stories? Well, are you a conscious writer? Do you figure out in advance what your theme, perhaps your moral, will be and then work your story around it? Even if you do, what creeps in and infuses the ideas without your knowledge?
Do you write about a character who wants something that is hard to get and shape your story out of your character’s approach to obstacles? What kind of main character appeals to you? What kind of obstacles?
Are you pulled into a story idea, first and foremost, as I am? How do you play with the idea? What kind of characters do you build to fill the roles your story calls for?
I’m convinced that no matter how we writers approach writing stories, our deepest feelings get into the act. We can’t avoid lowering a net, often without meaning to, deep into the quiet lake of our - whatever - mind, spirit, subconscious, soul, emotions. Strange fish swim into our stories, stir the plot with their swishing tails, light the water scape with their incandescent scales, and let us enter behind their strange eyes, where we see colors not visible to merely human vision.
I don’t know what I’ve really been writing about until after I’ve finished a book, which serves the book well. If I understand what’s going on, I’m likely to shape events to follow the underlying thread, and then predictability results. Usually my books are about problems I haven’t been able to resolve (like obedience). Writing the book doesn’t fix anything. I’m still too obedient, but now I’m more aware.
Of course, the meaning I discover eventually is often entirely different from the meaning my readers come up with.
This isn’t a writing prompt; it’s a return-to-the-scene-of the-crime prompt. Reread a few of your stories, or just think them over. Consider what meaning they have for you, what you may be telling yourself. Ask friends to say what they derive from your stories. An unacceptable answer is that you write well or don’t write well. You want to know how the story added to their understanding of you and of themselves. This is hard, so don’t push if they come up with nothing, and don’t conclude that your stories have no depth, just keep the question in your mind. Ask other people. If your curiosity grows, make a pest of yourself. When you write your next story, after it’s finished and you’ve been away from it for a month or so, go back to it and ask yourself the same question. Have fun!
This is a cheerful-ish poem. Kids can read it too, maybe best at Halloween. Truncated means shortened, like a skull’s nose is. Lurid means gruesome. If you don’t know what gruesome means, look it up. You’ll be glad you did.
Invitation
I bought a wooden skull in Mexico City, big
as my own skull, weighs over a pound and a half.
I have no clue what my own brainless skull will weigh.
This skull’s home, where it doesn’t live (ha, ha, yuk, yuk),
is my bookcase. I could hang it from the ceiling,
but it’s better recessed. Its eye and ear sockets
are bright red inside, red up its truncated nose,
red outlining the mouth and each widely spaced tooth
(ten of them), pink blush on its cheekbones and blush
on its scalp where a Mohawk would be, a black line
across the eye ridge and circling the ear sockets,
flirty eyelashes, squiggles drooling down the chin,
stippled stubble under the cheekbones. The jaw, once
articulated, is stuck, but I can chatter
the teeth. If you can’t picture it, I can say it’s
lurid but likable. I named it Death, Mister
Death or Missus Death, hard to tell which, its gleeful,
gap-toothy grin alive while it croons, Come to me.
End of poem. You’ve learned about something in my office. The skull makes me happy. It’s the funny side of death
Fiction reveals the author too, although not in such a direct way as my poems do. I used to read a lot of science fiction. One of my favorites was Robert Heinlein. Looking back, I’m aware of themes in his books, of government, an individual’s relation to society and authority, and group cohesion. I wonder if his friends could detect these interests without reading his novels and short stories.
In some of his books, Frank Herbert was into group-think and hive mentality, which he portrayed in a gossamer style that fascinated me. On the other hand, Isaac Asimov seems Herbert’s opposite: logic over emotion, disciplined plotting, full of surprises, but no confusion.
The books of all three are worth sampling. Heinlein wrote for children as well as for adults. If you’re under thirteen, I’d say, stick to his children’s books. In my recollection, Herbert and Asimov are fine for kids ten and up, but check with a parent or a librarian to be sure.
These writers are dead. However, if we could know them, live with them for a while as a guest, we might nod and say Ah ha! I get it. If we could watch each of the three of them brushing his teeth on You Tube, we might see confirmation of what we find in their books. Would Asimov be systematic (front side of the upper teeth first every time, back of the upper teeth next) and fast (he was an astonishingly prolific writer)? I imagine Heinlein talking with toothpaste in his mouth, and his brush is a contraption he invented. Herbert brushes with his entire household. If I were living there, the bathroom counter would be long. I would line up with Herbert, his wife, and two sons. After a few strokes, we would automatically and unconsciously be up-and-downing in unison.
What can you learn about yourself from your stories? Well, are you a conscious writer? Do you figure out in advance what your theme, perhaps your moral, will be and then work your story around it? Even if you do, what creeps in and infuses the ideas without your knowledge?
Do you write about a character who wants something that is hard to get and shape your story out of your character’s approach to obstacles? What kind of main character appeals to you? What kind of obstacles?
Are you pulled into a story idea, first and foremost, as I am? How do you play with the idea? What kind of characters do you build to fill the roles your story calls for?
I’m convinced that no matter how we writers approach writing stories, our deepest feelings get into the act. We can’t avoid lowering a net, often without meaning to, deep into the quiet lake of our - whatever - mind, spirit, subconscious, soul, emotions. Strange fish swim into our stories, stir the plot with their swishing tails, light the water scape with their incandescent scales, and let us enter behind their strange eyes, where we see colors not visible to merely human vision.
I don’t know what I’ve really been writing about until after I’ve finished a book, which serves the book well. If I understand what’s going on, I’m likely to shape events to follow the underlying thread, and then predictability results. Usually my books are about problems I haven’t been able to resolve (like obedience). Writing the book doesn’t fix anything. I’m still too obedient, but now I’m more aware.
Of course, the meaning I discover eventually is often entirely different from the meaning my readers come up with.
This isn’t a writing prompt; it’s a return-to-the-scene-of the-crime prompt. Reread a few of your stories, or just think them over. Consider what meaning they have for you, what you may be telling yourself. Ask friends to say what they derive from your stories. An unacceptable answer is that you write well or don’t write well. You want to know how the story added to their understanding of you and of themselves. This is hard, so don’t push if they come up with nothing, and don’t conclude that your stories have no depth, just keep the question in your mind. Ask other people. If your curiosity grows, make a pest of yourself. When you write your next story, after it’s finished and you’ve been away from it for a month or so, go back to it and ask yourself the same question. Have fun!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Getting funny
My happiest writing moments are when I’m writing something funny. I’m happy reading, too, when what I’m reading is funny, although maybe not happiest. I adore a good book in all its aspects.
Writing funny means keeping an eye out for opportunities. We writers make our characters miserable, and one of misery’s faces is humor. After our mother died, my sister and I flew to Florida to sell Mom’s condominium. We rented a car, and I backed into a police car. That was pretty funny.
So was the time I smashed up a coworker’s brand-new car in the office parking lot on my first day on the job. (And confessed, naturally.)
One of my earliest dates, when I was about fifteen, was with a boy who stood about six foot three. I’ve never made it to five feet. We went to a museum, and afterward, on Fifth Avenue in New York City, he held my hand, which I had to reach up to grasp. For blocks, people pointed and laughed. I didn’t laugh along, but we were funny.
When I was even younger I loved the verse about Ooey Gooey. I used to repeat it to myself over and over with a mixture of horror and delight. For those of you who missed the sad saga, it’s this:
Ooey Gooey was a worm,
a mighty worm was he.
Crawled out on the railroad track,
the train he did not see.
Ooey gooey!
Death at its silliest.
Mark Twain said, Humor is tragedy plus time. I agree, although I wouldn't agree that all humor is tragedy based. Some humor is clever and some is goofy without a hint of darkness, and there may be more ways to be both comical and sunny that I can't think of right now. But to stay on the tragic side, I’d suggest two additional equations. One is, Humor is tragedy plus willingness. In an awful situation, if we’re open to laughter, it will leap out - and provide lovely relief. My friend Joan, who had a brain injury, sometimes thinks it’s funny that she can’t remember what she ate for breakfast. She’s not horrified, she’s amused.
The second equation, a geometrical one, is, Humor is tragedy turned on its side. Take "Hansel and Gretel," one of the least funny fairytales out there, although there’s a lot of competition. For anyone who doesn’t know the tale, Hansel and Gretel’s parents want to leave their children in the woods and let them starve to death. There’s nothing lighthearted about that.
Or is there?
Suppose Mrs. Hansel-and-Gretel says to Mr. H&G, "If we move the children out of their room in the cellar and into the forest, we’ll have more space for our colony of giant slugs." And Mr. H&G says, "Superb idea, dear, and I can conduct my colorful mold experiments down there, too."
The pain of being unwanted flips over. Being left behind by Mr. and Mrs. H&G is probably a step up in the world.
It can get funnier if Hansel and Gretel know what their parents are up to. Suppose the first day they case the gingerbread house without nibbling. Suppose they follow the stones home only because Hansel left his stuffed rat behind.
Then, of course, the bumbling witch will be lots of fun. And the ending even more so, with Hansel and Gretel deciding to stay in the gingerbread house. Gretel says, "We won’t make the same mistakes as the witch." Hansel replies, "How many children do you think we’ll catch today?"
Gross, maybe, but I think it’s funny, and of course humor is personal - in case you’ve soaked seven hankies reading this.
Sometimes it’s a stretch. Back to auto mishaps. I once walked away from a car accident that could have been very bad. Luckily the span of highway I was on was empty at that moment. I was unhurt, and no one else was involved. How to make that into comedy? The only thing that comes to mind is to personalize the road and the guardrail. If the road is ticklish and the guardrail grumpy, possibilities start to emerge.
So here’s a prompt: Make a tragedy or a misery funny. Try "The Little Mermaid" (not the movie version) or King Lear. Or delve into history, which abounds with misery. Rewrite the destruction of Pompeii or the 1906 San Francisco earthquake or the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, which is in my distant family history. Have fun, and save what you write.
Writing funny means keeping an eye out for opportunities. We writers make our characters miserable, and one of misery’s faces is humor. After our mother died, my sister and I flew to Florida to sell Mom’s condominium. We rented a car, and I backed into a police car. That was pretty funny.
So was the time I smashed up a coworker’s brand-new car in the office parking lot on my first day on the job. (And confessed, naturally.)
One of my earliest dates, when I was about fifteen, was with a boy who stood about six foot three. I’ve never made it to five feet. We went to a museum, and afterward, on Fifth Avenue in New York City, he held my hand, which I had to reach up to grasp. For blocks, people pointed and laughed. I didn’t laugh along, but we were funny.
When I was even younger I loved the verse about Ooey Gooey. I used to repeat it to myself over and over with a mixture of horror and delight. For those of you who missed the sad saga, it’s this:
Ooey Gooey was a worm,
a mighty worm was he.
Crawled out on the railroad track,
the train he did not see.
Ooey gooey!
Death at its silliest.
Mark Twain said, Humor is tragedy plus time. I agree, although I wouldn't agree that all humor is tragedy based. Some humor is clever and some is goofy without a hint of darkness, and there may be more ways to be both comical and sunny that I can't think of right now. But to stay on the tragic side, I’d suggest two additional equations. One is, Humor is tragedy plus willingness. In an awful situation, if we’re open to laughter, it will leap out - and provide lovely relief. My friend Joan, who had a brain injury, sometimes thinks it’s funny that she can’t remember what she ate for breakfast. She’s not horrified, she’s amused.
The second equation, a geometrical one, is, Humor is tragedy turned on its side. Take "Hansel and Gretel," one of the least funny fairytales out there, although there’s a lot of competition. For anyone who doesn’t know the tale, Hansel and Gretel’s parents want to leave their children in the woods and let them starve to death. There’s nothing lighthearted about that.
Or is there?
Suppose Mrs. Hansel-and-Gretel says to Mr. H&G, "If we move the children out of their room in the cellar and into the forest, we’ll have more space for our colony of giant slugs." And Mr. H&G says, "Superb idea, dear, and I can conduct my colorful mold experiments down there, too."
The pain of being unwanted flips over. Being left behind by Mr. and Mrs. H&G is probably a step up in the world.
It can get funnier if Hansel and Gretel know what their parents are up to. Suppose the first day they case the gingerbread house without nibbling. Suppose they follow the stones home only because Hansel left his stuffed rat behind.
Then, of course, the bumbling witch will be lots of fun. And the ending even more so, with Hansel and Gretel deciding to stay in the gingerbread house. Gretel says, "We won’t make the same mistakes as the witch." Hansel replies, "How many children do you think we’ll catch today?"
Gross, maybe, but I think it’s funny, and of course humor is personal - in case you’ve soaked seven hankies reading this.
Sometimes it’s a stretch. Back to auto mishaps. I once walked away from a car accident that could have been very bad. Luckily the span of highway I was on was empty at that moment. I was unhurt, and no one else was involved. How to make that into comedy? The only thing that comes to mind is to personalize the road and the guardrail. If the road is ticklish and the guardrail grumpy, possibilities start to emerge.
So here’s a prompt: Make a tragedy or a misery funny. Try "The Little Mermaid" (not the movie version) or King Lear. Or delve into history, which abounds with misery. Rewrite the destruction of Pompeii or the 1906 San Francisco earthquake or the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, which is in my distant family history. Have fun, and save what you write.
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