Rami Ungar The Writer

With a title like that, you know you wanna read this post.

Alright, after sufficient time to geek out over Anne Rice coming onto my blog and giving me a major boost in stats (see last post), I got down to reading a volume about a Japanese comic book that I liked. The series, Bakuman, is about two teens who team up to write Japanese comic books together. It’s very unique and lots of fun to read (especially since it’s a look into a very different industry than writing), but occasionally they teach me something about my own work. Like last night, for example:

In the comic book, the main characters were discussing with their editor about how to deliver humor in a serious comic book that isn’t delivered in an annoying or off-putting way. They called it “serious humor”, and during the course of the comic book the creators of Bakuman took many oppurtunities just to illustrate their point. There was one instance when they were discussing a change in the editorial department and how it was a very big change for many characters. Serious, right? But the way they illustrated the characters’ reactions was hilarious, and it didn’t detract from the work at all.

Pretty soon I started noticing this “serious humor” in some other works I read. James Patterson, in his Alex Cross novels, has had points where the characters said something that was dead serious, but it was delivered in such a funny way. Heck, even something Alex does or observes, while serious to him, is delivered in funny ways, and yet the reader is not put-off by it at all! Instead, the work is enhanced in a way.

And then I remembered, in the fifth chapter of my work-in-progress Snake, one of the characters says something and while he’s being serious, I’m cracking up while writing it. It’s funny that I wrote that the same day I read a comic book that explores the subject.

Conclusion: serious humor is not something easily tapped into, and it’s not something you calculate either. I guess you can say that you put it in when the time is right, that it just comes to you and you go with it. At least, that’s how I find it.

All for now. Oh, and I highly recommend Bakuman, it’s very interesting. Available in hard-copy and e-book format.

In my last post, I mentioned that I’d lost power. So I was reading a book by flashlight, a book that I’d been looking forward to as it was the last volume in a really excellent sci-fi trilogy, and I was wondering how they were going to resolve the seemingly-unsolvable plot. What happens? No big battle; no jump into a black hole to stop the destruction of Earth; no combining of psychic powers in order to create a super-psychic power and save the world. Nope, just a deus ex machina, leaving me feeling a little cheated.

For those of you who don’t spend their time obsessing over terms like bildungsroman and deus ex machina, the deus ex machina is a plot device, usually a person or an object, that is inserted suddenly into a story in order to solve a seemingly-unsolvable plot. However, plenty of writers don’t like to use these plot devices, as they feel that they are not only cheating the readers out of a good resolution to the story, but also because the writers might feel they are cheating themselves.

You may be familiar with some famous deus ex machinas (I’m not sure if that’s actually the term’s plural form but whatever): the ending of Huck Finn is a well-known example. Lord of the Flies’ ending is also a deus ex machina, along with the ending for War of the Worlds. And I’m sure that if, given the time, I tried to look for more famous examples, I’d come up with a whole list of them.

Fortunately I don’t have the time. But if you want to put up your least favorite deus ex machina, and the emotional reaction you felt when you read/watched it, by all means tell me. I’d love to complain about it with you.

You ever come up with a character, give them a background, a personality, give them certain scenes where certain character traits that you just admire and adore in them really shine? And then you realize this character of yours shares the same first name as somebody you know? Becuase it’s happened to me twice that I can remember.

The first time was in my early years of high school, when the vampire craze was still in full swing (or was it just taking off?). Anyway, I was writing this great character, a vampire desperately trying to find a cure to become human again and kill the vampire who’d turned him, but I realized he shared the same first name as a friend and classmate of mine. When my friend found out, he kept saying whenever the subject was brought up that I’d named the character after him, and when he found out they both had brown hair (but different shades and styles), that conviction only got stronger. Well, I decided to hold off on the story until vampires were in an in-between-bursts-of-popularity period so I wouldn’t look like some hack trying to hitch a ride on a bandwagon, but for a while it was annoying.

The second time involves Snake, actually. I had this wonderful character in mind for the female lead. I’d already planned out her role and her character traits, and wanted to find a name that began with an A to match her (she just seemed like an “A” person to me). It must’ve been three weeks after I’d settled on a name that a girl in my dorm whom I’m friends with shares the same name. Luckily, she hasn’t found out yet, creating no misunderstandings, and I’m not sure if she has my blog’s address, but it’ll be interesting if she finds out and asks if I based the character on her. To which I’ll reply, “Are you eighteen and a redhead?”

Has this ever happened to any of you? Please let me know if it has.