September Shorts: Juvenile Jokes About Wee

Earlier this summer I went to see Angry Birds 2 with my eight-year-old daughter. If juvenile jokes about wee are up your street, you're going to have a great time. I certainly did.

It did make me think, however, about how impossible it would be to make juvenile jokes about wee work in prose. Some things operate well only in a visual medium. Newman and Mittelmark’s How Not to Write a Novel is a great exploration of what doesn't work in prose. (Is the cover a visual gag referring to Snyder's Save the Cat? Guess so...)

Sharing it with students, you can see very quickly how, for example, though slapstick might work in a TV sitcom or dumbass Will Ferrell vehicle, it looks and feels pointless on the page. There are some examples shared - very funny ones.

Working with young writers in workshops and lessons, I've discovered there are other things better  avoided as well. Consider the impossibility of trying to write a compelling story containing a blow-by-blow account of a tennis match. Or how hard it might be to entertain the reader with a detailed description of a game of football or poker. Literal descriptions of sport just don't translate on the page. 

Next time you're running a workshop, kicking off a creative writing session or putting pen to paper on a project of your own, How Not to Write a Novel might be just the resource to use or share. On the other hand, you might want to try Griffin and Mayhew's Storycraft, out now. Ahem.