What I learned about comedy writing from John Cleese

What I learned about comedy writing from John Cleese, 

the Big Cheese of British Comedy

I enjoyed Mr Cleese’s recently published semi-autobiography. Here is an interview with him after the book came out

While Cleese's book isn't a guide on how to write an autobiography or how to have successful relationships it contains some marvellous gems about writing comedy which I would like to share with you.

• In professional writing he encourages:- ‘If you kept at it, material would always emerge; a bad day would be followed by a decent one, and somehow an acceptable average would be forthcoming.’
• ‘Always put the key funny word in a sentence at the end of it, as this will give it maximum impact.’ Hmmm worth reviewing our sentences in the light of this observation.
• State of mind in writing comedy is important too and I read with delight the obvious - to those who have suffered from this - ‘The more anxious you feel, the less creative you are.’

Cleese’s Two Rules of Writing Comedy.

• ‘First rule: get your panic in early. Fear gives you energy, so make sure you have plenty of time to use that energy.
• Second Rule: your thoughts follow your mood. Anxiety produces anxious thoughts; sadness begets sad thoughts; anger, angry thoughts; so aim to be in a relaxed playful mood when you try to be funny.’

Yet what is truly funny? John Cleese worked on a lot of projects in radio, TV and film. The groups he worked with created what became famous comedies with varying types of humour. 

It’s fascinating and frustrating when he says ‘We all felt that about twenty percent of the show was comparatively weak, but there was constant disagreement about which twenty per cent that was.’ - huh. 

So professional actors and comedy writers can’t agree on what is the most funny - and what is the most fail - what hope do we, as beginning comedy writers, have of truly being humorous?

Sense of humour differs markedly from person to person. While in an audience we may be carried away by the laughter of people around us laughing; yet sitting alone in front of the TV or a movie we might laugh somewhere different in the story.

• This is why I find ‘canned laughter' false and weird. It’s being commanded by an audience to laugh where it’s not natural for me to laugh. I don’t respond well to that kind of push. Other people like to feel they are laughing with the crowd. Incidentally the history of ‘canned laughter’ is an interesting one and here's where you can find out all about it Canned Laughter History

AJ Burton and I have spent a lot of time over the past two years crafting ‘The Hoodle’ a werewolf parody. When there’s just the two of you on your own laughing like loons over jokes of your own devising you really don’t know if anyone else will share the joke.

Like John C, AJ has done most of the actual physical writing of this novel; but, without having myself and others to bounce his jokes off and create situations which we deemed hilarious (as John Cleese did with his long term writing partner Gra - Graham Chapman) - the book would have been a weaker parody, less confident, with fewer characters and situations.

The simple truth is, as can be seen in the credits of any comedy, a comedy partner or team will devise insanely funny ideas together, which one person on their own could never do.

I don’t feel we wasted the many pleasant hours we argued, laughed, drank bottomless coffee, building jokes as wobbly as Jenga castles and doing our best to write them down to create the hilarious antics of Jake and Hemi as they try to destroy The Dog Who Must Not Be Named, before he destroys them and their friends.
Contact us for help with your comedy writing or publishing on Skype
ChristineLeovLealand or email quintessence.publications *at* gmail.com

Five of the best things I discovered on the internet in 2011

Five of the best things I discovered on the internet in 2011 in no particular order:

1. Kanye West -  My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Yeah, not the kind of music my demographic are supposed to like but I saw it trending on Twitter so checked it out on YouTube. Wow. A delightful combination of samples from all kinds of classic music including King Crimson from the 70s. But these simply expertly background the comment, rhythm and virtuosity of KW. I can easily compare this music to the virtuosity of Stairway to Heaven

and Bohemian Rhapsody.

What do you think?

 Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield gave it five out of five stars, citing it as West's best album and "his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus [...] Nobody else is making music this daring and weird".^[127]  source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Beautiful_Dark_Twisted_Fantasy

Well not this daring and weird since King Crimson huh? Wow from the calm in the centre of the storm 1969.

2.  https://twitter.com/ I joined twitter - not really expecting anything. Found that I can talk to people around the world freely, find them, find people with my interests. Find anything at all I could possibly think to look for, ask about, and find more than I could ever imagine cause the people on twitter are into anything imaginable. And most are friendly, and talk about themselves and their interests and if they are lonely, or happy, they give good advice, quote from their own thoughts and those of famous others, share recipes and knitting patterns, hates and loves, create trends based around hash tags and titles, soccer players, rugby games and movies or television programs. Discuss live internationally and online if x should have been red-carded or not, if the Kardashians have their support or have set some kind of example.... the opportunities to get involved in the veins of the world are there - only on Twitter.

3. http://www.goodreads.com/   This is a superb site for anyone who reads or writes. Which maybe half the population of the developed world. 
Of course there are lots of people who can read and write but never actually do those skills - with the exception of texting, perhaps which I do count as writing and reading. LOL
So hey - Check out this amazing and illuminating website - which I have tested to the max by adding all kinds of literature to my profile and - yep - they had a link somewhere to the book. 
A BIG improvement on my childhood in Southland NZ where if I wanted a book of a classical work I had to ask and then the librarian would find a fusty volume in the basement! Now of course libraries simply turf out books when the withdrawals become below a certain point and kids who want to read Plato or Suetonius or Vergil - as I did, can download it free from my next fave website and Awesome Project:-

4.  The Gutenberg Project.http://www.gutenberg.org/

Firstly, let's celebrate the inventor of the ebook 

Michael S. Hart (1947-2011)

Project Gutenberg's founder, Michael Hart, passed away September 6. 

Here is a Brief Obituary 

Wow, how many authors like myself are benefiting by this young man's vision back in 1971? 

I like this man, he and GBS are like me, we want the world on our own terms:

'A lifetime intellectual, Hart was inspired by his parents, both professors at the University of Illinois, to seek truth and to question authority. One of his favorite recent quotes, credited to George Bernard Shaw, is characteristic of his approach to life:

 "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.  Unreasonable

 people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.  All progress,

 therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

Michael prided himself on being unreasonable, and only in the later years of life did he mellow sufficiently to occasionally refrain from debate. Yet, his passion for life, and all the things in it, never abated.'

All authors and readers light a candle for this talented man and support the project as thousands of classic books are being made into ebooks and not for profit, like Google Books scanning project no doubt is for.

5. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com   Joe Konrath is a kick-ass author, gun promoter and very successful writer from every angle you observe him.

I had the longest belly laughing session ever at Joe and DWS 'fisking' a memo from Hatchette publishing co. This would only be hilarious to ppl like myself who have been published by big trade publishers and have watched the employees - paid handsomly from OUR book sales - trying to prove why their jobs are necessary to anyone.

Anyone considering a career in writing or publishing would be wise to read his entire blog.

Any author trade published would be advised to read his blog as well as that of http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=860 and buying this book http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/

I launched my small publishing company Quintessence Publications and published eight books since March 2011. 

I will get more books published in 2012 but these fine people and many others who are available in links from their blogs are enormously helpful to me and hundreds of other authors, wanna-be authors and people who simply want to express themselves.

Thanks Joe K, David G, Dean Smith and his wife Kris.

Awesome people - setting an example of helpfulness and caring - spreading the love of writing and helping others throughout the world. 

Enjoy this list and watch this space for more marvelous authentic voices from New Zealand and the rest of the world whom I will be publishing in 2012.

Happy New Year

Christine Leov Lealand

Dungeonmaster to Novelist

I was once a creative Dungeon Master who developed my own milieus in that old tabletop roleplaying game which was popular back in the 80s - Dungeons and Dragons. I realise now that the skills involved in being a Dungeon master ruling over players, creatures and milieu alike was perfect training to be a novelist. Maybe a successful novelist.
Today gamers don't have the interaction they once had. Most games seem to be restricted to a few favourite milieus which the Dungeon Master no longer personally creates for the players. How many DMs actually modify their milieu to tease and torment their players? How many create their own maps, traps and creatures from scratch? My guess is that few now do.
If you long to create your own millieu and adventure within it with your friends - there is still no replacement for D&D. A set of dice, some graph pages, a map, a pencil and imagination and maybe a few other people is all you need to create something entirely new, progressive from moment to moment and interactive to a degree which computer generated games and internet generated games can merely hint at.
Writing a novel has the same level of excitement and creativity - a seriously good thing.
It was and is kind of sad that more milieus have not been utilised by D&D gamers - there's plenty of scope for Christian milieus - with the Soldiers of God hunting down and destroying the angels of darkness, Hospital adventures, Local neighbourhood adventures, Sci Fi adventures, hunting animals and humans through Africa or Asia, or in NYC; instead of a perpetual presentation of opponents from the monster manuals - undead and orcs - who do not interact and are simply disposed of as rapidly as possible in a maze or invented planet or continent - often imitated from some other person's creative vision.
While many pleasant hours may be had online adventuring - the player is trapped within the parameters of the set milieu offered by the game. There is no scope to go beyond into pure creative action and reaction.
If you as a player want to attempt something oddball like paragliding in a medieval war setting - well you just can't do it in an electronic setting - it has no flexibility or creativity. Whereas if you were in MY game and you as a player wanted to paraglide, hell, I wasn't going to stop you. But you would have to develop your glider, build it, fight off the wolves and natives and convince your group that it was a good thing. And then fly it. No problem. I LIKED my players to come up with new ideas. You wanna go to sleep in that room? Sure - you are going off on your own down that corridor cause no one else wants to go there? Excellent!
It is true young gamers do not necessarily have the breadth of vision, patience and creativity that a novelist develops - but a background of gaming and the creativity that pure old fashioned D&D offers will stand a novelist in good stead.
I've discovered that much.

Don't worship the gate-keepers - they are idols with feet of clay.

Reposted from my comments at Mark Williams international
As a successful erotica author I have watched my publisher pay me peanuts while reaping 100 or 200 times the income from my work over the past 11 years. I also strongly suspect that tens of thousands of my books have been sold secretly at wholesale price without my knowledge, but I have absolutely no way of proving it. They make endless careless mistakes with their accounting for my sales and royalties. They cannot account for my entire earnings and sales with them because they regularly change their accounting system and I have no rights in my contracts to request an independent audit of their records.
This subterfuge and unfairness broke my will to write. What is the point of being a writer whose books people love to read and I don't get paid for that good work? What is the remedy if the gatekeepers not only pay you hardly anything but they steal and lie as well? The average author is too poor to sue one of the big six.

Not only that, but despite having had three books published in three years, after that they didn't want any more of my books. They are a comfortably earning backlist for them. Why make any more effort to use me or my work? Or to find out if my genera work or biographical works are equally popular, as one might imagine they could be. No.

I bless the fact that I got my digital rights back from them 6 years ago before they thought they needed them. When they requested the rights back, as belatedly, they were publishing 100 NZ authors in ebook format early this year. I asked my editor for information on their marketing plan, and how much of their profit was I to receive?
There was no marketing plan, and I was to get 10-25%.

Having heard the news about ebooks I found smashwords and others online. I said thanks but no thanks to my publishers, as I think anyone would have.

I have now set up my own publishing company. My old books are being re-edited and going on-stream online steadily with many etailers, not just Amazon. Additionally I have found a very talented author, A J Burton, a retired policeman who writes gripping, realistic, very funny detective mystery fiction.
My choosing to publish him, recognising his talent and acknowledging his ability as a writer has transformed him into a real person, not a loser, as he had been, when trying to sell his book to agents and editors around the world. From being depressed and almost giving up, he is in heaven now, busily producing the sequel to Demon's Coven, and learning about how to edit his work.

The ebook revolution, fuelled by the manufacturers of ebook readers and app writers, etailers, Amazon.com and many authors has set millions of people free - we are merely two of them!

For all of us as human beings, the ebook revolution is simply the beginning of true freedom to write what we wish, publish for the enjoyment and enlightenment of others and to read what we wish. Gutenberg, Caxton and all those who wished humans to have access to the written word will be applauding from their graves.