Comic Fantasy

I feel if the characters are all serious then the writing dosn't seem real. There is bound to be someone who is foolish a wise cracker or someone who is just dumb. Fantasy is loaded with good examples of making fun of itself as well.

I firmly believe that any healthy story needs a good dose of the ridiculous. I can't say that I'm exactly 'trying' to write a comic fantasy, but if no one who reads it laughs even once, well, that's not what I'm going for.

Oh, mine is, sort of... There are two narratives, one obviously comical and a serious one. However, the serious one has humour weaved into it.

I have to agree that I can not keep all events serious. Though, I often try to have my characters play straight and have the reader complete the humour.

For example (please note that I use place holders like MC1 which are easier to type then getting a fantasy name spelled correctly all the time) --

Waking from a dream...

“Father!” cried MC1 as he stood up from the chair dumping his sister, Sis2, on to the floor.

“Ouch!”

The sun had risen and the courtyard was now bright with early sunlight.

“You dropped me. Sluggard.” Sis2 swung her fist and smashed it on to MC1’s foot.

MC1 took no notice of the minor hit as he tried to wipe the cobwebs from his brain. His chasing to try to catch his father before he disappeared had seemed so real.

Seeing no response from her brother with her first attempt to inflict pain, Sis2 grabbed up MC1’s discarded sandal and used that to club some revenge into his foot.

“Ouch! You hit me.”

“And you dropped me on the ground you, you, Scroot Worm.” By this point, having successfully gotten her brothers attention she had now climbed to her feet.

“Oh.”

“Oh, oh, is all you have to say to me?” Immediately, Sis2, decided that her brother deserved a kick to the shins. Evidently, her brother’s brain was still malfunctioning and only a swift kick would get it working correctly.

“Hey, stop it, I am sorry. I did not mean to drop. I just woke up, uh, suddenly.” MC1 did not feel like going into details of his dream with his younger sister. There were some things that you could not discuss with family.

“Hmph, apology accepted.” With that, Sis2, straightened her head back and walked regally from the balcony to her room where she could properly prepare for the day.

I for one found it impossible to keep my story serious. Random stuff kept happening, and eventually, that stuff turned out to have hilarious implications for the characters. Generally everyone tries to keep a straight face, after all, they never do get the jokes.

I'll post a short excerpt here though:

Purgatory; that was all it was. Eleven village women first strangled, and then methodically mutilated, their entrails left pouring all over the black streets of a forgotten sleepy residence area.. The people didn’t know who to blame, so they turned their fingers upon one person—the obvious fellow with the only tools and knowledge in town to commit such atrocities.

The local surgeon however, was found to be innocent. Perhaps it was because he had managed to find one of the stray deserters of the Wolf army (who were rumoured to turn into men on the night of full moons and do strange things such as tear up pavement, rampage through garbage, and get those five year olds with head colds off those darned forklifts) on the northern shores as his attorney, or it could just be because he was in the habit of carrying a preposterously gargantuan axe with fake blood smeared all over it.

Either way, the voices of people continued to condemn anyone who would be—could possibly be witnessing, involved in—or worse—perpetrating the horrific crime. And blame inevitably finds itself a suspect, and suspects normally find themselves guilty due to public opinion. This rather sad judicial anomaly will—like most uninteresting aspects of this narrative—be disregarded, and instead the reader’s attention should be focused on the fact that the villagers did, en fait, find the terrible serial killer.

It was a little boy named Jack.

I suppose mine's kinda serious, but I've got my comical lines, I threw six teenagers together to be slaves and then save their country for Pete's sake! But it's not clearly comedy. Although, J.K. Rowling doesn't write comedy either, but she's got her funny lines, mostly by Ron, but whatever.

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