posted
The young bard was sweating. Hard. He wanted to kill his jerk agent. Stand-up comedy in a dive in Orc City? Madness! Yet, here he was, about to do a routine for an assembled audience of hard-drinking orcs, goblins, and Tempus knew what else. Here goes . . .
"Helloooo, Orc City!"
[Assorted hoots and hollers, large tankards of mead pounded on tables.]
"So, I just flew in, and, boy, are my arms tired!"
"That's 'cause you don't have wings, jackass!" hooted the owl-men at the bar.
Damn it! Okay - one more try. . .
"Any trolls in the audience tonight?"
"Why, yes," droned a group of trolls at the front table.
"Uh oh! I'll have to speak a little slower!"
The trolls looked nonplussed.
"Slow-er!" repeated the bard.
Comprehension showed on the toll's faces. Then anger. Comprehension dawned on the bard, who wet his tights. Oh, Lordy, he thought. I'm a-goin' to die. ------------ Heh. How about that. 13 lines.
[This message has been edited by ccwbass (edited January 09, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by ccwbass (edited January 09, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by ccwbass (edited January 09, 2004).]
posted
Interesting, the jokes don't actually work. The reference to Tempus places it in a Forgotten Realms setting, and air travel is not a common concept. The reference to "flying in" doesn't fit a dnd world.
I like the idea, but you need to put some more thought into what jokes would fit the world. The opening was pretty good, but the agent is another word that does not fit the world you have choosen.
If you can revise it to fit the world you are attempting to put it in, let me know...I'd be interested in giving it a read.
posted
Yikes! Remember the article in The Onion about the grad student who found himself deconstructing the menu at a chinese restaurant simply out of habit?
Seriously (or, um, not so seriously), this wasn't meant for any story. It's just a strange little no-context-for-it, lightly-D&D-sprinkled scene that took four minutes of my time from conception to third revision.
When I say "silly," that ain't no irony.
Oops! It occurs to me that you're just teasing me. If I can have a stand-up comic totally bombing in Orc City, why can't I also give the kid a jerk agent?
Anyhoo, it's just there for a chuckle.
[This message has been edited by ccwbass (edited January 09, 2004).]
posted
Sometimes you just gotta throw stuff out there, m'man. If someone smiled when they read it, it worked, and logic be darned. Still, I thinking that this particular section is not a place for unserious 13-line posts.
Posts: 249 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
HA-HA-HA-HA........ I get it. Nice! Come on everyone needs a good agent! I guess the guys next line could be: "HA-HA-HA, Stop it your Killing me!" Punny huh?
Posts: 471 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I laughed! Cute, fun, throw something out there... maybe he just flew in and boy is his dragon tired! Maybe he has a bookkeeper instead of an agent, one who booked him so poorly? Maybe he's getting fleeced by a baaad guy?
"Leave off!" The bard and trolls looked towards the voice. The bard (name?) desperately tried, through the smoke and sputtering oil lamplight, to find the face to match the voice, a deep, silky voice that would haunt his sleep, if he made it through his act.
One troll stood, his head bounced off a thick, soot-begrimed beam. "Why?" he boomed.
A form rose up in a corner, tall, pushing a hood back to reveal a face rivaling elven ladies, framed in amber hair, over a body even a troll would think twice about before fighting. Indigo leather fit over a tan, trim body, muscled arms naked to the shoulders. A hilt flashed under a brown cloak. And voices throughout whispered reverantly, "Tanitha." The troll fell back on his bench with a thump. The bard choked.
"Go on, tell yer jokes." Her smile made him sweat more than the trolls had.
Ok, I've never done that - that was fun! Yeah, this probably isn't the place - maybe a section for serial prose? Oh well, back to reality...
posted
Sigh. My problem is that my smartass to serious ratio is heavily in the favor of smartass. Not only does that make it very difficult for me to trust the serious prose I attempt, but I just can't help making fun of the conventions I'm supposed to embrace.
The result is the occasional explosion of low-brow stuff like the above. It just passes through me like [insert fart joke here].
posted
But there is room for that! The Myth books LD mentioned could count (I loved those), the Phule books - heck, Hitchhiker's Guide is another. The trick is to do it so well people are clutching their guts and gasping for breath. Or at least giggling! A smartass mc could get him/herself in a bunch of trouble, and what fun to watch them try to get out of it. And flying in the face of convention can work if skillfully done. Maybe a combination of low and middle, with some high (you need the straightmen for your comic). Write what you want, how you want. You can always rewrite. It will be like walking on top of a fence - between well-written smartass and stuff not clever enough to be enjoyed.
Would you be happy just writing serious prose all the time???
posted
Well, I should admit I'm not an artistic purist. I've done enough sidework as a bass player to realize that there is sometimes a wide difference between how I employ art for money's sake and how I express it for my enjoyment. If the only way I could make money writing were to write serious prose all the time, then, yes, I'd be delighted to just write serious prose all the time. But because I'm perfectly content to keep my personal art unpurchased, I'd never actually be sacrificing my smartass ideals, I just wouldn't be marketing them.
posted
The problem is that if the work is not to be critiqued, then this is the wrong place to post it.
If it is posted here and purports to be a humor piece, then the fact that the jokes fall flat because you don't make jokes that play in the milieu you've chosen (and you are the one that chose this milieu).
If you're a grad student and your professor hands you a menu from a restaurant to deconstruct (though I've never met a literature professor sensible enough to use a real world example of analyzing a text to decide what you wanted to try eating), then you deconstruct it. Similarly, if someone posts a story fragment in this forum, then we give it a couple of comments and say whether or under what circumstances we'd be interested in reading it.
Of course, now I have an interesting idea for a Lit major who actually uses his skills at reading subtext to discern not only what he will order at a restaurant, but other things...whether he will continue going out with a girl, what his employer really means by all those memos about the copy room...the true secret agenda of his local newspaper.
This is not related to your story. I'm just throwing it out there...not that I have to or anything.
posted
As I mentioned above, I have figured out that this is not the place to just drop bits of nonsense. I'll be keeping my whimsy to myself in the future.
Posts: 249 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
ccwbass, you are welcome to share your whimsy, as long as it pertains to writing, in the Open Discussions on Writing area.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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