Dos Scribblings Weekly: Writing in the smiles and laughter

Hello again!

So I have to make an apology. I totally failed in blogging on Monday and Friday, but I suppose my excuse is that I was on vacation haha. Anyway... I thought today, an appropriate subject would be writing humor into the things we authors write. And what's funny is that I only just came up with this subject a few hours ago after I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring because of the more humorous scenes. To quote one: "I have the eyes of a hawk and the ears of a fox." Gimli has an arrow pointed in his face after he speaks. The elf captain steps forward. "The dwarf breathes so loud we could've shot him in the dark." (Yes, I did just quote that from memory, and yes, I have watched it that many times. Can you tell I'm a fantasy fiction nutball yet? Teehee!)
As I've gotten more involved in the writing world I've realized the importance of humor in writing. Though unconsciously I've always strayed towards movies that always have just a dash of humor in them if not more. Humor makes everything. Humor adds a lightness to the otherwise darker parts of the stories we read and write.
If you are a writer trying to write more of a darker story, I wouldn't put to much humor in your story, of course, but coming from a readers point of view if there isn't any humor at all that might cause a smile or a giggle then it might be to bogged down with to much of the darker and heavier emotions in the book. I am a firm believer in balancing everything in a work of literature; no matter the genre.

Now writing it into your story may be a bit difficult if you think about it to much. Though I'm not a professional writer or anything, I have realized over the 8 or 9 years I've been writing stories that you can't try really hard to put humor in. Otherwise it will come out really... plastic.
This may not happen with everyone, but I find that any humor I have in my book usually just comes to me as I'm writing a scene. I see how the scene is being lain out and usually the words of my characters or the POV of my main character flows perfectly into the scene.
So whenever you're writing and you need humor, it's not a good idea to over think it. It will just cause problems with how the scene reads.
The best advice on learning what's funny if you're having trouble with that, however, is to just watch and read whatever you think is funny. Don't try to appeal to any particular persons funny bone. I have found that if it doesn't make me laugh I can't flesh out the humor as I normally would be able to.
Like I wrote in my last post: find things that inspire, or in this case, inspire the funny in you.
After a while of practicing at writing humor if you ever have trouble with it, you should be able to get the hang of it for the most part.
And if anyone is interested and you're having trouble trying to make something amusing or humorous leave a comment and I'll do my best to help ya!

 I'll be stopping here for now, but check back on Friday (7/12) for another blog post of Dos Scribblings.

Love,

Jazmine

Dos Scribblings Weekly -- Inspirations, imaginings, good literature... and other matters. =]

Well heelloooo!!

Welcome to the first post of Dos Scribblings Weekly. For now it's just one this week, but on Monday I will do another one and then on Friday again.
I decided just to do something simple and talk about some of the things that help me become inspired to weave a great story. But where to start?
Where it all starts. A spark. An idea. An exciting incident to spur the start of a story.
This is what has happened to me time and time again whenever I see an enchanting movie or read a great book woven by a wonderful storyteller. Or in some other not so-common-cases for me is reading other young writers work with a combination of the above.
The combination of other writers work and movies like Lord of the Rings, Terabithia, and Narnia inspired me to write one of my books called The World Within. I am editing the second draft currently, and if I remember correctly I finished it back in 2008 sometime.
This is the book I hope to publish someday soon... it would be fantastic. I am in love with the characters, and I'm lucky enough to be able to have such a strong world to build the story on.
 Everything about stories comes from a spark of inspiration at one point or another. The Hobbit "an Unexpected Journey" was one of the bigger reasons I got into editing my second draft of The World Within. 

There is always something so exciting about being inspired to write a new book... a new story. I love it. Unfortunately for us writers though, not every story idea may have a good storyline ahead of it. Maybe wonderful possibilities, but sometimes it just doesn't work out.
Though I still hold out hope for some of my own personal ideas I've had, (Like my Jack Frost story I got inspired to write after I saw Rise of the Guardians) not all of them are very easy to find conflict within the story.

Inspiration is what keeps writers going though, and thinking up ideas is one of the most fun parts about writing. The only problem is to keep on going once you've started to write this wonderful idea. And that's a whole other story for another time...

I'll leave you to think about this, and I hope this was entertaining enough for you to read so you'll come back on Monday to read the next post. Ta ta! :)

Love,

Jazmine




**Disclaimer** I do not own either of these images. All credit goes to the companies and people affiliated to these movies.