Taking It Seriously

We connect to a story through empathy.

Lately we’ve been subject to the stories that ‘don’t take themselves too seriously’. From what I see, this kind of story is just there to make jokes that… don’t make sense.

Consider my first statement. How many sitcoms have you watched AND laughed at? We as analysts go back to them and analyse those jokes. It’s not as funny as we thought it would be.

I don’t subscribe to the advice ‘don’t take it too seriously’. I think it’s important to learn many facets of comedy writing to know where you stand, but you still need to take your work seriously - that is, care for your work.

I wouldn’t buy a Squarespace domain if I didn’t care about the work I produced. Starlight Radio is one of the top 3 things I care about in this life. So, I had to learn to care for it - the more I thought about it, the more, slowly, things fell into place. And they will continue to fall into place for me the more I write and think about it.

The characters in popular shows… aren’t very solid. In fact, they’re kinda transparent. We watch the sitcom, we laugh out of politeness. “How endearing,” we think. But when we dig into the root of it, how deep, really, is that character? There is no empathy on the work’s end to have a meaningful connection.

Then, as writers, we start to think “if we need people to connect, maybe we should create a character that acts like the audience.” And that’s been the convention in contemporary story writing.

But when we do that, and we ‘don’t take it seriously’, we end up with something of a mockery of the audience. Imagine, a person who is socially aware, but also has bad luck everywhere they turn.

Now apply those attributes to yourself. As a satire girly, that’s the opposite of satire.

This is precisely how Velma was written (sorry to bring it up). Velma is a warped mirror to the audience. We all hate her. How did this make it past the drafting stage.

I made Karu to be his own person. He has his own story, his own goals, and his own future, even as a father of an adult and two teenagers. I made Toren with his own story, his own goals, and his own future, even as a boy turning 13. 13 years is a long time.

And writing a tertiary character like Mara, I had to find a way to capture your attention. If Mara has the belief that kids shouldn’t be in the traineeship, what kind of person is she overall? That’s why she’s dressed well, but she slouches. And so, while we may disagree with Mara, we still connect because in a few short sentences, we see a whole person.

Then, having that scene written out, what would you, the reader, assume about me, the author?

For readers: apply this to the works you’re reading. How much sense does your work make now?

For writers: apply this to your own work and see what happens. It takes a lot of thinking and intuition, but with enough practice, you can make vignettes much like what I upload here.