In a general sense I think you're right, but I'd posit in a slightly different way: for a certain kind of humor, you want to keep things moving as fast as possible. You can skip over all sorts of things that you'd never be allowed to skip in a serious fic; similarly, you can make any sort of illogical moves in what happens or how people react that you like.
Of course you want to keep people in-character if you can, and the events as plausible as you can, but if you're aiming for humor there's a much wider selection of what you can and can't do. 'Course, having more freedom doesn't necessarily make things easier to write -- in fact, it makes it harder, at least until you get used to it. @_@;
The corollary to "move as quickly as possible," at least how I do it, is that when you hit your punchline, you stop. In a serious fic, that would be very bad, but stopping at just the right moment leaves the audience laughing over the line/action without getting distracted by followup; especially as the reader can then imagine whatever kind of followup to the hilarious moment they like.
So... yeah. What Louise said. A lot of humor is what you don't say, rather than what you do.
no subject
Date: 5 Nov 2004 07:08 pm (UTC)Of course you want to keep people in-character if you can, and the events as plausible as you can, but if you're aiming for humor there's a much wider selection of what you can and can't do. 'Course, having more freedom doesn't necessarily make things easier to write -- in fact, it makes it harder, at least until you get used to it. @_@;
The corollary to "move as quickly as possible," at least how I do it, is that when you hit your punchline, you stop. In a serious fic, that would be very bad, but stopping at just the right moment leaves the audience laughing over the line/action without getting distracted by followup; especially as the reader can then imagine whatever kind of followup to the hilarious moment they like.
So... yeah. What Louise said. A lot of humor is what you don't say, rather than what you do.