Chefelf.com Night Life: Jeru - Viewing Profile

For the Americans who don't know the rich vein of cultural history behind the term Snooker Loopy, I direct you thusly: Chas And Dave

My meadering writings were at one point focussed on plot, human emotion, the problems and issues brought up due to life and life's choices. But then I realised that it was possibly the dulliest and most uninteresting writing I had ever seen, so that all got stamped down under something which was actually entertaining. If you are going to attempt to write about real characters meeting real problems and such at least do it well, there's too many stories which just seem to be annatated notes of someone's life with no human relevence, interest or intellectual merit - aggravation and resolution in themselves do not necessarily a good book make.

Well as you may, or may not, know Douglas Adams basically worked on the same principle or thought arguably for a different reason. He used fairly liberal use of fourth wall breaking tactics, interrupting any kind of suspense of plot development, as well as just making Arthur Dent's adventures a rather idle mill through space which ultimately didn't have any purpose or resolution. It was only in later on novels that he would retcon, to use a horrible phrase, some kind of significance into the earlier events. In Douglas Adams' case this was due to the Hitchhiker's Guide being a radio show which was primarily there to entertain and not be burdened by the necessity of knowledge of the plot, but ultimately the radio show and novels would just ebb along with no particular significance, purpose, destination or even resolution. Stephen Fry's writiings are another good example of someone who constantly breaks the fourth wall, directly talks to the readers, completely anecdotally digresses to another time and place for little actual purpose, and generally disregards actual writing standards in favour of being entertaining.

I would suppose views differ greatly on reading/viewing/listening tastes. One doesn't tend to get increasingly anxious about the story or setting of a sketch (or skit if you are American), this may largely be due to the fact that ultimately it is neither important nor long lasting - but then Yahtzee's piece of writing was exactly long. The only author I can think of off the top of my head would be PG Wodehouse who does seem to blend actual plot integrity and humour together quite seamlessly, but otherwise it is generally a trade off between the two.

I read the short story, or whatever you would call it, without actually playing the game itself (Which incidentally I have since played and thought was full of amusement and brevity, as well as seeming to be a possibly intentional nod to Star Control II - fifth dimensional hyperbeings et al). I think the strangest thing of all is that upon reading it, I noticed vast similarities with both my own writing style and main theme of a novel I am currently in the process of rewriting. It is also about a human taken onboard a crew of three aliens and generally mulls around being comical space bums, plus the surreal imagery such as 'vomiting a wave of packing peanuts' is generally present in my writing style too. I would suppose that it's not much of a coincidence and that we are both imitating Douglas Adams, but still it was rather odd to read something so similar to that which I have been writing for a long while.

I'm pretty sure I even wrote something similar to "as the crew slipped into the fragile professionalism that usually resulted from mutual peril." strangely.

I don't think there is anything to complain about in the ending, well possibly that it could have been even more hastily and out of the blue in its execution. If you are trying to be a humourist in the way you write things as well as putting in terse situations and actual real social emotion and developments, then you are going to find that each impinge on the other. Which one you tend towards depends greatly on whether you'd overwrite any possible character development or dramatic resolution for the sake of a joke or vice versa.

It was good nonetheless though. I would venture to suggest however that with the particular writing style you have, with its fairly fourth wall breaking narration (there is a bit in the story, but going on the game as well), you should go for the more full out kind of humour which essentially abandons all sense of plot or development in favour of just making sure that the random ambulations of words are as funny as physically possible.