Experiment #2: Why Did the Chicken Make Out with the Road? Navigating the Hot/Funny Danger Zone (Patreon)

Greetings from the Mad Fiction Laboratory! Here in Maine, home of the Flannel Golems, May is upon us, bringing the most afeared-of-commitment dusting of green, my birthday, Eurovision, and this one tree with yellow flowers that blooms way too early every year and then stands around sheepishly like it accidentally wore a full ballgown to the weekly office strategy meeting—and I swear, right as I was typing that, the biggest, fattest, most brilliantly red cardinal I’ve ever seen crash-landed Kramer-style on that very tree as if to say NEVER FEAR, OVERDRESSED TREE, I AM YOUR COMRADE IN FABULOSITY OOPS DIDN’T MEANT TO BREAK THAT BRANCH SORRY NEW FRIEND.

More importantly, the fifty-eight tulips I planted after finishing The Glass Town Game last autumn have all come up and my excitement level is neither cool nor normal. They haven’t opened yet, the little minxes, but I can see hot pink tips peeking out of the mini-Audrey II’s! IT’S HAPPENING! I have lived on this island for eight years and said every single fall that I was gonna plant tulips, honest, this time I’m doing it, and I finally did and the magic of bulbs WORKED and all it took was disabling my carpal-tunnel funtimes hands for a week afterward. Planting bulbs feels like writing books in some ways: you put it off and put it off and finally get inspired and run yourself ragged working this indigestible knob of unwieldy notions down into the dark where it waits for months while nothing seems to be happening on the surface; you go about your life and fret that nothing will ever come of all that effort, that it won’t be worth it in the end, that you did all that just for a bunch of stupid tulips that no one else will care about and anyway they’ll just fade/get remaindered super quick, and besides, who are you to think you can grow tulips, all the good tulips have already been grown by better, smarter people, maybe you should just stick to grass like a normal person, then you forget about it for awhile because real, practical life is too overwhelming to just obsess about tulips all the time, until one day there’s little green-burgundy pokey bits coming up everywhere and you run down to edit the snow and leaves away from the good stuff so it can breathe and when you thought there was absolutely no chance of tulips ever happening for you, just then…HOLY HOT PINK PETAL ACTION, BATMAN.

Now that we’ve abused poor “tulip” until it no longer even sounds like a word, I can point out how long and how hard I will work for a, possibly dubious joke and/or metaphor, and that will lead us totally smoothly into this month’s experiment, which deals with two of the most driving forces of human nature: sex and comedy.

As those of you who’ve been reading my Current Stubborn and Frequently Angered Project excerpts know, I’ve spent the last two months working on a book called Space Opera. It is that dreaded chimera called science fiction comedy, done so well by Douglas Adams that two entire generations of writers and editors were given crippling genre inferiority complexes about it. And it is hard. So hard that I’ve been complaining to anyone who will listen, which is so many people because there is nothing human entities love more than hearing someone bitch about how hard it is to make up goofy hypercolor aliens with funny voices all day. But what fascinates me is why it’s so hard to write a comedic novel, when I’ve never had any trouble writing comedic scenes in a regular novel, why it takes so much longer than any other writing I’ve done, why it feels so bloody stressful to try to make people laugh. 

The only other thing that I’ve found this screamingly tough is writing about sex—and I’m by far and away not the only one who finds writing love scenes and romance hard, or we wouldn’t have so many bad ones. And look, life is short, so I’ll start with the money shot: writing funny and writing hot are difficult for exactly the same reasons, and, logically, therefore, hitherto, and concordantly, have the same solutions.

Back when Palimpsest came out, I found myself plunged headfirst into a terrifying world of having to read sex scenes out loud and then answer questions about them. I was not prepared for that, which might seem odd, as Palimpsest has kind of a lot of sex in it. It just hadn’t occurred to me. I’d only ever done readings from The Orphan’s Tales, and only from the funny bits of those, which resulted in instant audience feedback (laughter) and nice, easy questions about manticores and algebra and third wave feminism. So here’s what I learned about writing sex, distilled from years of agony into pithy comments delivered digitally to your doorstep.

The reason writing sex is such a thorny goddamned proposition is that, while nobody has ridden a dragon or punched a robot or traveled in time or turned into a tree to get away from the original nice-guy MRA, most adult people have had sex. Most people who haven’t had sex have wanted to have sex at some point, known others who have had sex now and then, or at least know in a Tab A/slot B sort of way how sex works in the wild. Everyone has OPINIONS about sex. Everyone thinks they know what good sex and bad sex are, and that their definition is, more or less, the right one. Even asexuals and aromantics, who can hardly escape the background noise of our hyper-sexualized culture, take positions on the subject. Sex is incredibly personal, yet incredibly universal. When you’re writing a sex scene, you’re interacting with some of your readers’ most basic assumptions about themselves, the world, and probably most delicately, how the world should be. What people find hot is so unique and intimate and varied that you are simultaneously deeply unlikely to hit everyone’s sweet spot and almost guaranteed to hit somebody’s, no matter what you write. But when people aren’t turned on by something clearly meant to be…ahem…stirring…they tend to react more viscerally than they do to a bit of clunky dialogue. They get grossed out, they laugh, they get angry, they get disturbed or offended, they put on their complaining pants and get the book banned. The failure conditions are far more intense and easier to fulfill than writing about how much a cookie reminds you of your childhood in France. It’s vastly easier to piss off and offend your readers writing about sex, which they have a personal stake in, than writing about zombies, which they’ve never encountered, and so are more willing to trust your authority as to whether they are fast or slow, hot or cold, many or one, intelligent or drooling morons shambling home from the club.

Sexuality is formed by genes, by environment, by nature, by nurture, over a lifetime of experiences, both real and fictional, both directly sexual and nothing to do with doing it, so when two of your characters hook up, they aren’t alone. They’re hooking up with that mountain of reader assumptions, assumptions that go far deeper than presuming every literate person knows the basic geography of New York City. Sex scenes can make people uncomfortable in a way an exposition scene never will. They can incite a response that is far more powerful than admiring a nicely-turned opening line or battle scene. They can challenge a reader’s politics and expose hidden desires. It’s the real life actual Danger Zone. 

Of course, the standards for a book of erotica and a book of fiction with erotic elements are very different. No one judges Debbie Does Dallas by the same directorial standards as Eyes Wide Shut. Fifty Shades of Grey may be a failure on almost every literary level except having the punctuation basically in the right place, but it undeniably succeeds at its more earthly goals for a lot of people. Most of us have probably read and watched and enjoyed things with practically zero artistic merit because of their…other virtues, and that’s fine. Because sex is this primal, Dionysian, inherently subversive thing, it’s the balance between that and the Apollonian order of plot, character, exposition, dialogue, prose that causes no end of trouble. 

Some of that has to do with the words involved. Sexy Words are a real problem. It’s very hard to write a scene where it’s at all clear what’s going on and to whom without them. But many of them are profanities. A few are really offensive to some people but aces to others. Some of them are inherently ridiculous outside of the precise right context. Some of them are ridiculous no matter what. It’s crazy easy to slide into lazy, cliche terms or go the other way into overly oblique language and faceplant directly into a pit of ‘turgid manhood.’ They are deeply culturally informed. Often, the really profane ones get people going because they’re transgressive and naughty, but, being transgressive and naughty, they’ll also almost certainly cross people’s boundaries. The silly ones are safer, but too much of that and no one takes anything seriously. People are absurdly specific about words referring to our body parts and what we like to do with them, and using the wrong one, or sometimes even using any at all, can make readers ASTONISHINGLY uncomfortable. They may not even realize what a strong damned opinion they have on the relative merits of cock, dick, prick, knob, willy, boner, dong, disco stick, pecker, penis, schlong, weiner, or wood until they see whichever one they really hate in print, and then they’re thrown out of the scene with a look on their face like Beaker on a bad day. 

Watch! I’ll bet a hot nickel I can make you super uncomfortable right now. All I have to do to make any American audience squirm is use the word cunt. In our culture, it’s pretty much Queen Jadis’s Deplorable Word. It is not used in company, it is not allowed on network TV, it is not said casually. It also happens to be my favorite word for lady bits. I’ve lived in Scotland and Australia, it doesn’t bother me on that transgressive level in the least. It’s barely a bad word to me anymore, which definitely resulted in some interesting social situations when I first moved back from the UK. To me, cunt sounds strong, confrontational, powerful, capable, hot. It comes from the middle English word for rabbit—a fast, fierce little beastie that loves life and making more of it. It’s in Chaucer and Chretien de Troyes. It sounds like a comic book action verb, like BANG! POW! ZOUNDS! I love it. All the other words sound weak and giggly and prissy and gross to my ears. I find pussy downright revolting, vagina clinical, and kitty so stupid as to be beneath notice. If I use the word that I like, I know 100% some people will hate it. I have to make that decision every time and I can hardly think of another word with that kind of power to simultaneously arouse or offend or both or neither.

And here’s the thing. Everything I just said? Is equally true of comedy. 

The reason writing comedy is such a thorny goddamned proposition is that, while nobody has punched a dragon or ridden a robot or turned into time or traveled in a tree to wreck the original alt-right white-tower orange-eye supporter, most adult people have laughed. Most people who haven’t laughed have wanted to laugh at some point, known others who have laughed now and then, or at least know in a Tab A/slot B sort of way how humor works in the wild. Everyone has OPINIONS about what’s funny. Everyone thinks they know what good jokes and bad jokes are, and that their definition is, more or less, the right one. Humor is incredibly personal, yet incredibly universal. When you’re writing comedy, you’re interacting with some of your readers’ most basic assumptions about themselves, the world, and probably most delicately, how the world should be. What people find funny is so unique and intimate and varied that you are simultaneously deeply unlikely to hit everyone’s sweet spot—and here’s one massive difference—can absolutely hit nobody’s but your own. But when people aren’t amused by something clearly meant to be…ahem…hilarious…they tend to react more viscerally than they do to a bit of clunky normal dialogue. They get grossed out, they laugh but only out of nervousness, they get angry, they get disturbed or offended, they put on their complaining pants, they get the book banned. The failure conditions are far more intense and easier to fulfill than writing about how terrible a thing is war, which everyone already agrees with. It’s vastly easier to piss off and offend your readers writing comedy, which they have a personal stake in, than writing about elves, which they’ve never encountered, and so are more willing to trust your authority as to whether they are short or tall, wholesome or mean-spirited, whether they walk like this or like this, clever and ruefully wise or snickering at some farmer getting popped in the balls by an enchanted dun cow. 

A sense of humor is formed by genes, by environment, by nature, by nurture, over a lifetime of experiences, both real and fictional, both directly entertaining and nothing to do with drollery, so when your characters slap sticks, they aren’t alone. They’re rolling up to a microphone in an arena of reader assumptions, assumptions that go far deeper than presuming every thinking person finds walking into a bar inherently hilarious. Comedy can make people uncomfortable in a way an action sequence never will. It can incite a response that is far more powerful than admiring a nicely-turned prologue or picnic scene. It can challenge a reader’s politics and expose hidden desires. It’s the real life actual Danger Zone. 

Of course, the standards for a book of comedy and a book of fiction with comedic elements are very different. No one judges The Mask by the same directorial standards as The Truman Show. Scary Movie and all its sequels may fail on almost every cinematic level except having the acts basically in the right order, but it undeniably succeeds at its more earthly goals for a lot of people. Most of us have probably read and watched and enjoyed things with practically zero artistic merit because of their other virtues, and that’s fine. Because laughter is this primal, Dionysian, inherently subversive thing, it’s the balance between that and the Apollonian order of plot, character, exposition, dialogue, prose that causes no end of trouble. 

Some of that has to do with the words involved. Funny Words are a real problem. It’s very hard to write a scene where it’s at all clear what’s going on and to whom without them. But many of them are profanities. A few are really offensive to some people but aces to others. Some of them are inherently ridiculous outside of the precise right context. Some of them are ridiculous no matter what. It’s crazy easy to slide into lazy, cliche terms or go the other way into overly oblique language and faceplant directly into a pit of ‘what’s the deal with airline food.’ They are deeply culturally informed. Often, the really profane ones get people going because they’re transgressive and naughty, but, being transgressive and naughty, they’ll also almost certainly cross people’s boundaries. The silly ones are safer, but too much of that and no one pays attention. People are absurdly specific about words they find inherently funny, and using the wrong one can make readers ASTONISHINGLY uncomfortable. You may not even realize what a strong damned difference it makes which fruit or animal or man’s first name is the funniest until you have to debate the relative merits of peach, leopard, Colin, panda, guava, Jeff, banana, and golden retriever with yourself. Unlike “straight” writing, it can’t just be the right word, or the prettiest word, or the most powerful word, it has to be the funniest word, which is a whole other set of criteria that includes unquantifiable shit like: which one is the most fun to say, which one is the second or third most absurd, because the most absurd might be too over-the-top, which one won’t make anyone reach for a dictionary, which one has that nice Anglo-Saxon guttural consonant punch, which one is the most wry and knowing, which one might be a pun, which one could be a nice callback, which one hasn’t been used by every comedian ever because the leopard is obviously the funniest animal. 

And either way, if you say cunt people are gonna raise their eyebrows.

Comedy and erotica have the same goal, and it’s not the goal of other kinds of writing—what they want is to trigger an autonomic, cathartic response. A release. Laughter or arousal. These are both mostly involuntary physical processes. They degrade or elevate us, depending on your point of view, above or below our usual veneer of civilization. They are both inherently dangerous. They seem inconsequential but are not at all. They can be communal and they can be exercises of power, they can both be used as weapons and as acts of love. Laughing at something can take its power, which is why dictators can never take a joke and the playground can be such an awful place. They access anxieties and fears. They ground you in the present moment and drive all else aside. We may not have a logical explanation for either one—how many times have you said I don’t even know why I find that so funny or I don’t know what was so hot about him/her/them/it, not usually my type, but wow—but we know what we like. It’s instinctive; get in your head too much and you lose the juice. You can go high or low to make it happen, an artful chain of puns or a quick dirty joke, a long dance of cultured Austen-esque seduction or a roll in the slashfic hay: all’s fair in love and wit. If you get the response, you won, move onto the next bit. No one likes someone who seems too confident that they’re the funniest or the prettiest. Self-deprecation gets the audience on your side or the side of your protagonist. Setting up a joke bit by bit, layer by layer, is a seduction of the audience, bringing them to the pay-off without boring or hurting them, and if it fizzles, there is no awkward like it. Sex and humor are completely connected on such a deep level—we hardly joke about anything as much as we joke about sex, and the most desirable trait in a potential mate, in poll after poll, is a great sense of humor. The word comedy itself comes from the Latin com-edo, meaning ‘to eat together’ because classical comedic plays always ended with a wedding and a feast. I don’t think we need to get into the etymology of the word hysterical. Or indeed bits.

So how do you do it? Aside from the usual advice of go out and find people who make you laugh or turn you on and pay attention to how they’re doing it, the basic rule of three, people like alliteration and puns even if they pretend not to, why mean one thing when you can mean two or more, callback and repetition are your friends, use a phrase and then reverse it to defy expectation, (see this entire post), be humble, never work with children or animals, try to punch up and not down, don’t be afraid to go for the obvious sometimes, embrace specificity, make it personal, seek enthusiastic consent, stay hydrated, and have fun?

The hottest sex scene I’ve ever written is in a book called Deathless. In it, Koschei, an immortal brooder out of Russian fairy tales, serves a huge elaborate dinner to Marya Morevna, a young woman living through the Revolution who hasn’t had a full meal in years. He teaches her how to eat aristocratic food, explaining every dish and what order to eat them in, telling little stories about where each one comes from, what they mean symbolically, and why he chose them while he was planning out this meal specifically for her for ages and ages. I know this is my hottest scene because I have been told so over and over again, by people I never thought I would be discussing sex scenes with. 

And no one has sex in it. 

The same taut anticipation and breathless language of any lovemaking is all there, but the sensual focus is on the food (the only other thing as personal and universal as humor and sex), on the little touches of their hands, on the power dynamic between them, on the heavy richness of a fully belly, on the atmosphere and the foreshadowing of what was obviously to come later on. Not one single Sexy Word is used, not one single turgid manhood in sight. But I doubt anyone failed to read it as a love scene. Changing the focus to whatever in the room is not explicit sex can create a feeling of sensuality that’s almost unbearable. In the real world, tons of things happen before the actual sex part commences. Clothes, rooms, music, dancing, conversation, the color of fingernail polish or a tie, food, memories, perfume, starlight, city streets, the tidiness or untidiness of an apartment, the taste of wine, perhaps even a joke or two. Think of all the things that might make you want to go home with someone that have nothing to do with their measurements and write about those with the same intense focus that you would use to describe sex acts. Write a sex scene, start to finish, and then go back and replace all the naughty nouns and verbs with ones referring to something completely non-sexual. Everyone has fetishes—practice describing things so intimately that you can give readers a new one. Then write a scene about going to the opera or playing skee ball or grooming horses or skydiving or a good meal (or a bad one) or getting dressed for a formal event or gardening and replace the nouns and verbs with the Sexy Words of your choice—or don’t. Emily Dickinson wrote a lot in her diaries about violets suckling at the midnight soil after her lady friends came over for tea and nobody thinks she was actually talking about flowers. Anything can be hot if you do it right. By approaching the subject sideways, you can surprise the reader into seeing things in a new way, which is sort of the point of the whole gig.

And if you’re into writing murder mysteries or thrillers, this can work scarily well for scenes that are not all about sex-positivity and warm feelings. We have no issue reading descriptions of horrible violence for pages and pages, even in Homer, it doesn’t get people het up the same way. Try writing a murder scene, then changing all the words of violence to words of seduction. Then do it the other way. Write a bedroom scene and replace your words of love with words of death. The results will be disturbing, not gonna lie, but it’ll be different and probably effective. This is actually a classic theater exercise in which the actor performs a monologue as though he or she is about to sleep with the other character or about to murder them. 

The same shift of focus will serve you well in comedy. Rarely is a scene of everyone laughing at their hilarious friend as funny to the reader as everyone taking themselves seriously on some subject that should never be taken seriously. This is, naturally, the meat of genre comedy, in which tropes that have been taken seriously for far too long are placed in the context of real-world expectations to shine a light on their inherent absurdity. Practice the same scene reversals—hell, some of that find/replace Skee-Ball with parted lips stuff will probably come out hilariously. Write a scene about one activity, say, planting tulips, and use the same language to describe another, wildly unrelated activity, say, writing books. Write about something incredibly dramatic like the heat-death of the universe or an oncoming comet or an invasion of alien dinosaurs, and downplay it as much as you can, as though you’re a cosmic hipster talking about vinyl you don’t expect anyone else to care about. Write about an average break-up or the theft of a stamp collection with the same language you would use to breathlessly recount an invasion of alien dinosaurs. Give a Lovecraftian horror a neurotic New Yorker’s speech patterns. Give a neurotic New Yorker the speech patterns of a sheltered elf maiden.

There are a lot of ways to be funny and/or sexy. Like everything else I ever say, this is hardly definitive or prescriptive. But it’s a deeply handy shortcut to kicking yourself out of a rut of cliche or formula. Embrace reversal of the usual order of things. Mashup opposites. Make the weird and the normal speed-date. The unhinged Saturnalia of comedy, sex, death, is the tootsie-roll center of the tootsie-pop of art. Try it on the sentence level as well as the macro-level. Derrida said you can’t actually deconstruct anything—deconstruction is always already inherent in the text. No matter how insanely different concepts or people or events or lines or stories might seem, they are always already linked. They are always already part of each other. Find the point of connection and you’ve found the scene.