The Healer and the Irate #removeoneletterfilms

Maggie here. I’m not much of a Twitter user but once in awhile I will take a look at the trending topics list. Sometimes, there’s a good game going. Those can be fun to get lost in.

Like this weekend, people were taking films and removing one letter from the title. It’s quite interesting to see how much the meaning can be changed by removing or adding just a simple little letter.

Let’s take The Lord of the Rings for example. It can become The Lord of the Rigs and before you know it no more rings are involved but there’s some big guy in a truck named Frodo leading on a 9-truck expedition.

 

Julie: How you share is that someone uses a “hashtag” like
#removeoneletterfilms to mark their post as belonging to the “conversation.” Then you can look up that tag here and see what everyone else is saying! Parental guidance suggested but most the ones I saw were OK and even funny.

OK, yes, it’s silly, but sometimes it’s fun to be a little silly!

Maggie: Here are the ones Julie posted:

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn
The Princess and the Fog #removeoneletterfilms

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn
The Ion, the Witch and the Wardrobe #removeoneletterfilms

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn
Price Caspian #removeoneletterfilms

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn
The Voyage of the Dawn Trader #removeoneletterfilms

Then she got into Lord of the Rings mode:

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn
 Exciting story of sailors making friends. Fellowship of the Rig #removeoneletterfilms @MaggiePhillippi

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn

Group seeks a grammatically-confusing landmark. The Two Tower #removeoneletterfilms @MaggiePhillippi#removeoneletterfilms

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn
Thanksgiving day across the US. Return of the Kin #removeoneletterfilms @MaggiePhillippi

And this one made me smile:
 

Julie Bihn ‏@juliebihn

Now 15% more piratey! Pirates o' the Caribbean #removeoneletterfilms

Tag-team! Julie again! I stole half of mine from Maggie because she said she wouldn’t do them. Lord of the Rings? All the ideas were hers; I just added some words. (Collaboration!)

I loved hers, though. Anyone who’s read the book or seen the movie knows why this is funny:

Maggie Phillippi ‏@MaggiePhillippi 

Ann of Green Gables #removeoneletterfilms

And who can forget this touching Disney film?

Maggie Phillippi ‏@MaggiePhillippi 

The story of a dog looking for his lost sandwich. Blt #removeoneletterfilms @juliebihn

Maggie: I wanted to start a trending topic about removing one letter from TV shows. Because how funny would it be to have a show about FIENDS? Or anyone remember Scarecrow and Mrs. King? Turn it into Scarecrow and Ms. King and you cut that cast in half. Who knows? Maybe that’s what everyone will be doing next weekend.

Or maybe book titles. The Healer and the Irate. A story of a girl who heals anger.

Writing Humor with a Partner

Maggie: Humor is a tricky thing. What someone finds funny another will find absurd.

Julie: Pizza, pizza, oh my. Pizza train, pizza train. Everybody pizza train. WHOO WHOO

Maggie: …

Homely unicorn is also not amused.

Julie: Actually, that’s kind of how collaborative writing goes sometimes. One of us will say something we think is BRILLIANT (such as typing out my best recollection of Jimmy Fallon’s Pizza Party dance). The other says, “Um, no.” That second set of eyes is usually right, by the way...whether you’re talking humor or a serious plotline.

Maggie: I feel that my sense of humor is radically different from Julie’s. But we don’t let it work against us but rather for us. We tweak the moments until both of us find humor in the situation. So hopefully if both of us find it funny, the majority of readers will chuckle at it too.

Julie: Our book is above all a romance, but we like to put in moments to make the readers smile. Isn’t that the point of writing?

Maggie: I just share my writing, my imagination with others and hopefully they’ll be entertained too.

I’d also say that when looking for someone to write with or someone to edit/beta read your work, that it’s a good idea to find someone who thinks differently from you. We had a wonderful beta reader who wasn’t even in our target audience. She didn’t like romances but she had no trouble reading The Healer and the Pirate. When it appealed to a non-romance reader we knew that we had something special.

Julie: Check back next week for one more note on collaborative writing. What are we talking about? It’s a bit of a mystery.

(And yes, Julie made the homely unicorn. :) )

Maggie's Funnies

About two weeks ago, Julie shared some things around the web that make her laugh. This week, it's my turn.

1. Simon's Cat

I love Simon’s Cat. The above one is the very first comic but to me, they are all hilarious. I honestly can’t pick a favorite. The stories are so great because they are true to life. Thank goodness I don’t own a baseball bat or I’d wake up with a black eye every morning. It’s bad enough my hands and arms have scratches on them because Xena “digs” me out of the covers every morning. And a lot of the mischief Simon’s cat gets into reminds me of Shadow. I have seven cats by the way. Cat humor makes me laugh!

Julie: The cat is adorable (meows and all) and anyone who’s had a cat (or probably a dog) can relate…it slowly segues into absurdism as the cat somehow manages to tweak Simon's ear….and then the baseball bat….ROTFL. The cat managing to point to its own mouth, miming that it needs fed, is icing on the cake. Pretty brilliant.

2. Surprise Kitty

Are we seeing a pattern here? Can it be that I only laugh at animals?

Julie: It’s an Internet classic for a reason. Perhaps one of the cutest cat videos ever! Though it makes me smile more than laugh.

3. Twilight

And just to stick with the kitty theme I chose this one:

Picture from Know Your Meme

I have nothing against people liking Twilight. I just don’t feel it is worthy of all the media praise it gets. So anything that pokes fun of Twilight is guaranteed to make me laugh.

Julie:  Smile-worthy, to be sure...though I would’ve liked it about as much without the captions. Cute widdle kitty with wings.

So how does this pertain to collaborative writing? You’ll have to come back next week to see!

3 Funny things on the Internet from Julie

What does Julie think is funny?

One of the many challenges of collaborative writing is that Maggie and I often don't find the same things funny. Often if I'm watching a sitcom and hanging out online I'll quote a line to Maggie and she won't find it funny at all.

So here are three things I think are hilarious and Maggie's reaction.

1. Andy and April eating off Frisbees in Parks and Rec



So here are the newlyweds sharing breakfast (and then their hijinks after). Everything about this first scene cracks me up, starting with the marbles. I love people acting ridiculous when it actually makes sense with the characterization. In this case, April and Andy are absolutely goofball characters, while Ben, their roommate, plays the straight man.

Mostly it's the Frisbees, though.

Maggie: Well, I didn’t find April and Andy funny at all. In fact, my opinion of them plummeted to the floor because they seem to think it is awesome to cheat people out of money. I did chuckle at the laundry bit and the marshmallow shooting. Poor Ben needs to be around better people.

And I'll agree with Maggie that in real life, April and Andy cheating a roommate out of money is not funny. In a sitcom, though...I laugh. (Even though April totally stole my line about laundry racism.)


2. Nedroid Picture Diary

I like comics and Maggie's not so into them. Bartholomew's debut is one of my favorite comics ever, though.

http://nedroid.com/2009/09/bartholomew/

"Ow! You are stinging me." Reginald's art skills are horrible and the entire premise of his comic (and even the reason for drawing his comic) is ludicrous. Beartato (the round guy) has an expression in the final panel that is just priceless.

Here are a couple comics from Nedroid with a fantasy/speculative bent:

http://nedroid.com/2011/09/hotel/
http://nedroid.com/2011/04/wont-get-fooled-again/

Maggie: Now I find a great deal of Nedroid funny. I chuckled at the last two. The first one I just don’t really see why it is funny but that is my brain being too literal.

3. Jimmy Fallon Pizza Party Dance

The embedded version may or may not work--if it doesn't, try http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/7th-floor-west/video/episode-4-that-is-so-not-ok/1127722/ (and reload as needed).

Skip ahead to about 1:05...because one thing Maggie and I have in common is we don't think bodily function jokes are funny.




I don't even know how many times I've seen this and I still laugh every time. The sheer lunacy of the dance, coupled with Lauren the assistant's deadpan/cold looks…plus pizza is already kind of funny. The clip with just the dance was taken off YouTube but I used to post it on my Facebook every time I ate pizza. I was devastated when I saw the clip was off of YouTube, fearing this work of comedy was lost from the Internet forever.



There’s a common thread in what I think is funny--all these rely on complete absurdism, and more often than not there is a voice of reason in the lunacy.

Actually, in real life, Maggie often is that voice of reason giving me that cold Lauren-ish stare (all the way from Florida). Given my taste in comedy...that might be fair.

Maggie: Wow. I am going to sue Lauren for stealing my patent “that is not logical” stare. I mean if it is that strong to be felt from that far away, I should have full rights to it. :)

Oh and I hate pizza so a Pizza train is just... ::runs the other way::

Next week we’ll find what Maggie thinks is funny!