Bite-Size 2.0: A Creator Discussion and Advice Thread

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Jokes? I got jokes. Are they funny? To me, yes to others...eh...I can't get no respect ┐(´ー｀)┌

•Fairly often! Moreso in an RP setting, (which probably doesn't count, but that's okay.) Though I do have a secondary comic no longer in progress that was designed as a gag series with a small story. But to answer the question, yes, I love comedy and jokes so there will always be some of that present.

•Okay so it depends on the series. For Dragon Sparking, the jokes are usually sight gags thrown in and could be easily missed. Though one character cracks sick jokes whenever he can, mostly because he's a tool and likes to annoy people (in a Deadpool, mean spirited kind of way.)
For my other series, Office Drone, I used a combination of sight gags, slapstick humor, and depressing work related humor.
So really...whatever joke works, is what I use.

An example from Office Drone. I tried to layer several jokes within one picture, all of them are sight gags tinged with a layer of depressing office humor

•Both.

•They can. Shoehorning in jokes after a serious moment is a no-go for me, let the situation breathe first. Trying too hard to make a joke land and calling attention to it is a no-go, unless that in itself, is the joke.

[Iris-Grimoire]

• I try to put them in occasionally to relieve tension where the scene can afford it. It's going to change depending on the story, but currently with Splitting Image, it's slightly occasional.
• They come naturally... Out of context. I'll sometimes think of a fun potential comedic exchange in the comic without a specific scene, and then I have to scramble to find where it would be appropriate. I try not to think about them too hard, I've noticed before that Marvel-style humor in comics infuriates me at times(since sometimes characters are just taking nothing seriously even if the framing is serious) and it could cause that in my own work
• Really depends on the time and work. You can break the tension in scenes entirely with funny quips, but without something eventually, your work might be darker than you intended it to be. Quantity is also important, a single funny exchange can be way more effective than a 6 page setup that might be lost on someone reading weekly.

[Awesomeness_Studios]

Preferred Name: Marlene, Awesomeness Studios, Awesomeness (idrc just call me whatever is appropriate or use @ to call me)
Pronouns: she/her
Genres you create: Comedy, Slice-of-Life
Where you plan to take your writing journey: I just want to make cartoons when I grow up.
Link to Tapas Account: https://tapas.io/randomness16648

Can't wait to be a part of this!

[Awesomeness_Studios]

Oooh we're talking about humor today!

I'll try to answer every bullet point here based on my most recent series The Four Friendly Humors (not the upcoming spinoff, but the original)

• I used jokes quite a bit in my writing. Almost every episode is somewhat funny (at least I hope they are). I tried not to make it chaotic however (ie. really crazy and wacky things going on) since that wouldn't fit the chill tone. The only time in the series I would call it "chaotic" would be the scooter arc, which was supposed to be weird and funny in the first place (and honestly, that's why I picked scooters over bikes in the first place -- they just seemed funnier to me).

• I don't get so many comments so idk what's that effective or not. One of the my episodes was just a simple two-panel dumb shower thought I had and someone commented that it was "hilarious" so ¯(ツ)/¯

• After running a semi-popular meme page for over a year, I think jokes tend to come naturally to me. I do think about the delivery though since every punchline has a certain sweet spot which can be missed if too much or two little happens.

• Since I'm writing comedy, jokes are the story. As long as I don't overuse them too much (like an average of one joke per episode), I should be fine. Since my next comic is going to be more story based, I will have to learn how to lower my input of jokes so that the audience doesn't miss the moral of the story.

[rajillustration]

Oh man I love jokes!

• As for my own writing, learning the pacing of how to do proper jokes has been a lifetime effort. I started my writing journey making sad little emo things, as you do when you're in High School, and then as I kept writing and reading I learned the value a joke can have on a story and it's pacing. I went through a pretty heavy Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams phase, and I think that style snuck into my work becuase I just adore how they're able to switch faces from comedic to dramatic so effortlessly. It's what I want to write like, because comedy makes your work so much more approachable and enjoyable. Also, I really do think comedy keeps people reading and turning the page. They love the rush of funny words.

• Since I'm making a comic I feel like I have a clear advantage over a novel writer towards getting a joke across. I have some pretty heavy themes in my story, so to help the jokes in the dialogue deliver, I made my characters quite simplified and dynamic, so they can be really animated and sell the jokes I need to sell. I could have made them less cartoony and more detailed--and that was my original plan, but the jokes were not working, and the story was getting so damn heavy (Harriet was just completely insufferable). So strong, visual movement paired with light whimsy in my dialogue helps sell it. The art just has to match your jokes.

• Jokes do not come naturally to me and I don't really think it comes "naturally" to anyone. You have to practice being funny and making jokes just like any form of storytelling, whether it be in your art or in your writing (or both). I think it started as a symptom of my personality, I can have some pretty low lows, and humor is both a coping mechanism but also a way for me to be approachable as a human being. But over time, my sense of humor has become a part of my brand. So, on the side I do write a humorous blog where I can just practice that style of writing in a low-risk environment--of being funny while still being real. I follow a lot of comedians. I read funny books. I pay attention to jokes because they're really hard to make, and so it takes time and many, MANY rewrites to get that timing just right (and I'm still learning how to do this better all the time)

• Most of the time jokes add to the story, but they can absolutely take away as well. Especially if a character just died or something, youknow? I think this is a big problem in comic book movies, since movies have real ass physical people in them, and some of them are just straight up not funny actors and they can't deliver the same joke as the comic they're based off of. There's also moments where jokes are just...terrible, and it makes it even worse if it's said at the wrong time. Often the solution is, if in doubt, just edit it out.

[ben]

Oh no I came on to talk about numbers because I have a kind of unique perspective of that but I just realized it’s a days old topic

But its Humor Time and I think I can talk a little bit about that. I’ve drawn strips and comedy series with some level of success for the past few years as a full time gig. I feel like I don’t necessarily write “jokes” so much as I write comedic sequences and have comedic dialogue.

I feel like it comes pretty naturally to me in the sense that I’ve always been a person who sought to entertain people. Sometimes I rip dialogue straight from something funny that happened with my husband in the kitchen and I feel like being kind of goofy in my speech IRL is my default setting whether I want it to be or not.

I think having comedic elements in a story can be vital. Even now I’m working on more dramatic works that are less straight forward “comedy” and more drama and/or horror. But having strong comedic elements in more “serious” works is such a helpful way to deliver a gut punch. It’s not there to be an antithesis to the dramatic elements but to help bring some levity to something that might otherwise be too heavy or veer into just being straight up boring. It also just creates a really interesting friction. Shows like Fleabag where you’re laughing at a character’s mishaps and then mourning a loss with them a scene or two later really highlight how much comedy can be used to highlight the hard stuff. Even Get Out employs a lot of comedy to the point where a lot of reviewers thought they were watching a horror/comedy film but it doesn’t negate the story; it makes the heavy stuff feel more heavy if you’ve just come back from giggling at a funny scene or a silly piece of dialogue.

It’s also less of “how may jokes can I get away with” and more “how is the humor driving the story forward?” In Get Out humor is used to sort of reveal the evil; the girlfriend’s father talking about how he supported Obama, the girlfriend eating fruit loops while listening to “I’ve Had the Time of My Life”, the scene of Lakeith Stanfield’s character in the party scene manages to both be funny and completely eerie. Fleabag uses humor to show the downward trajectory and fuel the events that end up forcing her to learn how to move on and move forward. It’s all a part of the same thing and that’s just presenting who characters are and moving the plot forward. If it’s just a silly scene for the sake of levity I think its best to look at it and figure out how, if at all, it helps move the story along.

[KRWright]

Oh no I came on to talk about numbers because I have a kind of unique perspective of that but I just realized it’s a days old topic

You are ALWAYS welcome to return to previous topics! They don’t time out!

[ben]

AHH thanks for letting me know!! ️ I’ll come by later and RANT

[ratscout]

• This is such a hard one, honestly. It's kind of like trying to write good romance dialogue; it can be really freaking hard, especially if it's a novel and you can't work with funny visuals. I have a character in Inheritance who provides a lot of the comedy, and he's a bit of a scoundrel. XD I don't have enough active readers to determine if people find him funny, but I certainly laugh like a fool at his jokes sometimes.

• Most of the time, they just come naturally to me. Like, one of my characters was patching up a lot of ripped clothing and then my more comedic character marches in and notices that a pair of breeches was ripped right down the butt and he made a joke about it. XD I laughed at my own joke LOL.

• They can definitely add depending on when they are told. I find that a lot of movies are TERRIBLE at doing this nowadays, though. Like, some Marvel movies will try to add in some really awkward humor in the middle of a dead serious scene and it just sucks all the tension out of it. And because Marvel movies make a crap-ton of money, a lot of other movies tried to emulate this. I try to add humor in only when it's a happier/lighthearted chapter because I hate it when tension is sucked out of a potentially great scene by adding in humor where it doesn't belong.

[darthmongoose]

Yeesh these discussion points come thick and fast!

• I've cut down the number of jokes considerably since my early work. I have a lot more confidence in doing sincere stuff now, but I'd still say I put in more jokes than most people.

• My favourite types of jokes are things like anticlimactic payoffs or very dry under-reactions to big setups or extreme scenarios. I love mundane reactions to enormous, significant things, so one of my other tropes is in-universe media and social media where you get the usual banal headline or hashtag structures, but they're talking about monsters. I also like really character-based stuff where people just... can't even! Things that really resonate with the experience of being a flawed human being. Nowadays I guess we'd call that kind of thing #RelateableContent or something.

• A mixture of low-self-confidence and years of school bullying that causes me to use self-effacing humour as a defence (or in my work for characters not to take the work they're in seriously), having Terry Pratchett as one of my big early influences and being from an area where comedy and banter are baked into the culture sort of primed me for comedy. My family would always sit together to watch comedy shows, basically for as long as I can remember, and sitting after a meal telling funny stories and jokes was how I grew up. So for me, the challenge is kind of not falling back on making jokes just because it's easier than being sincere and serious.

• I think jokes can add or take away, which is why I've significantly cut down on the amount I use. I often used to use comedy as a crutch when I was too scared of being sincere and seeming sappy or uncool. It makes some of my old work feel kind of limp and lacking drama, even when the jokes hold up, because the jokes undermine the drama. Sometimes it's easier to be a clown and direct people to laugh at deliberately constructed silliness than to bare your heart to the room and risk people's scorn and laughter at your real emotions. On the other hand though, humour adds a lot of humanity to characters. It's always that fine line between "Hehe, okay this character is a person like me and I'm having fun!" and "Oh my god, Joss Whedon, can people stop quipping all the time and just act like people with emotions for five minutes!?"

[joannekwan]

I keep jokes to a minimum. I'm not a comedy writer so I only work things in if it follows the flow of the scene.

The jokes that seem to work for me the most are the ones that come naturally to the characters in their interactions and banter. Most of the time I underestimate how funny things can be. Like I'll write an interaction and think 'heh' but then when it goes live I get people commenting they're bursting out laughing. So that's good I suppose!

I never try to force a joke or actively think of something funny to write, since that's not my style. So anything that comes off as funny in my work comes like how it does in real life. It just happens.

It depends on the story if jokes will add or take away from it. Tone is super important, and the scale or absurdity of the joke should definitely be measured accordingly to the tone of the story. Then there's timing. If a character cracks a joke during an inappropriate scenes then for sure it can take away from the story. And of course, if the jokes only produce cricket chirps, then it probably would have been better to omit them entirely from the story.

[At12MN]

Intimidation

I'm really shy and easily intimidated. I consider myself a baby, while the other creators are all adults, and that difference makes me want to just stay at the back of the imaginary room. I'm content being the silent fan of the bigger writers. So no, I haven't overcome this part.

---

Humor

I don't consider myself a funny person so I often worry that I'm forcing things to be funny. Because of that, I let them come naturally in the dialogue. I don't force it or think hard about it.

Jokes do add or take away from the story depending on the timing and the atmosphere in the scene.

[KRWright]

[Awesomeness_Studios]

For the first bullet point, I can say that sometimes I actually feel like I'll get more time later on. I have a lot of schoolwork, so I feel like even adulthood will give me more time to do stuff (especially since there are a lot of adult creators with other full-time jobs).

For all the other bullets, I basically have the same answer: I do not believe my age has an impact on creation. I may be a teen but if I think I have a great idea now, I'll do it. I've learned that mistakes early on make you better sooner, so I might as well keep writing. Of course, I believe that some stories need more preparation and experience to make, but for the ones I think I can do now, I shall do. That's why I'm working on a short story-driven series right now -- so I can make a longer story-driven series later on. To me, I don't see age as something that stops me: it's all about that experience

[nathanKmcwilliams]

•To an extent, it was when I was about to turn 30 when I realized time on getting Dragon Sparking made was running shorter and shorter. I realized that I absolutely had to start it for real before I turned 30 or I'd never actually do it.
But now that I'm on the path, I'm not too worried, it was mostly just getting started that I was panicked about.

•Nope. I'm 32 now so no.

•Not really, but I'm very picky with what I read and watch already. Though video games have lost their shine, and I get really bored while playing them. I just don't have much 'fun' time to waste, when I could be doing my art instead, it's much more fulfilling.

•I remind myself that I plan on doing this art thing until I die so there's no immediate rush to be big or anything. Now that I've started, I can just run the race until it's done.

[Jenny-Toons]

For the first bullet point, I can say that sometimes I actually feel like I'll get more time later on. I have a lot of schoolwork, so I feel like even adulthood will give me more time to do stuff (especially since there are a lot of adult creators with other full-time jobs).

Definitely this notion. I got more comic work done when I was doing my internships (9-5 jobs) compared to when I was trying to do comic work during school. I just had more time. I'm still a young lady, so I still got more than enough time to work on my stuff. It's really all about the experience.

I will say that I feel more prepared, rather than too young or old. Before Our Universe and My Demon Valentine, I tried posting a crime comic on Deviantart. It didn't work out -- I kept trying to reboot the story over and over. I soon realized this wasn't a story I could tell yet, so I put it on the side and worked on shorter stories. And here we are today.

[Iris-Grimoire]

• Not quite, but I get anxious thinking of how long a single project takes and if I'm not wasting precious time on time on it instead of doing smaller ones. However, if I only do small ones, I can't make the big one I want, I guess.
• A bit; it's also the huge impression that either you get in straight out of college or you take 10+ years to get that call. Doesn't stop me from trying anyway.
• Not really, my mood for certain genres and mediums shifts every few months, not much with age. Except for horror, I used to tolerate it as a kid, now I can't get anywhere close to it
• Reading other people's works or talking with other creators! You really aren't alone in most of these feelings, so many people that share your age or position out there and are nice to discuss these matters with.

[Awesomeness_Studios]

Not quite, but I get anxious thinking of how long a single project takes and if I'm not wasting precious time on time on it instead of doing smaller ones. However, if I only do small ones, I can't make the big one I want, I guess.

Oh my god I feel you! I've been making miniseries to share as many stories as I want, but I also REEAALLLY want to make longer stories. I have plans to make a longer one after Doing Fine, Supine however.

[joannekwan]

Every year as I hit my birthday, yes I do feel that march toward the inevitable end of the line. I'm 30 for the record.

Nope, I feel I'm getting old now and I WISH I had started younger. If not starting a comic, I wish I had began to build my online presence sooner, perhaps just as I was entering college. I didn't really dive into the online creative scene until I had already graduated.

I'm definitely less interested in stories focused on teenagers now. I roll my eyes at anything where high school is a major setting.

The only thing that calms my worries is just producing more work honestly. It's why I'm beginning a shift toward novels as I realize I cannot feasibly only create comics to tell the stories I want to. Comics just take so long to complete.

[Hodge]

• Do I ever feel like time is running out? All the time, even if its not really rational or whatever, I'm a very anxious person and the pressure to succeed really weighs on me. Also, you never know what the future has in store for you, so I don't want to take the time I have now for granted.

• Well I'm 22 now so if anything I feel a bit old. Which is silly I know haha, but I started this in college as a hobby, and so seeing people I knew back then achieving their goals, I can't help but feel like I'm falling behind. I wish I took art and comics more seriously at a younger age when the competition was less fierce, but I guess that would make me a different person than I am now.

• Ahhh well those stories in a middle school/high school setting are a bit iffy for me rn. Though actually, as a creator now that I'm older I feel more comfortable doing genres I wouldn't have in the past.

• Hmm guess I just keep drawing, keep making comics, and just focusing on the art. Also, socializing and trying to be a part of the community has helped as well.